The Florida Supreme Court has upheld two death penalty verdicts in decisions affirming the legality of a 2023 statute that allows judges to impose capital punishment even if juries are not unanimous in their verdicts.
Michael James Jackson’s non-unanimous death sentence recommended by a Florida jury was upheld by the state Supreme Court.
In a Dec. 18 decision, the state’s high court affirmed the Legislature’s decision allowing judges to order executions even when only eight jurors out of 12 recommend capital punishment. Only Florida and Alabama allow courts to impose capital punishment when juries return non-unanimous recommendations in favor of a death sentence.
One of the two cases involved defendant Michael James Jackson, who was convicted with co-defendants of kidnapping and robbing an elderly couple, James and Carol Sumner, and then burying them alive in 2005.
Jackson was sentenced to death, but the sentence was vacated in 2017 due to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prompted the state Legislature to pass a measure requiring unanimous juries in order to impose a death sentence. In 2023, however, state lawmakers altered the law again to allow trial courts to impose capital punishment based on a recommendation of eight or more jurors.
The Jackson appeal to the high court raised 14 issues, including constitutional concerns about his sentence and challenges to the 2023 amendments. The state Supreme Court, however, rejected all of them, including one based on the Eighth Amendment.
“In the end, Jackson’s Eighth Amendment claim fails under existing precedent recognizing that ‘the Eighth Amendment does not require a jury’s favorable recommendation before a death penalty can be imposed,’ the court said in its decision. “... Jackson does not explain how a statute requiring eight or more jurors to recommend a death sentence can facially violate a constitutional provision that itself does not require a jury recommendation of death.”
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) said in a statement emailed to the Florida Record that the record number of executions carried out in Florida this year makes the state Supreme Court’s decision especially alarming.
“Florida is moving faster toward executions while lowering the safeguards meant to prevent irreversible error,” Grace Hanna, the FADP’s executive director, said. “Non-unanimous sentencing is far more than a technical issue. Ninety-seven percent of Florida’s death row exonerees were sentenced by non-unanimous juries, and eight of the 19 people executed this year were also sentenced without jury unanimity.”
With such weakened jury protections, the likelihood of unjust sentences increases, according to Hanna.
“By denying relief in these cases, the court is allowing the state to repeat the same mistakes that were already overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (in 2016) in recognition of the irreversible harm they've caused,” she said.
Legal counsel for both Jackson and another death row defendant, Michael Harrison Hunt, have said they will appeal the state Supreme Court rulings to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Jackson, has pointed to U.S. Supreme Court conclusions that non-unanimity laws have racist origins.
“Non-unanimous juries increase the risk of wrongful convictions and can operate to silence the voices of jurors of color,” Megan Byrne, an attorney with the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said in a prepared statement. “Florida’s high court has made clear that the state values speed and finality over accuracy and justice.”
