Ron DeSantis: What If We Killed More People, Harder?

Signs three Git Tuff crime bills so 2024 primary voters will know he's Gittin' Tuff on Crime.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed three new bills on crime Monday, to prove that he is officially Tough On Crime as he prepares to run for the 2024 Republican nomination. The real headline-catcher is a bill that would restore Florida's death penalty for child rape, even though the United States Supreme Court in 2008 banned the use of capital punishment for anything other than murder. DeSantis figures — probably correctly — that the new composition of the Court may be happy to let states start killing people for crimes that everyone agrees are heinous, because who would want to spare the life of a child rapist anyway? The angry tweets write themselves, and may even be a useful distraction from DeSantis's embarrassing flailing in his war on Disney.

To be clear, Yr Wonkette is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, because the state shouldn't be in the business of killing anyone. No, we do not want mass murderers teaching kindergarten, either.

DeSantis's signing announcement, however, was firmly focused on touting another of the bills, HB 1627 , which sets minimum bail bond recommendations. Judges would be free to set higher bail amounts, but not to allow anything lower than the minimum without the approval of the Florida Supreme Court. It's all part of DeSantis's presidential ambitions, so he can run against blue states' horrible "woke" prosecutors even if he doesn't have any handy in Florida, having already fired them. DeSantis said the minimum bail requirements would "handcuff" any "pro-criminal judges" that might be lurking out there.

The crime bills certainly had the desired effect on at least one DeSantis lickspittle, state Sen. Jonathan Martin, who gushed that DeSantis is "standing between the child molesters and the wokeism, [...] And someday he’ll be maybe having more of a decision on some of these federal judges."

As the Tampa Bay Times reports, DeSantis essentially acknowledged that the bail law is all about underlining his Tough Guy credentials, not addressing a problem that actually exists:

“Part of doing well is preempting things before they happen,” he said during a bill-signing ceremony in Titusville. “We can sit there and wait for things to go south, but if you can get ahead, it does make a difference. So here is us looking. And we’re proud of what we’ve done, but we also understand we’ve got to stay ahead of the curve. So we’re doing that here today, and I think the state will be better off for it.”

DeSantis said he wanted to differentiate Florida from states like New York and Illinois, which have initiated criminal justice reforms like the elimination of cash bail.

Never mind the research showing that cash bail hits poor and minority people hardest, and can turn into a form of debt peonage. Republicans hate bail reform, so even though Florida hasn't done it, DeSantis and his compliant R legislative supermajority are reforming bail the other direction. He happily explained that

“This is kind of the anti-New York, in terms of what we’re doing. [...] They wanted to basically say that a lot of these crimes should be treated with a slap on the wrist. We’re doing the opposite.”

The other two bills are also designed to lay down markers for 2024 and to prove he's the One True Fox News candidate. One, HB 1359 , sets a minimum sentence of three years for anyone who manufactures, sells, or traffics fentanyl and similar opioids, but the real wingnut bait is the bill's enhanced punishment for a crime that the Tampa Bay Times notes "is rare, if not nonexistent":  

That penalty would jump to a minimum of 25 years and fine of $1 million if a minor is involved. DeSantis invoked the specter of drug dealers disguising fentanyl as Halloween candy “to try to get it into our youth,” [...]

“They need to be treated like murderers, because they are murdering people,” DeSantis said.

Look, drug dealers handing out fentanyl candy on Halloween may not be happening, but lack of reality was no reason not to freak out about teachers supposedly telling little white kids that they're personally responsible for slavery, or about rampant voter fraud.

The third measure DeSantis signed, HB 1297 , the bill requiring the death penalty for certain sex crimes against children, was near and dear to DeSantis's heart; he specifically asked the Lege for that one in January, explaining that "We really believe that part of a just society is to have appropriate punishment, and so, if you commit a crime that is really, really heinous, you should have the ultimate punishment."

As we noted, the Supreme Court in 2008 held that the "death penal­ty should not be expand­ed to instances where the victim’s life was not taken," in an opinion written by former Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a case where the plaintiff's last name was also Kennedy. Before Kennedy's opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, eight states, including Florida, had death penalties for raping children, but none had actually executed anyone since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. The Court had previously ruled, in 1977, that the death penalty for the rape of an adult was unconstitutional.

The new law is designed to be challenged so the far more rightwing Trump Court can overturn the Kennedy decision, which DeSantis has said he thinks was wrongly decided. The Tampa Bay Times explains the law would allow capital punishment for sexual battery of a child under the age of 12, but only "if jurors unanimously find two aggravating factors regarding the circumstances of the case or the victim, such as whether the victim was disabled." Currently, in other capital murder cases, Florida jurors only need to find a single aggravating factor.

But while the statute seems fairly narrowly drawn, another "reform" signed into law by DeSantis late last month will also make it far easier for juries to impose the death penalty. Previous Florida law required all 12 jurors in a capital case to vote for death, but the new law allows juries to recommend execution with just an eight to four vote. DeSantis pursued the looser standard after the jury in the trial of the Parkland massacre shooter split 9-3 on the death penalty.

Now Florida courts can get to work executing more people, and presumably racking up an even higher record of wrongful convictions than it already has; the state currently leads the USA in death row exhonerees with 30. Heck, Florida's even sending people back to prison to serve out life sentences after appealing federal court rulings that they were wrongly convicted.

And if DeSantis gets his wish and the Supreme Court upholds HB 1297, that will no doubt invite other states to challenge earlier rulings so the Court can start tinkering with the machinery of death for other crimes that aren't murder, like perhaps the currently unused statutes in Florida and Missouri that allow death sentences for drug trafficking, or several states' laws allowing executions for aggravated kidnapping.

[ Tampa Bay Times / Death Penalty Information Center / AP ]

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