Florida Excessive Punishments Amendment (2002)
From Ballotpedia
Florida Amendment 1, also known as the Excessive Punishments Act, was on the November 5, 2002 election ballot in Florida. It passed, with 69.8% of voters in favor.
- Yes: 3,169,542
- No: 1,377,678
Amendment 1 was a legislatively-referred prospective amendment to the Florida Constitution, voted onto the ballot by the Florida Legislature.
Text of the proposal
The language that appeared on the ballot:
Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution identical to a proposed amendment to Section 17 of Article I of the State Constitution which was approved by a statewide vote in 1998. The Supreme Court of Florida struck the 1998 amendment in a ruling in which four of the seven justices found that the ballot summary was inaccurate. The proposed amendment expressly authorizes the death penalty for capital crimes and expressly authorizes retroactive changes in the method of execution. The amendment changes the prohibition against "cruel or unusual punishment," currently provided in Section 17 of Article I of the State Constitution, to a prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" to conform with the wording of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment prohibits reduction of a death sentence based on invalidity of an execution method and provides for continued force of the sentence. The amendment permits any execution method unless prohibited by the United States Constitution. The amendment requires construction of the prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment and the proposed prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment to conform to United States Supreme Court interpretation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment would prevent state courts, including the Florida Supreme Court, from treating the state constitutional prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment as being more expansive than the federal constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment or United States Supreme Court interpretations thereof. The amendment effectively nullifies rights currently allowed under the state prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment which may afford greater protections for those subject to punishment for crimes than will be provided by the amendment. Under the amendment, the protections afforded those subject to punishment for crimes under the "cruel or unusual punishment" clause, as that clause currently appears in Section 17 of Article I of the State Constitution, will be the same as the minimum protections provided under the "cruel and unusual" punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment provides for retroactive applicability.
