DeSantis orders Florida’s 100th execution in same week he suggests death penalty reform, citing Parkland

The death warrant is signed. Donald David Dillbeck is scheduled to be the next convicted killer executed by the state of Florida. His will be the 100th execution since the death penalty became legal again in the 1970s.

Dillbeck, 59, is scheduled to die Feb. 23 by lethal injection for the 1990 murder of Faye Vann in Tallahassee. Dillbeck had escaped from custody while serving a life sentence for the death of Lee County Deputy Sherriff Dwight Lynn Hall in 1979.

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It will be the first post-pandemic execution in the state, the first since Gary Ray Bowles in August of 2019, the third under the DeSantis administration.

And if the Florida Legislature follows the governor’s advice, it’s going to be a lot easier to send future killers to take Dillbeck’s place on death row. Earlier this week, DeSantis revived his criticism of last year’s verdict in the Parkland mass shooting trial, telling a gathering of the Florida Sheriff’s Association that it’s once again time to reform the state’s death penalty law.

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Under current law, a jury has to be unanimous in recommending a death sentence. A single juror is all it takes to keep an inmate off death row and send him to prison for life. In the Parkland case, jurors said they were split 9-3 in favor of death. Confessed killer Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison in early November.

The decision should have condemned Cruz to death, DeSantis said. “We can’t be in a situation where one person can just derail this,” he said, suggesting a “supermajority” of as few as eight jurors.

The requirement of a unanimous jury is recent. Florida’s death penalty scheme was ruled unconstitutional in 2016 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which faulted the state for giving judges too much authority. Jury decisions were advisory, and there was no requirement that they make a unanimous finding that the death penalty was even appropriate.

The new law, passed in 2017, addressed the Supreme Court’s concerns by requiring a unanimous jury to make three decisions — that the state proved the existence of aggravating factors justifying a death sentence, that those outweighed any mitigating factors raised by the defense, and that death is the appropriate sentence.

In 2020, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that unanimity is not necessary, but the new law remained in place.

The political landscape is fertile ground for the kind of change DeSantis is seeking. If the state Legislature changes the law, any challenge would be heard by a U.S. Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority that bears little resemblance to the more ideologically split court that made its 2016 ruling.

“As defense attorneys we hope that on most issues the court will rely on and maintain its own precedents,” said Matthew Metz, legislative chairman of the Florida Public Defender Association. “But there’s always the potential for a change.”

According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, Florida inmates sentenced to death are eight times more likely to have their sentences overturned than be executed: the state has sentenced 1,234 inmates to death since 1976. Executions have been carried out only 99 times.

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Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on Twitter @rolmeda.