Florida Legislature tries again with immigration, maintains mandatory death penalty for "unauthorized alien[s]"
After prior legislation was approved and ready to go to Gov. DeSantis, the Legislature created new legislation on immigration that maintains a provision for a mandatory death penalty.
As TFDP previously covered, the Legislature approved legislation in late January aimed at addressing immigration that included a provision for a mandatory death penalty for any “unauthorized alien” convicted of a capital offense. Gov. DeSantis was expected to veto the legislation because he did not think it was strong enough on addressing immigration.
This week, the Legislature proposed new legislation on the topic. In pertinent part, one of the proposed bills (proposed in both the House and the Senate) maintains a provision for a mandatory death penalty for any “unauthorized alien” convicted of a capital offense.
On Monday, new bills were filed in both the House and the Senate—HB 3-C and SB 4-C. These bills are identical. Section 5 of the bill states:
Section 6 states that the bill would take effect immediately upon being enacted.
The Senate bill is scheduled to be heard by the Appropriations Committee tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. The House bill has been added to the Budget Committee’s agenda.
A pre-meeting analysis of the bill for the Senate Appropriations Committee (available here) states the following as to the death penalty provision in the legislation:
The analysis also outlines Florida’s capital sentencing process. As to the legislation’s mandatory death penalty, the analysis warns that the U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled similar statutes were unconstitutional. The following analysis is included in a section titled “Due Process”:
In addition, the following is included under “Eighth Amendment”:
You can find more information on the legislation on the Florida Senate website here.