Florida Supreme Court orders 150 death row inmates be resentenced

‘At least 150 death row inmates in Florida will need to be resentenced after the state’s supreme court ruled that they had been convicted under unconstitutional laws.
Florida has the second largest population of death row inmates in the US, with nearly 400 people awaiting execution. On Thursday, the state’s supreme court ruled that nearly half of those inmates needed to be resentenced.
On January 12, 2016, in the US Supreme Court case Hurst v. Florida, the state was found to be violating the Constitution by giving judges the power to sentence inmates to death based on a jury’s recommendation, meaning anything over a 10-2 decision, rather than a unanimous verdict. The case overturned Florida law, stating, “the Sixth 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.”’
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