Florida prosecutors announce that they are seeking the death penalty against an African-American child sex offender who had been punished for an earlier sex offense and was then found to have molested his girlfriend’s two daughters over a long period. A 2023 law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis makes this possible. A number of state legislatures in Republican states (Alabama, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee) have moved in the same direction, in direct defiance of Supreme Court rulings that bar the death penalty in non-homicide cases (Coker v. Georgia, 1977; Kennedy v. Louisiana, 2008), perhaps in the hope that today’s more conservative Court will overturn the 2008 precedent, which was decided by a 5-4 vote.
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