Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday she hopes Judge Neil Gorsuch’s potential Supreme Court confirmation will yield new guidance from the high court on the death penalty.
“We need clarification regarding the death penalty,” Bondi told the Washington Examiner. “It’s different in many states. … It’s a bit different throughout the country, so I look forward to Judge Gorsuch being on the court, Justice Gorsuch being on the court, and bringing some clarification to those issues.”
Bipartisan momentum may be building for a Supreme Court review of the death penalty, as Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton, has also said a review may be needed. Bondi is a Republican.
Last year, the Supreme Court decided Florida’s death penalty process was unconstitutional because it provided power to judges that was reserved for juries. In that case, Justice Breyer publicly urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty, one of several times he has made that request during his term.
Breyer dissented again Monday from the Supreme Court’s decision not to take a death penalty case from Louisiana.
“Marcus Dante Reed was sentenced to death in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, a county that in recent history has apparently sentenced more people to death per capita than any other county in the United States,” Breyer wrote in dissent. “The arbitrary role that geography plays in the imposition of the death penalty, along with the other serious problems I have previously described, has led me to conclude that the court should consider the basic question of the death penalty’s constitutionality.”
If the Supreme Court does reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty after a potential Gorsuch confirmation, the newest justice could prove to be a determinative vote. Gorsuch has written extensively on the issues of death and dying — including a book he authored about assisted suicide and euthanasia — but less on matters involving capital punishment.
Gorsuch’s rulings involving the death penalty have not shown the judge to be concerned about the punishment’s constitutionality, but analyses have found that he frequently favors the side of criminal defendants against the state — similar in some ways to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat Gorsuch hopes to fill.
