Florida man who faced death penalty over child sex abuse takes life-in-prison plea deal

Though Florida prosecutors sought the death penalty for a man accused of sexually abusing a child, making use of a new law Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year, the accused man instead pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

Joseph Andrew Giampa, 36, may have been the first person in Florida to face the possibility of a death sentence for a sex crime under the state’s new law. The law, a DeSantis priority, seeks to extend the death penalty to people who sexually abuse children, despite existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent that says the death penalty should not be used for anything other than murder.

The office of State Attorney William Gladson, who represents Florida’s 5th Judicial Circuit, said on Friday that Giampa’s defense attorneys offered a sentence of life in prison, and the prosecutors took it at the request of the victim’s family and “with the interests of the child victim in mind.”

Gladson said that the quick resolution of the case is proof that the new Florida law is effective.

“By passing this law, the Florida Legislature and the Governor have sent a message that Florida has zero tolerance for those who prey upon our most vulnerable and that the punishment will be certain, swift and severe,” Gladson said in a statement.

Giampa appeared to have been suffering from mental health distress while in jail, according to court records. While in the hospital being treated for self-inflicted wounds on Jan. 24, he attempted to push past deputies and told officers he was trying to escape so that they would shoot him.

Had Giampa’s case gone forward and had he been given the death penalty, it would have opened up a likely constitutional challenge. When lawmakers last year passed legislation seeking to extend the death penalty to child rapists, they said they thought previous high court rulings on the issue were “wrongly decided and that such cases are an egregious infringement of the states’ power to punish the most heinous of crimes.”

DeSantis last year also weakened Florida’s death penalty jury threshold and required that only eight out of 12 jurors agree in order to implement capital punishment. That threshold is the lowest in the nation and makes Florida the only other state, besides Alabama, that doesn’t require a unanimous jury to implement the death penalty.