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Legal Heavyweights Want Death Sentences Commuted to Life Sentences

May 3rd, 2016 by flanews

Some legal heavyweights are urging the state’s Supreme Court to convert death row inmates sentences to life sentences.

 

A group that includes former Supreme Court justices and American Bar Association presidents filed a legal brief Tuesday ahead of a Supreme Court case later this week that could determine the fate of those sitting on Florida’s death row.  The state’s death penalty was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court earlier this year and lawmakers scrambled to change the death penalty sentencing laws.

“They wrote a very plain speaking law that said if the US Supreme Court ever declares the Florida Death Penalty scheme unconstitutional, then the trial judges of the state will be obligated to call all of those death row people before them in court and immediately re-sentence them to life in prison,” said former Florida Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead.

The Florida Supreme Court will hear from attorneys of Timothy Lee Hurst. His case caused the US Supreme Court to rule against Florida’s death penalty sentencing scheme.

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