The Florida legislature is continuing debate on bills and budgets in Tallahassee. And even though there are a little under two weeks left in the session, a number of new laws have made their way to the governor’s desk, two of which involve controversial topics.
Rachel Witbracht: Today (Tuesday, April 25) is the 50th day of legislative session, so there are only ten days before adjournment and the legislature has made quick work in sending bills to Governor DeSantis’ desk.
Last Thursday, Governor DeSantis signed a bill that would change how the state of Florida imposes the death penalty to become the state with the lowest threshold for capital punishment in the nation. The new law was sponsored by Republicans Blaze Angolia and Bernie Jacques. It would allow juries to compel the death penalty with an 8 to 4 vote instead of the unanimous jury threshold.
This change was prompted due to the sentencing of Nikolas Cruz, the 2018 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooter. During his trial, the jury had voted 9 to 3 to impose the death penalty, and so they instead sentenced him to life without parole, which was his punishment for being found guilty on 17 murder charges. DeSantis, in a statement referencing the signing of the bill, said, once a defendant in a capital case is found guilty by unanimous jury, one juror should not be able to veto a capital sentence.
So this new Florida threshold would be lower than the 10 to 2 majority required in Alabama. The votes on the House and Senate floor drew opposition from Democrats and also a handful of Republicans, and mostly they were attorneys who believed that although Cruz should have been given the death penalty, that the threshold should still be unanimous jury.
Bob Barrett: Well, another bill, controversial bill that made it to the governor's desk and has already gotten his signature was the six week abortion ban. Talk about that a bit.
Rachel Witbracht: Yeah. Governor DeSantis signed the six week abortion ban bill last week. But the six week ban will only take effect if the state's current 15 week ban is upheld in an ongoing legal challenge that's before the Florida Supreme Court.
Abortion clinics across the state filed a suit against last session's 15 week ban. But the first (District Court of Appeals) allowed the ban to take effect. So the Florida Supreme Court, which is controlled by conservatives, has not taken action yet. I think we can probably expect them to uphold the first DCA's decision on that.
The six week ban contains exceptions for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking, which was a push by the Florida Senate President Kathleen Pasadomo.
Bob Barrett: A lot of other bills going through. There's so much making its way to the governor's desk and well, the governor's desk is not being occupied right now since he's in Asia at this point. I guess the other thing that's going to be big news is the budget talks beginning.
Rachel Witbracht: Absolutely. So the budget conferencing process started yesterday (April 24), so that's the first step in finalizing the state budget. The House and Senate present their offers and make negotiations to align their priorities with each other. And in a joint memo, house speaker Paul Renner and senate president Kathleen Pasadomo emphasized that the house and senate budgets were already aligned on many key issues. But those two budgets differ greatly in the health care and the justice silos. The senate healthcare budget differs by about $150 million more than the House, mostly dealing with Medicaid and Medicare allocations. And the criminal justice budgets are a bit closer, with about a $40 million difference.
The key gaps consist in law enforcement training and second chance programs in key areas of the state. Conferencing usually takes place in about a one week time frame, so being that there so closely aligned, I would expect the conferencing process to be done sometime this week.
