TAMPA, Fla. — When the jurors came back with a verdict, reporters noticed three had tears in their eyes. One, as reported in the Tallahassee Democrat, would return to court a few days later and express sympathy to Donald David Dillbeck’s adoptive parents before a judge sentenced him to die.
The jury’s vote — eight in favor of the death penalty, four for life in prison — spurred pleas in the newspaper’s editorials and from readers urging that death penalty juries be unanimous.
That was 32 years ago. Unanimity is now the law. But the debate is as contested as ever.
