Source: tallahassee.com 12/15/23
During a May 1 bill signing event, DeSantis said the measure is “for the protection of children.”
In a first for Florida, a Central Florida prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for a man charged with raping a child.
The pursuit of capital punishment comes after lawmakers passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a measure allowing the death penalty for those convicted of sexually battering children under the age of 12.
Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Bill Gladson this week announced that a Lake County grand jury had indicted Joseph Andrew Giampa, 36, on charges of child sexual battery and promoting a sexual performance of a child.
In a statement, Gladson said his decision to pursue the death penalty “reflects the gravity of the charges and the State Attorney’s Office’s dedication to holding criminals accountable for their actions. … Our commitment to ensuring justice and protecting the vulnerable remains unwavering.”
The local angle:Prosecutor, citing law that took effect Oct. 1, will seek death penalty in child sex case
Gladstone’s decision to seek the death penalty will almost surely draw legal challenges, as both U.S. Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court precedents have barred death sentences for rapists.
The governor acknowledged as much on social media, posting that it “will be the first case to challenge SCOTUS (the U.S. Supreme Court) since I signed legislation to make pedophiles eligible for the death penalty. (Gladson) has my full support.”
In a 2008 case out of Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court …
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I see this article at least had the guts to mention the SCOTUS ruling from 2008, kudos to the author. However, the author did not do all the research they could have. In 1977 SCOTUS addressed this same issue before and reached the same conclusion. That 1977 decision had some very distinct language in it which I’ll paraphrase; We can not rationalize how an individual can be put to death when a death itself did not occur. While the case in question is especially heinous the victim survived and can heal unlike the victim of a murder.
That same paraphrased language was the basis of the 2008 SCOTUS case and hence even with new justices the chances of Florida prevailing is slim due to the idea of stare decisis still being so prevalent as we see from Doe v Alaska in 2003. I hope the FLA Action Committee has a field day with this case.
DeSantis is just posturing. He knows damn well that even if the death penalty is imposed here it’ll be overturned. Even if he has enough clout to sway the Florida Supreme Court, the USSC will strike it down, probably in record time.
And the sad part is that the victim, after being sexually abused, is statistically more likely to become an abuser him or herself. So in the end, in the long run, this death penalty will end up hurting victims of crimes, especially when there is no evidence that the death penalty serves as a deterrent.
That is, so sick. What a son of a bitch. De Santis I mean.
“In fact, Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book of Plantation, a child sex abuse survivor who voted for the bill, told the Senate Rules Committee when lawmakers debated the proposal that “it never goes away. Sometimes you close your eyes and you see it. I don’t get a chance to make it stop.”
Woman, if you can’t make it stop, then why the hell aren’t you in treatment instead of the Floriduh legislature?
Many of us here know that life in prison as a sex offender can be a living hell. Perhaps DeSantis might be doing this guy a favor through advocating his state-sanctioned murder. However, if DeSentis actually knew anything about life.in prison (all he knows is Gitmo due to his complicity in that part of the federal gulag when he was a Navy lawyer) he’d understand that life in prison is a far more appropriate punishment for this fellow. I don’t know about Florida prisons but I do know something indirectly about Level IV yards in California prisons. They are hellish places. For me, death would be preferable than to have to spend any time in one of those horrid places.
This is just a sample of what America is gonna look like in 2030. We all know De Santis and Gavin Newsom are running for president and one of their main topics are who’s the toughest on public safety, starting with sex offender monitoring and supervision laws.
I never really agreed with the death penalty in any case at all. I would think it is more punishment for someone to spend decades or life in prison than to be put to death. I can’t see how killing someone can be justified no matter what.
Where will it stop? At what point will people draw the line and say that the crime does not warrant the death penalty. Even Trump is saying if he is reelected he will make it so drug dealers get the death penalty – well does that mean even someone selling weed in a state that it is not legal in can get the death penalty even?
It’s remarkable how much of American politics is just rhetoric. Florida has had fewer than 200 executions total since the mid-70s when the death penalty was reinstated in many states. It has more than 1,000 murders every year. If there were a genuine interest in leveraging the death penalty to improve justice, they’d make a more concerted effort to reconcile that enormous deficit.