After issuing a bombshell decision in January about the death penalty, the Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in two potentially far-reaching cases about whether that decision should lead to reinstating death sentences for two convicted murderers.

Some justices appeared skeptical of arguments by lawyers in Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office, who said the January ruling should lead to reinstating death sentences for Bessman Okafor, who was convicted in a 2012 murder in Orange County, and Michael James Jackson, who was convicted in two 2005 murders in Duval County.

Both men were initially sentenced to death but had those sentences set aside because of a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that, in part, required unanimous jury recommendations before defendants could receive the death penalty. Okafor and Jackson have been awaiting new sentencing hearings in lower courts since 2017.

The Supreme Court in the January decision reversed key parts of the 2016 ruling, including the requirement for unanimous jury recommendations in death cases. Seizing on that, Moody’s office contends that Okafor and Jackson should not receive new sentencing hearings — and that their original death sentences should be reinstated.

Okafor’s sentence, for example, was vacated after the 2016 ruling because a jury had recommended by an 11-1 vote that he be executed for the murder of Alex Zaldivar during a home-invasion robbery. With the January Supreme Court decision doing away with the unanimous jury requirement, Assistant Attorney General Doris Meacham argued Tuesday that a court mandate about him receiving a new sentencing hearing is no longer valid.

“His death sentence is constitutional,” Meacham said. “To ask the lower courts to go forward with a resentencing that is no longer necessary is not justice.”

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