Move FM Global News

TALLAHASSEE, Florida: After a failure to obtain a unanimous vote, which led to the Parkland school shooter being sentenced to life in prison, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a bill allowing juries to recommend the death penalty in capital cases on an 8-4 vote.

Following the Republican-controlled state Senate’s approval in March, the state’s House of Representatives approved the measure by an 80-30 vote this week.

If Republican DeSantis, who is widely thought to be considering joining the 2024 presidential campaign, signs the bill into law, Florida prosecutors trying capital felony cases would need to convince only two-thirds of a 12-member jury to recommend the death penalty for a convicted defendant, rather than a unanimous decision.

The change only affects the penalty phase of capital trials, and would have no effect on the requirement for a jury’s unanimous vote to convict a defendant.

After a jury could not come to a unanimous decision on giving a death sentence to Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018, DeSantis stressed that he was “very disappointed.”

In a March interview on WPLG, an ABC affiliate in South Florida, Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was killed in the Parkland shooting, said, “Because of the jury’s incorrect decision, the victims, my beautiful daughter, her 13 classmates and her three teachers, did not get the justice that they deserve.”

If the bill becomes law, Florida and Alabama would be the only states where a unanimous jury decision is not required to sentence a capital defendant to death.