“There’s no delicate way of saying this: The court has lost its legitimacy,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “It is clearly no longer a neutral arbiter. The justices were handpicked for their far-right-wing beliefs, and they are aggressively substituting their views … in place of well-established law, and they are systematically dismantling necessary protections in capital cases.”
Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga holds up a booklet about the Constitution of the United States that he received while in law school, Nov. 17, 2000.
Photo: Pool Old/Reuters
Judge, Jury, Executioner
The current unraveling of Florida’s death penalty precedents dates back to a 2016 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case called Hurst v. Florida. There, the court ruled 8-1 that Florida’s death penalty scheme was unconstitutional because it treated a jury’s decision on sentencing as merely “advisory” and instead g