October 20, 2021 DELIVERED VIA EMAIL

Chair Brannan III

Criminal Justice & Public Safety Subcommittee
Florida House of Representatives
402 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399

Re: Written Testimony in Opposition to HB 95 and HB 6037

Dear Chair Brannan and members of the Criminal Justice & Public Safety Subcommittee:

The Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform and additional allied partner organizations submit
this written testimony in opposition to HB 95 and HB 6037 and respectfully urge you to vote
“No” on these bills.

These Bills are Costly, Unnecessary, and Counterproductive

If enacted, these bills will unnecessarily increase incarceration for decades and burden the
already overcrowded, dangerously understaffed, and fiscally-strained prisons throughout the
state. Additionally, there is no evidence of any public safety benefit of these bills, and they
would result in increased costs to taxpayers and the state.

The Department of Corrections (DOC) presented to this committee last month about the current
overcrowding prison crisis. There are currently too many individuals incarcerated per correction
officer, thus creating an unsafe and unsanitary environment in our prisons for those incarcerated
and for correction officers. The solution is easy: ensure that only individuals who truly need to
be separated from society are locked up in prison. Safely reducing the prison population can be
accomplished by increasing earned rehabilitation credits, eliminating mandatory minimums,
expanding humane elderly and medical release options, reinstituting parole, and other reforms
that have been implemented across the country.

According to the DOC, due to staffing shortages and inability to safely manage the current prison
population, Florida has temporarily closed 3 prisons, closed 188 dorms, suspended 431
supervised work squads, closed 27 work camps, and closed 5 community release centers. In
doing so, DOC has significantly contributed to even worse overcrowding and unsanitary
conditions. It was already next to impossible to socially distance in prison, and these actions
have made the situation much more dire and placed the individuals and correction officers in
greater risk of contracting Covid.

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In order to address this urgent need, this legislature should be working on cost-efficient
legislation to safely reduce the prison population, not bills like HB 95 and HB 6037 that are
designed to increase the prison population and further strain state resources.

Vote No on HB 95/SB 190 – Increasing Death Penalty Cases; Making Prison Terms 3x Longer

HB 95 will result in increased death penalty cases, at a significant cost to the state, and at a time
when the majority of Floridians and leaders in the faith community are moving away from
support for the death penalty.

The bill makes it easier to impose the death penalty and life imprisonment on individuals without
proof that the person’s conduct caused the harm, thus not only increasing those entering the
prison population but also increasing the number of those in prison that will never be released, at
a cost to the state and taxpayers of $20,000 per each inmate for 30 years or more (minimum cost
per individual – approx. $600,000 in prison costs alone, not including the significant costs of
death penalty appeals).

Under current law, it is a first-degree murder resulting in the death penalty or life imprisonment
when a person distributes illegal substances to another causing the death of the user. The law
provides that the defendant’s conduct must actually “be the proximate cause of death” of another
in order to be punished with the harshest of sentences: death or life imprisonment. The reason the
“causation” standard is there is because the penalty of death or life imprisonment is so severe and
irrevocable.

HB 95 deletes the “proximate cause” standard and replaces it with a vaguely worded and easily
satisfied standard. According to the bill, prosecutors merely need to show that the defendant’s
actions were a “substantial factor in producing” another’s death. According to the bill’s
definition of “substantial factor” the user’s death could actually have been caused by a substance
other than the one that was provided by the defendant. If enacted, prosecutors will no longer
need to prove that the defendant’s conduct was actually the cause of death. Thus resulting in
significantly more death penalty cases, and more innocent individuals unjustly on death row.
Additionally, this vague and lesser standard could perversely lead prosecutors to bring first
degree murder chargers and seek the death penalty against defendants involved in the sale of
drugs in overdose cases, despite no evidence of causation, in order to secure a more robust plea
and longer prison sentence.

