Capital punishment in Florida

The new electric chair was originally housed at Union Correctional Institution, but moved to Florida State Prison in 1962.

[3] After the Supreme Court permitted the death penalty once more in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the state electrocuted John Arthur Spenkelink on May 25, 1979, which was the second execution in the U.S. since 1967, after that of Gary Gilmore on January 17, 1977, in Utah.

A provision for capital sexual battery was found unconstitutional in the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Louisiana.

[8][9][10][11][12] The first attempted use of the law was in the case of accused child molester Joseph Giampa, who ultimately pleaded guilty rather than risk possible execution.

[20] This was also challenged and in October 2014, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the law, finding that death sentences can only be handed down by a unanimous jury.

[21] On April 20, 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 450 that eliminated the unanimous jury requirement, replacing it with a supermajority of at least eight of twelve jurors.

It creates tighter time frames for a person sentenced to death to make appeals and post-conviction motions and imposes reporting requirements on case progress.

When sentenced, male convicts who receive the death penalty are incarcerated at either Florida State Prison itself, or at Union Correctional Institution next door to Florida State Prison, while female convicts who are sentenced to death are incarcerated at Lowell Correctional Institution north of Ocala.

Florida used public hanging under a local jurisdiction, overseen and performed by the sheriffs of the counties where the crimes took place.

[28][29] The electric chair became a subject of strong controversy in the 1990s after three executions received considerable media attention and were labeled as "botched" by opponents (Jesse Tafero in 1990, Pedro Medina in 1997, and Allen Lee Davis in 1999).