Richard Wolf

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Florida's system of letting judges, not juries, decide whether convicted criminals deserve the death penalty.

The 8-1 ruling is significant because Florida has about 400 prisoners on death row, second only to California — and unlike California, it conducts executions regularly. However, most of the state's prisoners are not likely to be affected because their appeals have run out or their convictions were based on indisputable aggravating circumstances.

In Florida, judges can impose the death penalty even if the jury has not ruled unanimously or agreed on any aggravating circumstance. If the jury has issued a recommendation, the judge doesn't have to follow it. No other state gives judges such discretion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the decision for the nearly unanimous court, with Justice Samuel Alito dissenting.

"We hold this sentencing scheme unconstitutional," Sotomayor said. "The 6th Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury's mere recommendation is not enough."

Alito disagreed, contending that past Supreme Court rulings allow judges to establish the facts leading to a death sentence. Even so, he said, "under the Florida system, the jury plays a critically important role."

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The ruling in the case brought by death row prisoner Timothy Hurst won't affect other states, where juries have considerably more power and their verdicts must be unanimous. Still, it's another setback for proponents of capital punishment nationally at a time when the Supreme Court is hearing many such cases — and could ultimately rule on whether the death penalty itself violates the Constitution.

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The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that juries, not judges, must determine whether the necessary facts exist to warrant a death sentence. In Hurst's case, the jury found that the murder was particularly heinous and was committed during a robbery — two aggravating circumstances meriting a death sentence. But the jury decided that by a 7-5 vote; it was not clear if a majority of jurors voted for either circumstance separately.

The judge in Hurst's trial then conducted a separate fact-finding process and handed down the death sentence, rendering the jury's decision merely advisory, Sotomayor said.

Florida's solicitor general, Allen Winsor, argued in court in October that the state's system of having judges and juries go through separate processes offers more, not less, protection for capital defendants.

"There are some real benefits associated with judicial sentences," Winsor said. "You're not going to have someone's life or death being determined exclusively on, perhaps, the emotions of a jury."

But Sotomayor ruled that Hurst was hurt by the state's system, since the jury never clearly found the aggravating circumstances required for a death sentence. "The maximum punishment Timothy Hurst could have received without any judge-made findings was life in prison without parole," she said.

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