CREATORS
July 29, 2025
Last week, a Florida jury deliberated for one hour and 42
minutes before recommending the death penalty for Shelby Nealy. If a state is
going to have a death penalty, it would be for people like Shelby Nealy. He was
already serving a 30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter
for killing his wife, Jamie Ivancic, in January of 2018.
He then pretended to be Jamie in the months that followed,
corresponding with her family through texts and social media messages before
they became suspicious.
In December 2018, he went to Jamie's parents' home in Tarpon
Springs, Florida, and killed her parents, Richard and Laura Ivancic, along with
Jamie's brother, Nick.
What is interesting about Nealy's fate is that the jury
voted 11-1 in favor of death for all three victims. The jury was not unanimous,
and that is only possible in two states — Alabama and Florida.
Alabama has not required a unanimous jury decision for a
death sentence since 2017. Prior to that, Alabama was the only state that
allowed judges to override a jury's recommendation for a life sentence and
impose a death sentence.
Between 1976 and 2017, Alabama judges overrode jury verdicts
112 times, with 91 percent of the overrides changing a verdict of life to a death
sentence. Currently, Alabama allows a death sentence if at least 10 out of 12
jurors recommend death.
In Florida, the path to non-unanimous jury verdicts in death
penalty cases is even more convoluted.
Across the country, 27states allow death sentences. Although
the United States is considered a death penalty country, executions are rare,
or non-existent, in most of the nation. According to the Death Penalty
Information Center, two-thirds of U.S. states — 33 out of 50 — have either no
death penalty or have not carried out an execution in at least 10 years.
Prior to 2016, Florida did not require a unanimous jury
verdict to impose death. Rather, according to Taylor Evans writing in the
University of Miami Law Review, a simple 7-5 majority was sufficient under
state law to sentence a criminal defendant to death. Additionally, judges could
override a jury's sentencing recommendation.
That changed after a Florida case made its way to the United
States Supreme Court in 2017. The high Court, by an 8-1 majority, held that
"(t)he Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact
necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury's mere recommendation is not
enough."
The United States Supreme Court required a unanimous jury
verdict in capital sentencing. However, in 2020, the Florida Supreme Court
issued a new interpretation of the law. According to the Death Penalty
Information Center, the Florida Supreme Court found, "while a unanimous
jury must find the existence of an aggravating factor in a capital case (which
are the factors that make a first degree murder charge eligible for the death
penalty), there was no requirement that the jury's recommendation for death
must be unanimous."
The Florida Supreme Court decision opened the door to an
even more bizarre standard. In January of 2023, only a month after three jurors
declined to impose the death penalty on Nikolas Cruz, the mass shooter at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, legislation was
proposed to change Florida's unanimity requirement in death penalty sentencing
to a mere supermajority.
Today, a person convicted of first-degree murder in Florida,
followed by a jury finding that the alleged aggravating factors have been
unanimously proven, can be sentenced to death by a mere 8 votes out of 12
jurors. That is not progress and certainly not justice.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino
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