BROWARD COUNTY, FL – The Garrison Project this past week published, in partnership with Rolling Stone Magazine, a story documenting the unconstitutionality of Florida Death Penalty Law.
Highlighting rapper YNW Melly’s trial, the story noted, “If convicted in a double homicide, Melly could be sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury — a practice with deep roots in Jim Crow.”
“As jury selection for Melly’s trial began in the spring of 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rescinded Florida’s unanimous jury requirement for executions, lowering the threshold for juries to recommend death sentences from a unanimous vote to eight voices in favor of death — just one above a simple majority and the lowest bar in the nation,” The Garrison Project and Rolling Stone wrote.
According to The Garrison Project, an independent, nonpartisan organization addressing the crisis of mass incarceration and policing, this is the result of the 2022 trial of Nikolas Cruz, where the jury’s split decision spared his life, angering DeSantis, who believed the death penalty was the appropriate punishment.
In the Rolling Stone piece, the project cites an analysis from the Death Penalty Policy Project that concluded in 2024, a third of death sentences in Florida and Alabama were non-unanimous, and 16 percent of executions were from these cases.
And, as of 2025, nearly 60 percent of Florida’s death row inmates were sentenced with non-unanimous verdicts, The Garrison Project/RS states the analysis reveals.
The Garrison Project/RS quotes the director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, Robert Dunham, who states, “In Florida, we are seeing some of the most aberrant practices. The expansion is essentially a return to Jim Crow laws.”
The Garrison Project/RS story explains non-unanimous juries, used in Louisiana starting in the late 1800s, were abolished in 2018, and in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unanimous verdicts are required for serious criminal convictions.
The Garrison Project/RS also quotes Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, who noted, “Though it’s hard to say why these laws persist, their origins are clear, with a careful eye on racial demographics, the convention delegates sculpted a ‘facially race-neutral’ rule permitting 10-to-2 verdicts in order ‘to ensure that African-American juror service would be meaningless,” citing Louisiana’s Constitutional Convention.
In Oregon, non-unanimous verdicts stemmed from the Ku Klux Klan’s influence, Rolling Stone shares. In 2023, Oregon overturned the convictions of over 400 people sentenced by non-unanimous juries, while Louisiana did not apply the ruling to about 1,500 cases.
The Garrison Project/RS continues, saying Duval County, where DeSantis was born, is at the center of Florida’s death penalty system, which has the nation’s largest active death row. Florida leads in death row exonerations and ranks third in executions.
According to a 2020 study from the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, between 2006-2016, Duval County accounted for 17 percent of Florida’s death sentences, the highest in the state, reports The Garrison Project.
Broward County, where YNW Melly is being prosecuted, has similar Black-white demographics to Duval County and is also a leader in death sentences, and The Garrison Project reports that in 2007, Herman Lindsey, a Black man from Broward, was sentenced to death with an 8-4 jury decision, but was later acquitted in 2009 due to serious trial errors.
According to The Garrison Project/RS, in July 2023, YNW Melly’s trial ended in a mystery, with nine jurors voting to convict and three to acquit, and the case has since been tainted by allegations of misconduct.
In October, the lead prosecutor was removed for hiding that the lead detective was willing to lie to support the case, notes the Rolling Stone published account, and in January 2024, Melly’s ex-girlfriend was jailed for 12 days for not testifying, and was released only under strict monitoring.
The Garrison Project writes, “The Melly saga proves that while the death penalty has been on a long, historic decline — in 1996, there were 316 new death sentences in the U.S. and just 26 last year — the punishment can thrive when states like Florida change the rules, especially in politically charged environments like the one surrounding the Parkland trial.”
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, states, “The death penalty has of course always been a political tool,” adding in the RS story, “The new legislative efforts that we’ve seen in Florida, I think, are the work of elected officials who may be trying to curry favor or score points with the governor or the new presidential administration.”
YNW Melly has been incarcerated for over 2,100 days in conditions, his lawyers disclose, wherein he hasn’t had a phone call or family visit in over three years and hasn’t met privately with his defense team since March 2022, according to the Rolling Stone/The Garrison Project.