Additionally, this bill contains a provision adding up to 10 or 15 years to a prison sentence for
individuals who sell certain controlled substances within 1,000 feet of certain health provider
facilities. It is already a felony subject to up to 5 or 15 years in prison to sell controlled
substances, this bill will result in increasing prison length by up to 10 years or more. Again, we
do not need longer prison sentences to keep the public safe, we need drug addiction treatment

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and efficient sentences that rehabilitate individuals so they can safely and productively return to
their communities.

Vote No on HB 6037 – Tripling Prison Sentence Length For Merely Crossing County Lines

Pursuant to Florida statutes, a felony burglary in the third-degree carries a prison sentence of up
to 5 years in prison, a felony burglary in the second degree carries a prison sentence of up to 15
years in prison, and a felony burglary in the first degree carries a prison sentence of up to 30
years or life.

Under current law, these sentences are doubled and tripled if you commit a burglary in another
county for the purpose of thwarting law enforcement’s efforts. According to Florida Statutes, “if
the purpose of the person’s travel is to thwart law enforcement attempts to track the items,” the
penalty is increased from up to 5 to 15 years, and from up to 15 years to 30 years.

This bill deletes and abolishes the statutory requirement providing that in order to increase
sentence length, prosecutors must show that the defendant intentionally sought to evade law
enforcement. Instead, the bill increases sentence length by up to 10 or 15 years for merely
crossing county lines.

Why should someone be sentenced to 10 more years in prison, and taxpayers be forced to spend
$200,000 ($20,000 x 10 = $200,000) more to warehouse someone merely because they crossed
county lines during their burglary. This makes no fiscal sense. Penalties should be proportionate
to the offense committed, not wildly inflated due to mere geographic location within the state.
This bill flies in the face of the adage that the punishment should fit the crime. Along with
defendants, the taxpayers of Florida would be unjustly paying for this unnecessary bill.

We Urge You to Pass Legislation That Would Safely Reduce the Prison Population

At a time when we need to be working toward safely reducing the prison population to address
urgent staffing needs, HB 95 and HB 6037 would do the opposite. We currently spend $2.7
billion dollars on prisons, and DOC is desperately seeking significant additional funds due to the
fact that there are too many incarcerated individuals to house and manage safely and securely.
The last thing we need is to increase the prison population and prison lengths.

The funds we would save by not passing this legislation and not warehousing individuals at
double and triple the sentence length could be used toward rehabilitating those already in our
prisons and addressing the root cause of crime and recidivism by investing in educational and
vocational training, and drug addiction and mental health programming to individuals. Everyday
Floridians are suffering and barely able to make ends meet -- we need our legislature to focus on
and invest in secure housing, healthcare access, and job creation for all Floridians. If increasing
public safety is truly the goal, these are the reforms the legislature should be pursuing.

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Conclusion

For all the reasons, we urge you to vote “No” on these costly and unnecessary bills. Please do not
hesitate to contact Kara Gross, Legislative Director of the ACLU Florida, at kgross@aclufl.org if
you have any questions or would like any additional information.

Sincerely,

ACLU of Florida
Amnesty International - Orlando Chapter 519
Bend the Arc: Jewish Action South Florida
Broward for Progress
Chainless Change, Inc.
Compassion in Action, Initiative of Compassionate St. Augustine
for Criminal Justice & Prison Reform
Democracy For All Florida
Dream Defenders
Faith in Florida
FL NOW (National Organization for Women)
Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates
Florida Cares
Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy
Florida Council of Churches
Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC)
Florida Justice Center
Florida Justice Institute
Florida Policy Institute
Florida Rising
Florida Student Power Network
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
FRACEEV (Florida Fellowship of Hispanic Councils and Evangelical Organizations)
Humanists of Tallahassee
Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice FL
Mission Talk, Florida
NAACP Florida State Conference
National Council of Jewish Women Greater Miami Section
Pax Christi Florida
Southern Birth Justice Network
SPLC Action Fund
Tallahassee Citizens Against the Death Penalty (TCADP)
United We Dream Florida
Women’s March Florida
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