Florida is emerging as a new state in the realm of capital punishment. Enilsa Brown 49

Florida, once the leading state in the death penalty, has been ramping up its use of the death penalty. In 2023, Florida passed a law making the sexual assault of a child under 12 by an adult a capital crime, making it the second state allowing non-unanimous juries to impose a death sentence. This made Florida just the second state — Alabama being the other — allowing non-unanimous juries to impose a death sentence.

In January 2025, the state legislature passed the so-called Trump Act, mandating “the automatic imposition of the death penalty for ‘unauthorized aliens’ convicted of capital offenses.” DeSantis signed the legislation, even though it was a marked departure from Supreme Court precedent dating back to 1976 forbidding mandatory death sentences. In June, Florida passed legislation expanding the death penalty to offenses including cases of child sex trafficking and opening the door for the use of any method of execution “deemed” constitutional, rather than specifying particular methods.

The spike in executions may be driven by DeSantis’s political ambitions. He is term-limited and could be eyeing a position in the Trump administration. In May, the governor reiterated his support for capital punishment, saying that there are “some crimes that are so horrific that the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty.” However, Florida’s recent death penalty history suggests that something else is at work. From 2020 to 2022, during DeSantis’s first term, it carried out no executions. In 2023, as DeSantis ramped up his presidential campaign, he signed six death warrants. In 2024, during most of which he was no longer a candidate, he signed just one.

Research has shown that 72 percent of all executions carried out in Florida between 1976 and 2014 were for crimes involving white victims, even though only 56 percent of all homicide victims are white. At the same time, 71% of the executions carried out against black inmates were for homicides involving white victims. A lawsuit filed last month alleges that 95 percent of the execution warrants he has signed have been in cases involving white victims. All this suggests that Florida’s newfound enthusiasm for the death penalty has yet to be matched with equal enthusiasm for doing justice in capital cases. It is long past time to address that problem.

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