Lawmakers in Florida have enacted a bill that will see people convicted of pedophilia and child sex offenses given the death penalty.
The proposed legislation (HB 1297) was decreed after it passed the Florida House of Representatives 95-14 last week and was backed by Senator Ron DeSantis who is expected to sign it.
The bill would apply to those condemned of abusing children under the age of 12. Lawmakers hope that it will eventually lead to the U.S. Supreme Court reversing a 2008 finding that banned the death penalty for people who sexually abuse children.
DeSantis threw his support behind the proposal on Good Morning Orlando and said: "My view is, you have some of these people that will be serial rapists of six, seven-year-old kids, I think the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment when you have situations like that."
Check out the bill below:The bill's co-sponsors, State Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book and State Sen. Jonathan Martin contended that those who sexually harm children are likely to repeat their horrific crimes and deserve the maximum penalty.
"Once a predator has a child ensnared, they will harm that child over and over and over again," Book said, as cited by The New York Post. "And then move on to another innocent child."
Book also argued that execution guards against the targeting of additional victims, adding: "Pedophile behavior has been deemed highly repetitive to the point of compulsion."
Meanwhile, State Sen. Rosalind Osgood (D-Broward), who is one of the five who opposed the bill, disputed that while she agrees that sexual abuse of youngsters is an extreme offense, she struggled with imposing the death penalty due to her religious beliefs.
But, Senator Jason Pizzo - a former prosecutor - stated that criminals who sexually harm youngsters can't be rehabilitated in society, adding: "There is nothing more heinous than touching and abusing a child," per CBS News.
The ruling will also give juries the authority to hand down death sentences with a vote of at least 8-4 in favor of the ultimate penalty. Previously, the death sentence needed a unanimous vote to see convicts put to death as a result of their offenses.
The 15-year-old precedent derives from the ruling of Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the Supreme Court justices stated that the death penalty could not be administered against child rapists or anyone else who had executed a crime in which the victim did not die.
DeSantis indicated earlier in the week that the current Supreme Court made up of six Republican and three Democrat justices, may be open to overturning the decision.
"I think we're right at the law and I think that its current court would consider a challenge to that," DeSantis told WFLA.
