The Florida Supreme Court is sending this message to criminal defendants: If you think you were wrongly convicted, keep it to yourself.

Ignoring long-standing law, the justices decided that when defendants dare to dispute their guilt instead of owning the crime, state trial judges may pile on extra prison time.

With that, the justices normalized a penalty for defendants who proclaim their innocence. They’re entitled to address the court before sentencing, a procedure called allocution. From now on, any sentence a judge increases to retaliate for a defendant’s defiant attitude is likely to hold up on appeal. “I don’t think there will be a whole lot of allocutions anymore,” said Miami attorney Jude Faccidomo, president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “This is just an incremental step toward giving the trial judge carte blanche on sentencing.”

“This opinion makes it very clear that unless defendants throw themselves on the mercy of the court at sentencing, they’re better off keeping their mouths shut,” said Faccidomo, a criminal defense lawyer for 17 years. “We always say, ‘Don’t talk yourself into a higher sentence.’ ”

Justice Ricky Polston, who usually votes with the court’s conservatives, was one of two dissenters. This time he joined Justice Jorge Labarga, the only moderate.  “Punishing someone unless they confess guilt of a crime is a violation of due process and the right against self-incrimination,” he wrote. Polston and Labarga concluded that the trial judge trampled Davis’s rights. For context, Labarga brought up Florida’s 30 Death Row exonerations, “the most of any state in our nation.”

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