A prosecutor’s mistaken “death penalty waiver” does not automatically take the death penalty off the table. The Third District Court of Appeal said so on October 14, 2026, in State v. Morris, Nos. 3D25-1610 and 3D25-1535. It quashed a Miami-Dade order that had made a murder case proceed as a non-death-penalty case. The court called its holding narrow, and the opinion is not final until rehearing is resolved.
How it happened. In 2021, a prosecutor doing routine audits of death cases, unaware that Julio Morris had been re-indicted, filed a form titled “Announcement of Death Penalty Waiver.” She later stated by affidavit that it was an administrative item meant only for the original indictment. The waiver was never announced in open court, bypassed the State Attorney’s internal review, and went unnoticed for years. The defense argued the State was bound by it. The trial judge agreed, saying the State was “stuck” because “death is different.”
Why the Third District disagreed. The court said the decision to seek or waive the death penalty belongs to the state attorney, under the Florida Constitution’s separation of powers. “No prosecutor exercising informed discretion ever decided to waive the death penalty for the Superseding Indictment,” the court wrote, so the trial court “did not enforce a prosecutorial decision but supplanted one.”
What it does not mean. The court did not say the State can retract a real waiver. It limited its ruling to “unusual and specific facts.” The case continues as a capital case “until and unless the State announces a formal waiver of the death penalty on the record as to the current charges.” It cited Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.112(b), under which a waiver directed to a death-penalty charge is effective only if the State affirmatively makes it on the record.
A point for the defense. The court noted that although the Florida Supreme Court has abolished comparative proportionality review on appeal, a capital defendant can still argue to the penalty-phase jury that death is unwarranted because an equally or more culpable co-defendant received a waiver.
Read the opinion (PDF): Download the opinion (PDF)
Also covered at Florida Lawyer News.
Source: State v. Morris, Nos. 3D25-1610, 3D25-1535 (Fla. 3d DCA Oct. 14, 2026). This article is general information, not legal advice.