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St. Thomas Law Review

First Page

759

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Between 1991 and 2000 the Florida Supreme Court published at least 343 direct appeal opinions on 288 men and women sentenced to death in circuit court, Florida's felony trial court. All but nineteen, 266 or 92% of the individuals, saw a conviction affirmed. One hundred seventy seven, or 61% of the individuals, also saw their death sentence affirmed while the remainder won various forms of relief, though often only temporary. This article and the accompanying appendix will examine those 288 cases, try to quantify them, and consider what they say about recent Florida death penalty jurisprudence. In a few instances, significant developments in Florida death penalty law will be discussed. The article will not discuss capital post conviction litigation except as an occasional aside.' The article considers death penalty direct appeal opinions issued by the Florida Supreme Court between January 1, 1991, and December 31, 2000. The primary virtue of this approach is its simplicity. One drawback, however, is that percentages should not be read too literally. These percentages are, at best, an indication of general trends. Many decisions follow remands earlier than the period of this study. Other cases with remands late in the period of this study returned to the Florida Supreme Court with decisions after December 31, 2000. Some of those decisions are discussed in footnotes. Many times remands, especially those on sentencing issues, resulted in trial court resolutions that were not appealed. Those final actions are beyond the scope of the research of this article.

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