The state attorney in Lake County said the case’s quick resolution could be attributed to Florida’s new law.
Though Florida prosecutors sought the death penalty for a man accused of sexually abusing a child, making use of a new law Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year, the accused man instead pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
Joseph Andrew Giampa, 36, may have been the first person in Florida to face the possibility of a death sentence for a sex crime under the state’s new law. The law, a DeSantis priority, seeks to extend the death penalty to people who sexually abuse children, despite existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent that says the death penalty should not be used for anything other than murder.
Using the threat of the death penalty in order to extract guilty pleas is an abuse of process and must be challenged in court.
“Gladson said that the quick resolution of the case is proof that the new Florida law is effective.”
That’s a sick statement. Perhaps it’s a quick resolution if the man was guilty, but what if he was innocent? Should the state still be using the threat of death for a quick resolution?
….only in Floriduh.
Interesting on several points…
1) A person with a sex conviction in jail or prison is already serving a potential death sentence given their ranking in the population there
2) Their line of thought is akin to saying the registry works to prevent sex crime convictions (uh huh, yeah, right)
3) Lowering the jury threshold to 75% (8 outta 12) is in line with UCMJ of today where it is the same threshold for non-capital crime cases (which the guvnah learned in the military as an atty there and saw it could be effective to get what he wants…votes (even though the Ramos case says it needs to be unanimous verdicts and capital cases in the military legal system requires unanimous verdicts)
The guy should’ve let it run to get the same life sentence result to prove a point about the FLA thinking.
“Giampa appeared to have been suffering from mental health distress while in jail, according to court records. While in the hospital being treated for self-inflicted wounds on Jan. 24, he attempted to push past deputies and told officers he was trying to escape so that they would shoot him.”
Yeah, sure sounds like a guy who’d be deterred by the death penalty.
If Giampa had good counsel, they would of called Gov Insantis’ bluff. Worst that could happen is that he’ll wait the appeals process out while spending a few more years on death row away from the general population who are waiting to kill him. Even if SCOTUS didn’t uphold precedent and allowed this guy to get the cocktail, I certainly would want to end it right there instead of spending 4 or 5 decades being the most hated man in a Floriduh hell hole prison
I’m positive this has to do with the fact that Governor DeSantis’ campaign was so bad it wasn’t like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, it was more like rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg.