A Florida State House member has filed a bill that would allow a jury to give the death penalty to sex traffickers of minors and mentally incapacitated people.

Representative Berny Jacques, a central Florida Republican with a law degree from Stetson University, filed House Bill 1283, which would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for sex trafficking under certain circumstances.

Victims would have to be under the age of 12 or mentally incapacitated according to state law for the death penalty to be considered.

There are a lot of caveats – including the requirement that a convicted persons actions have at least two aggravating factors for a jury to consider the death penalty.

People under the age of 18 wouldn’t be eligible for the death penalty – and at least eight members of a jury would have to find the death penalty for a court to hand down that sentence.

According to a state government website – there were 137 convictions for sex trafficking of any kind in the state in 2020. That was the most recent year they had data for.

The bill has not yet been referred to committees, which will give us a good idea as to whether or not this bill will pass. Typically, the fewer committees a bill is referred to, the more likely it will pass into law.

The bill has a companion bill in the state senate – SB 1804. That’s typically seen as a positive sign that a bill has a better-than-average shot at becoming law.