>> Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill this week allowing the state to seek
the death penalty in sexual battery cases involving children younger than twelve.
This is at least insofar as the Supreme Court has ruled in the past,
explicitly unconstitutional.
But the Supreme Court is what it is, and so
everyone stay tuned to find out whether they side with him.
But first, the legislation which is going to go to an effect in October of this
year, requires a minimum sentence of life in prison without parole for
cases of sexual battery against young children.
The state will require prosecutors seeking the death penalty in these cases to
identify at least two aggravating factors, including whether the defendant had
a history of sexual predation or holds a custodial position over the children.
The bill received bipartisan support in the legislature even though it
didn't have to.
Republicans hold a supermajority.
They can and do do whatever they want.
But anyway, the Senate Minority Leader, a Democrat, did co sponsor it, by the way,
just bear this in mind going forward, if this bill does take effect,
Florida is already the state with the most exonerations from the death penalty.
30 people have been exonerated since 1976.
What that means is if we didn't have a long appeals process and if we didn't have
individuals and organizations attempting these exonerations,
literally dozens of people who were 100% innocent of what they were being charged
with would have been executed by the state.
And that bothers some people.
None of them are Republicans elected in Florida, even though they're always
suspicious of government power, except when it's killing a person.
In any event, as I said, this is explicitly unconstitutional.
The legislation is in direct violation of the US Supreme Court decision in Kennedy
versus Louisiana, which found it unconstitutional for
states to use capital punishment for a crime other than murder.
The death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's life was
not taken, the ruling said.
That is so clear, so explicit.
Ron DeSantis knows that and doesn't care.
He says he's prepared to take this law all the way
to the US Supreme Court to overrule the existing precedent,
which, my God, that would require like activist judges or something.
And don't conservatives have a supermajority of the Supreme Court?
Yes, they do.
And yes, they might overturn it because precedent means literally nothing to
these people.
What do you think, Brett?
>> So Ronda Santis's argument is that you like
pedophiles unless you want to kill people.
>> Well, they're hoping that that.
>> This is what Ron Desantis's rhetorical strategy is.
He wants to say he's more strict.
And this is all the same argument they had against a woman's right to choose.
They love fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is like this sense of moral superiority where no one really
applies anything nuanced to anything.
And they can sit on their high horse, look at their doctrine and say,
you're evil and I'm good because of my doctrine, which I apply no nuance to.
And that's this.
They want to say, you're killing babies,
you're raping children, unless you take the most strict stance.
And in this case, it's the death penalty.
He's trying to say that you're more for child rape than I am,
which is just like so, it's lazy, it's insane.
Basically, if I say I just want to lock them up for a very long time and
get them away from children, and I want to punish them too, he's saying,
well, you don't want to kill them, which makes me better than you.
Which is an, it's one of those, like they frame a ridiculous argument in a way
that makes other people seem ridiculous, but their argument is ridiculous.
He's like, unless you want to kill more people, you're a pedophile.
And they're calling people who like dudes who put on address pedophiles
because they want to put on a dress.
>> They like the idea of increasing the number of people that are being killed.
You can apply that to virtually any situation.
It also applies to the state, the same state that they continually say
they want to make it small and powerless and all that.
They believe it should be killing more people.
The government should be killing more of its citizens in all cases,
that's what they want.
Unless those citizens have themselves killed people who are like ringing
the wrong doorbell or driving their car purposefully into protesters,
the government should not get involved in that.
But in this case, they should.
And by the way, to the person who might say, and
they will do exactly what Brett said.
They love the idea.
Because all of this, in terms of political narratives from the right over the past
few years, is just designed to make people who are not particularly clever,
not particularly curious, have an easy out to feel morally and
intellectually superior will be.
Why do you think that they shouldn't kill a pedophile?
That's easy, I don't think they should be killing anybody, should lock them up for
the rest of life.
>> I think, by and large, this is my instinct,
if you kill someone, we should kill you.
That is my instinct.
But I know how often we get it wrong.
That's why I'm not for the death penalty.
By that definition, if I followed my instinct,
it's not after thinking about it my position, but my instinct,
you killed someone, we should shoot you in the face and kill you till you're dead.
But then if I endorse a system that does that and
people end up dying as a result, unjustly, then by my own logic,
you should come and kill me because I endorse that system.
And that's just a ridiculous position to have.
So I'm against the death penalty for that and other reasons.
>> Exactly.
Yeah, they get it wrong.
And again, the same government that should be powerless and yet
it should be able to kill.
Gets everything wrong, we're told, but
should be making the decision as to who lives and who dies.
It doesn't make any sense.
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