Jackson v. Florida

Michael James Jackson was sentenced to death in May 2023. If his resentencing had taken place just one month earlier, before Florida’s capital-sentencing law changed in April 2023, eight votes for death would have meant that he lived. If the trial judge had correctly applied the amended law to apply only prospectively, as the Legislature unambiguously commanded, only a unanimous jury vote could have resulted in death. In either case, the very same eight- to-four jury vote would have saved Mr. Jackson’s life. And even this on-the-cusp vote might have tilted in favor of life if the trial court had not failed to instruct the jury that, under Florida law, a life recommendation would be binding.

A continuance would have allowed the court to confirm—with model jury instructions that came out shortly after Mr. Jackson was sentenced—the arguments Mr. Jackson’s attorneys were making all along: that the jury could not be lawfully instructed that its life vote would be a mere recommendation subject to the court’s approval rather than a binding determination that the court could not modify. The ACLU is assisting in the appeal and entered appearances in September 2023. Our briefing contends that the trial court’s improvised and inaccurate jury instructions violated state law and Supreme Court precedent and that Florida’s new statute allowing non-unanimity in capital sentencing violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Briefing was complete in September 2024, and oral argument took place December 2024. The court issued its decision in December 2025, and we filed a motion for rehearing in January 2026.

The Latest: In December 2025, the Florida Supreme Court issued its opinion affirming the death sentence. We await a ruling on our motion for rehearing.