Dead Man Walking Substack: Oh, Florida!
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Faucher, Stefanie
Dec 10, 2025, 2:54:13 PM12/10/25
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Dead Man Walking Substack
https://graphicdeadmanwalking.substack.com/p/oh-florida
Oh, Florida! What has set the state on its homicidal course?
Dec 6, 2025
On Valentine’s Day, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He injured 18 others and shredded the heart of an entire community.
In October, 2022, a jury unanimously agreed that Cruz was eligible for the death penalty.
That same jury deadlocked on whether to impose the sentence of death.
For death, the law required that the jury be unanimous; but three of the jurors held firm against it, resulting in a final recommendation of life without parole.
The sentence caused a furor in the Parkland community. It also detonated through Florida’s legal and political machinery and caused a seismic shift in policy.
Governor Ron DeSantis, who had previously faced criticism from conservatives for displaying a lack of appetite for the death penalty, became a fervent campaigner for capital punishment.
DeSantis vowed to change the law that required unanimity for a death sentence. Working with lawmakers on both sides of Florida’s legislature, by April 2023 he had signed into law a bill, SB 450, that allowed for the imposition of death when as few as eight out of the 12 jurors voted for it.
That made Florida one of only two states in the country to permit a non-unanimous death sentence; the other state is Alabama, and it sets a higher bar than Florida, with 10 out of 12 jurors required to vote for death.
In 2024 Florida led the nation in the number of new death sentences imposed, with seven. In one of those seven cases, the defendant waived his right to a jury and it was the judge who imposed the sentence. In each of the other six cases, the jury decision was non-unanimous. That is, without the passage of SB 450, there would have been no death sentences handed down by Florida juries that year.
It takes more than juries
It’s no surprise that a law designed to make it easier for juries to impose death has, in fact, made it easier for juries to impose death. But the new law only explains why Florida has experienced an increase in death sentences; it doesn’t explain why this year Florida has been on an execution rampage.
In 2022, the year that Nikolas Cruz received a life sentence, Florida executed…no one. Zero executions. In the preceding year the state executed…no one. It was the same the year before that.
This year, Florida is on track to execute 19 people—more than the combined total of executions in the state for the preceding decade.
What’s fueling the killing machine?
The primary drivers in this execution surge are:
Gov. DeSantis himself, who has shown newfound willingness to sign each and every death warrant that comes across his desk, and to hasten the processing of a ‘backlog’ of cases.
Florida’s process for issuing a death warrant—the document needed to authorize an execution—puts all the power in the executive and not the courts. In Florida, once the courts certify that an inmate has exhausted their appeals, the governor has complete discretion in issuing death warrants: he selects who is to be killed next and when the execution shall occur. In all the other states that carry out executions*, the power to set a date of execution is in the hands of the courts, a process that adds an extra level of review.
Florida’s clemency process, a process that grants asymmetrical power to the governor. The clemency board consists of the governor plus the Florida Cabinet (the Attorney General, the Chief Financial Officer, and the Commissioner of Agriculture). The governor cannot grant clemency without the votes of at least two other board members, but he has the unilateral power to deny clemency.
Legislation passed in 2022 that increased the secrecy of the execution process. Prior to that year, Florida, like many other death penalty states, had found it difficult to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections because drug companies refused to have their drugs used in this way. Obtaining such drugs under the new secrecy laws has proved unproblematic for the state.
Encouragement from President Trump for states to get back into the business of executing their citizens. DeSantis’ has been only to willing to prove his show-no-mercy chops.
The conservative and highly pro-death-penalty makeup of the US Supreme Court which has emboldened states to test the limits of constitutionality. For example, in 2023 Florida passed a bill making child sexual abuse a capital crime, despite the ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) which found that executing people for non-homicidal offenses violates the Eighth Amendment. In 2025, DeSantis signed a bill into law that made death mandatory for any “unlawful alien” convicted of a capital offense. This law runs contrary to longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent (specifically Woodson v. North Carolina in 1976), which held that mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional because they prevent the consideration of mitigating factors in individual cases.
A brutal irony
When the jury declined to sentence Nikolas Cruz to death for what most would regard as a crime that fully qualified as “the worst of the worst”, it was a victory for mitigation.
During the trial, the defense team had peeled back the layers of Cruz’s life, a life warped before birth by his mother’s addiction, maimed by fetal alcohol exposure that went undiagnosed until after the shootings, and mishandled by nearly every institution meant to help him. Cruz’s team did what few capital defense teams ever manage to do: tell the entire story, persuasively, and in full color. Three jurors heard and those three were enough to save their client.
The brutal irony? The Cruz defense team’s success—perhaps the most painstaking and principled work capital mitigation has produced in recent memory—helped trigger a backlash that will leave future defendants with fewer protections, fewer second chances, and even less room for mercy.
The Parkland verdict didn’t temper Florida’s appetite for the death penalty. It supercharged it.
________________________________
* Although Pennsylvania’s death warrant process is similar to Florida’s, the governors in that state haven’t signed a death warrant in decades. Conversely, no governor in Florida has granted clemency since 1988, when Gov. Bob Graham commuted the sentence of Learie Alford due to doubts about his guilt.
Thanks for reading Graphic Dead Man Walking. Please share it.
