READ MORE: Trump’s executive order resumes executions, after Biden dialed them back<\/a><\/p>\n Florida\u2019s high number of executions is part of a global trend, reports Amnesty International<\/a>. The human rights group reported a 78% increase in executions globally from 2024 to 2025. The government in Iran, for example, carried out more than 2,000 executions last year. The authoritarian regime uses the death penalty to instill fear and punish dissent.<\/p>\n Justin Mazzola, a researcher with Amnesty International U.S.A., attributed Florida\u2019s record pace of executions with its Republican governor.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aThe U.S.\u2019s rise is solely due to what was happening in Florida this past year and the extraordinary lengths that the DeSantis administration went to carry out executions on basically a spree,\u201d Mazzola told WLRN.<\/p>\n DeSantis has said the death penalty is a deterrent to crime and views it as \u201can appropriate punishment for the worst offenders.\u201d<\/p>\n Mazzola said DeSantis and other death penalty advocates are wrong about capital punishment being a crime deterrent.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aA lot of it is tied to the flawed rhetoric around security that the death penalty makes us safer and Governor DeSantis using this as a kind of badge for any prospects that he may have potentially once his term is ended,\u201d Mazzola said.<\/p>\n Craig Trocino, director of the Miami Law Innocence Clinic<\/a> which is dedicated to identifying and correcting wrongful convictions, argues that Florida\u2019s high number of exonerations of those on death row should be a cautionary sign for DeSantis and that the death penalty should be abolished. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia prohibit the practice.<\/p>\n Florida had 30 exonerations from death row as of 2025<\/a> \u2014 more than any other state \u2014 according to the Death Penalty Information Center.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aYou would think if you led the nation in exonerations from death row, you would do the opposite of speed them up,\u201d he said \u201cYou would stop them, try and figure out why that’s happening and then instead of doing that, we’re increasing the availability of [the] death penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n Juries and the death penalty<\/p>\n Before 2016, Florida would allow a simple majority of 7 out of 12 jurors to recommend the death penalty. In the 2016 case of Hurst v. Florida<\/a>, The U.S. Supreme Court struck down this system and the Florida Supreme Court changed the rule to require unanimous jury recommendation.<\/p>\n The Florida Supreme Court then reversed this prior ruling and by 2023 the legislature<\/a> rescinded the unanimity requirement and today only 8 of 12 jurors need to recommend the death sentence for it to be imposed.<\/p>\n Florida and Alabama are the only execution states that don\u2019t require a unanimous jury to hand down a death sentence. In 2025, Florida had almost 300 people on death row and was preceded only by California, which had over 500 people on death row but last executed someone in 2006.<\/p>\n![\"chart](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/thumbnail.jpeg\")
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