DeSantis signs bills tackling fentanyl, cash bail and child rape

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed three crime bills that would stiffen penalties for child rapists and fentanyl traffickers and cut the prospect of statewide bail reform off at the knees.

The bills — including one that would challenge existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent on capital punishment — were part of a package that DeSantis said would “uphold law and order” throughout the Sunshine State.

“Part of doing well is preempting things before they happen,” he said during a bill-signing ceremony in Titusville. “We can sit there and wait for things to go south, but if you can get ahead, it does make a difference. So here is us looking. And we’re proud of what we’ve done, but we also understand we’ve got to stay ahead of the curve. So we’re doing that here today, and I think the state will be better off for it.”

DeSantis said he wanted to differentiate Florida from states like New York and Illinois, which have initiated criminal justice reforms like the elimination of cash bail.

Critics say that practice, which allows people charged with a crime to pay their way out of jail before an initial hearing, disproportionately harms minorities and the poor. DeSantis said tightening cash bail laws prevents “a culture of recidivism, repeat offenders, and a situation where crime is spiraling out of control.”

“We don’t want to go down that road,” he said. “So what we’ve done is we’ve looked across the country: Where are some of these jurisdictions falling down, and how can we make sure Florida can protect its people?”

The first bill DeSantis signed, HB 1627, calls for the Florida Supreme Court to create a uniform set of bail bond recommendations by the end of the year. The law allows lower courts to increase bail amounts, but not lower them without Supreme Court approval — a provision that DeSantis said would “handcuff” “pro-criminal judges.”

The bill, which drew votes from some Democrats in addition to Republicans, also prevents the pretrial release of certain arrestees, including habitual offenders or those charged with certain violent or felony-level crimes.

“This is kind of the anti-New York, in terms of what we’re doing,” DeSantis said. “They wanted to basically say that a lot of these crimes should be treated with a slap on the wrist. We’re doing the opposite.”

Another new bill, HB 1359 — which passed the House and Senate unanimously — imposes a minimum three-year prison sentence on those who sell, traffic or manufacture fentanyl and similar drugs. That penalty would jump to a minimum of 25 years and fine of $1 million if a minor is involved. DeSantis invoked the specter of drug dealers disguising fentanyl as Halloween candy “to try to get it into our youth,” a practice experts say is rare, if not nonexistent.

“They need to be treated like murderers, because they are murdering people,” DeSantis said.

The state’s third new bill, on child sexual abuse, could have national implications.

The bill, HB 1297, was a push of DeSantis’, who said during a news conference in January that he wanted to allow for the death penalty to be applied when someone sexually batters a child younger than 12 years old.

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“We really believe that part of a just society is to have appropriate punishment,” he said, “and so, if you commit a crime that is really, really heinous, you should have the ultimate punishment.”

It is currently unconstitutional to execute someone for a crime other than murder, based on a 2008 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, Kennedy v. Louisiana. And in 1977, a U.S. Supreme Court case said the death penalty was unconstitutional for the rape of an adult.

DeSantis has said he thinks the court, in its current iteration, would not uphold the ruling in Kennedy, and this bill “sets up a procedure to be able to challenge that precedent.”

The bill saw votes that blurred party lines — the House voted for it 95-14, and the Senate voted for it 34-5. In the Senate, Democratic Leader Lauren Book, who is a victim of childhood sexual abuse, also co-sponsored the legislation.

The bill specifies that capital punishment for sexual battery would only be allowed if jurors unanimously find two aggravating factors regarding the circumstances of the case or the victim, such as whether the victim was disabled. In capital murder cases, jurors only need to find one aggregating factor.

Because of a bill recently signed by DeSantis, a minimum of eight out of 12 jurors would be required to vote in favor of death for a defendant in any capital punishment case.

The previous statute required all jurors to vote unanimously.

DeSantis pushed to reduce the threshold, pointing to the life sentence given to the Parkland school shooter after only nine of the 12 jurors voted for death. Opponents of that move worry it opens Florida up to more error: the state already has the nation’s highest number of death row exonerees, at 30.

Supporters at the bill-signing ceremony said DeSantis, who is widely expected to announce a bid for the Republican nomination for president, was making the state safer and setting an example for leaders around the country.

“He’s standing between the child molesters and the wokeism,” said state Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers. “And someday he’ll be maybe having more of a decision on some of these federal judges.”