© 2025 Rose Vines
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Unsubscribe
--
Stefanie Faucher
Deputy Director
8th Amendment Project
sfau...@8thamendment.org
Mobile 510.393.4549
8thamendment.org
Uniting the national movement to end the death penalty in the U.S.
https://graphicdeadmanwalking.substack.com/p/oh-florida
Oh, Florida! What has set the state on its homicidal course?
Dec 6, 2025
On Valentine’s Day, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He injured 18 others and shredded the heart of an entire community.
In October, 2022, a jury unanimously agreed that Cruz was eligible for the death penalty.
That same jury deadlocked on whether to impose the sentence of death.
For death, the law required that the jury be unanimous; but three of the jurors held firm against it, resulting in a final recommendation of life without parole.
The sentence caused a furor in the Parkland community. It also detonated through Florida’s legal and political machinery and caused a seismic shift in policy.
Governor Ron DeSantis, who had previously faced criticism from conservatives for displaying a lack of appetite for the death penalty, became a fervent campaigner for capital punishment.
DeSantis vowed to change the law that required unanimity for a death sentence. Working with lawmakers on both sides of Florida’s legislature, by April 2023 he had signed into law a bill, SB 450, that allowed for the imposition of death when as few as eight out of the 12 jurors voted for it.
That made Florida one of only two states in the country to permit a non-unanimous death sentence; the other state is Alabama, and it sets a higher bar than Florida, with 10 out of 12 jurors required to vote for death.
In 2024 Florida led the nation in the number of new death sentences imposed, with seven. In one of those seven cases, the defendant waived his right to a jury and it was the judge who imposed the sentence. In each of the other six cases, the jury decision was non-unanimous. That is, without the passage of SB 450, there would have been no death sentences handed down by Florida juries that year.
It takes more than juries
It’s no surprise that a law designed to make it easier for juries to impose death has, in fact, made it easier for juries to impose death. But the new law only explains why Florida has experienced an increase in death sentences; it doesn’t explain why this year Florida has been on an execution rampage.
In 2022, the year that Nikolas Cruz received a life sentence, Florida executed…no one. Zero executions. In the preceding year the state executed…no one. It was the same the year before that.
This year, Florida is on track to execute 19 people—more than the combined total of executions in the state for the preceding decade.
What’s fueling the killing machine?
The primary drivers in this execution surge are:
Gov. DeSantis himself, who has shown newfound willingness to sign each and every death warrant that comes across his desk, and to hasten the processing of a ‘backlog’ of cases.
Florida’s process for issuing a death warrant—the document needed to authorize an execution—puts all the power in the executive and not the courts. In Florida, once the courts certify that an inmate has exhausted their appeals, the governor has complete discretion in issuing death warrants: he selects who is to be killed next and when the execution shall occur. In all the other states that carry out executions*, the power to set a date of execution is in the hands of the courts, a process that adds an extra level of review.
Florida’s clemency process, a process that grants asymmetrical power to the governor. The clemency board consists of the governor plus the Florida Cabinet (the Attorney General, the Chief Financial Officer, and the Commissioner of Agriculture). The governor cannot grant clemency without the votes of at least two other board members, but he has the unilateral power to deny clemency.
Legislation passed in 2022 that increased the secrecy of the execution process. Prior to that year, Florida, like many other death penalty states, had found it difficult to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections because drug companies refused to have their drugs used in this way. Obtaining such drugs under the new secrecy laws has proved unproblematic for the state.
Encouragement from President Trump for states to get back into the business of executing their citizens. DeSantis’ has been only to willing to prove his show-no-mercy chops.
The conservative and highly pro-death-penalty makeup of the US Supreme Court which has emboldened states to test the limits of constitutionality. For example, in 2023 Florida passed a bill making child sexual abuse a capital crime, despite the ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) which found that executing people for non-homicidal offenses violates the Eighth Amendment. In 2025, DeSantis signed a bill into law that made death mandatory for any “unlawful alien” convicted of a capital offense. This law runs contrary to longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent (specifically Woodson v. North Carolina in 1976), which held that mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional because they prevent the consideration of mitigating factors in individual cases.
A brutal irony
When the jury declined to sentence Nikolas Cruz to death for what most would regard as a crime that fully qualified as “the worst of the worst”, it was a victory for mitigation.
During the trial, the defense team had peeled back the layers of Cruz’s life, a life warped before birth by his mother’s addiction, maimed by fetal alcohol exposure that went undiagnosed until after the shootings, and mishandled by nearly every institution meant to help him. Cruz’s team did what few capital defense teams ever manage to do: tell the entire story, persuasively, and in full color. Three jurors heard and those three were enough to save their client.
The brutal irony? The Cruz defense team’s success—perhaps the most painstaking and principled work capital mitigation has produced in recent memory—helped trigger a backlash that will leave future defendants with fewer protections, fewer second chances, and even less room for mercy.
The Parkland verdict didn’t temper Florida’s appetite for the death penalty. It supercharged it.
________________________________
* Although Pennsylvania’s death warrant process is similar to Florida’s, the governors in that state haven’t signed a death warrant in decades. Conversely, no governor in Florida has granted clemency since 1988, when Gov. Bob Graham commuted the sentence of Learie Alford due to doubts about his guilt.
Thanks for reading Graphic Dead Man Walking. Please share it.
© 2025 Rose Vines
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Unsubscribe
--
Stefanie Faucher
Deputy Director
8th Amendment Project
sfau...@8thamendment.org
Mobile 510.393.4549
8thamendment.org
Uniting the national movement to end the death penalty in the U.S.
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