Six prisoners in Florida had execution warrants signed by Governor Ron DeSantis last year, the highest number in the state since 2014. He was a presidential candidate as well.
Up until then, DeSantis has only approved two executions, both of which occurred in 2019. The abrupt increase in severity and the law he signed removing Florida’s death penalty jury requirement appeared to herald a change in strategy regarding the death sentence.
A representative for the governor, Bryan Griffin, stated that although COVID and state emergencies, like as storms, can postpone some executions, “the process has resumed” when DeSantis signed the first of those six death warrants in January 2023.
His office did not respond to emails requesting an explanation for why DeSantis has not signed any death warrants this year.
DeSantis hasn’t carried out any executions this year, which has some people wondering if the governor’s six murders from the previous year were a result of his presidential campaign and his desire to appear tough on crime. In January, DeSantis called off his campaign.
In the last months of his presidency, former President Donald Trump, who faced off against DeSantis for the Republican nomination, presided over a record number of federal executions: thirteen prisoners were put to death between July and January.
“I believe the majority of observers thought Governor DeSantis was attempting to show how tough he was on crime by outwitting Donald Trump,” stated Robert Dunham, a death sentence specialist and former head of the Death Sentence Information Center. Of course, he made a mistake by assuming that people’s views on the death penalty would determine whether they would vote for or against Donald Trump.
The death penalty used to be a major factor in both Republican and Democratic campaigns. But in the past 20 years or so, the American public has reexamined and grown less supportive of the death sentence, thus that has become less true.
Politicians still use the death penalty for political reasons, according to Austin Sarat, an Amherst College professor. This is especially true if there is a high-profile incident that they can capitalize on during a campaign. However, the public’s attention has already shifted by the time of the execution, which frequently occurs decades after a death sentence.
Sarat stated that he believes there is more to this issue than politicians seeking to carry out executions as a political campaign tactic. DeSantis has signed much fewer death warrants than former Governor Rick Scott, even though he oversaw a greater number of executions last year.
Sarat remarked, “My guess is he talked more about woke in schools than he did about Florida executions.”
Political science professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stated that politicians hope to gain from taking a firm stance against crime.
However, he claimed that voters’ opinions of executions are the same as those of other tough-on-crime policies, such as raising police funding or enacting stricter legislation.
He remarked, “It all adds up in the tough-on-crime bucket.” “People don’t distinguish between those subtleties.”
It’s unknown if DeSantis will carry out executions once again in his remaining years as governor. There are about 280 death row inmates in Florida, some of whom had been there since the 1970s.
However, his influence on death row inmates may extend beyond Florida for many years to come. Given that Florida has the largest number of death row exonerations, some opponents of the capital penalty, including activists, lawyers, and religious organizations, were concerned about the DeSantis-led reforms to Florida’s death sentence.
DeSantis signed a bill that lowered the number of jurors needed to sentence someone to death to eight, making Florida the state with the lowest threshold in the US. He also enacted a bill that aims to overturn previous decisions made by the US Supreme Court and carry out the execution of child rapists.
Following a request from the victim’s family, the first Florida prosecutors who tried to prosecute a man for sexually abusing a child and seek the death penalty eventually gave up.
But before to that, DeSantis had been a fervent advocate of their effort to apply the death penalty. DeSantis stated on social media that the prosecution has “my full support” and that this would be the “first case to challenge SCOTUS” since he approved the legislation.