{"id":443,"date":"2018-09-05T10:03:32","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T14:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clearwatercriminallawyer.net\/?p=443"},"modified":"2026-01-31T13:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T18:03:39","slug":"death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Penalty Affirmed by Florida Supreme Court in Murder Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Florida, people convicted of certain crimes may be sentenced to death for those crimes. However, there are some people who are constitutionally protected from the death penalty due to their status or characteristics. For example, the United States Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional to sentence someone to death if they committed their crimes when they were less than 18 years of age. The laws around violent crimes and sentencing change periodically as federal and state courts clarify their positions. A knowledgeable Florida violent crimes defense attorney can help you understand any potential penalties of the crimes you have been charged with.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Another one of the categories of people that cannot be executed are people with intellectual disabilities. This is because they are not seen as having the same decision-making ability as people without these kinds of disabilities, and so the death penalty is considered cruel. Florida amended their death penalty statute in 2003 to include this prohibition. Under the 2003 Florida statutes, a defendant has the burden to prove by clear and convincing evidence that they are intellectually disabled. To do this, they needed to show three things: significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, with concurrent deficits in adaptive behavior, that manifested before age 18. At the time, Florida used a strict cutoff of an IQ score of 70 to determine what counted as \u201csignificantly subaverage\u201d intellectual functioning.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading Death Penalty Affirmed by Florida Supreme Court in Murder Case\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading \u2192<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Florida, people convicted of certain crimes may be sentenced to death for those crimes. However, there are some people who are constitutionally protected from the death penalty due to their status or characteristics. For example, the United States Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional to sentence someone to death if they committed their crimes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-felony-murder","category-violent-crimes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Death Penalty Affirmed Murder in Florida Appeals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Pinellas County, a violent crime charge case can hinge on death penalty affirmed by. See how this ruling your defense. Get help and plan your next step.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Death Penalty Affirmed Murder in Florida Appeals\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"In Pinellas County, a violent crime charge case can hinge on death penalty affirmed by. See how this ruling your defense. Get help and plan your next step.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hanlon Law, PA\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Death Penalty Affirmed Murder in Florida Appeals","description":"In Pinellas County, a violent crime charge case can hinge on death penalty affirmed by. See how this ruling your defense. Get help and plan your next step.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Death Penalty Affirmed Murder in Florida Appeals","twitter_description":"In Pinellas County, a violent crime charge case can hinge on death penalty affirmed by. See how this ruling your defense. Get help and plan your next step.","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Hanlon Law, PA","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/"},"author":{"name":"Hanlon Law, PA","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/03dc1d8f0e988aa69b0efe5d06eeb939"},"headline":"Death Penalty Affirmed by Florida Supreme Court in Murder Case","datePublished":"2018-09-05T14:03:32+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-31T18:03:39+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/"},"wordCount":652,"articleSection":["Felony Murder","Violent Crimes"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/","url":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/death-penalty-affirmed-by-florida-supreme-court-in-murder-case\/","name":"Death Penalty Affirmed Murder in Florida Appeals","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-09-05T14:03:32+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-31T18:03:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/03dc1d8f0e988aa69b0efe5d06eeb939"},"description":"In Pinellas County, a violent crime charge case can hinge on death penalty affirmed by. 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