“The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the state’s death penalty was so flawed for so long that more than half of the people on death row may be entitled to new sentencing hearings.
“That opinion, handed down in a pair of decisions Thursday, covers more than 200 inmates awaiting execution — and includes all of those who were sentenced after 2002 or whose appeals were not final by that year.
“It is a legal decision that death row inmates, defense attorneys, prosecutors and the families of murder victims have awaited since January, when the U.S. Supreme Court found the state’s death penalty unconstitutional.”