TALLAHASSEE – The Supreme Court of Florida has rejected a bid for reinstatement from State Attorney Monique Worrell, who was suspended from her role last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The body handed down the 6-1 per curiam ruling on June 6, finding that Worrell had not shown that the governor’s justifications for suspending her were too vague or impeded upon her use of prosecutorial discretion.
Worrell served the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida, which covers the Orlando metropolitan area in Orange County and Osceola County. Fifteen pages of allegations said her charging practices allowed violent offenders, drug traffickers and pedophiles to avoid jail time.
"For example, the Executive Order alleges Worrell authorized or allowed practices that prevented or discouraged assistant state attorneys from obtaining meritorious minimum mandatory sentences for both drug trafficking offenses and gun crimes," the ruling says.
"It cites Worrell’s prosecutorial record as support for these allegations – stating, for example, that of the 130 cases involving possession of a firearm by a convicted felon referred to the Ninth Circuit by the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office in 2021 and 2022, only five resulted in a minimum mandatory sentence."
And of 58 non-homicide armed robbery cases, only one led to the minimum mandatory sentence. She authorized or allowed policies that kept assistants from seeking sentencing enhancements for reoffenders and habitual violent felony offenders, the decision says.
"In addition, citing data from the Florida Department of Corrections, it alleges Worrell authorized limited charges for possession of child pornography – even when additional counts could have been charged and proven at," it adds.
"And, it says, Worrell’s subordinates permitted or required assistant state attorneys to disregard statutory limitations on withholding adjudication – and to seek additional withholds even when doing so violated Florida law. For these reasons, says the Executive Order, the State Attorney’s Office for the Ninth Judicial Circuit has suffered a critical loss of experienced prosecutors.
"Its systemically poor performance amounts to a neglect of its duties and incompetence. And, concludes the Executive Order, this neglect of duty and incompetence endangers the public safety and welfare.”
The state Supreme Court said it “cannot agree with Worrell that the allegations in the Executive Order are impermissibly vague, nor that they address conduct that falls within the lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
Worrell countered that her suspension boiled down to politics – with her being a Democratic prosecutor and DeSantis being a Republican governor, and the governor punishing her simply for utilizing such prosecutorial discretion, instead of the commission of egregious misconduct.
However, a majority of Florida’s high court did not concur with Worrell.
“The Executive Order makes factual allegations of some specificity. These include citations to prison admissions data from the Ninth Judicial Circuit, briefing reports from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and documents illustrating the alleged harms that the governor argues constitute neglect of duty and incompetence. To acknowledge the specificity of these allegations does not trespass on the Senate’s fact-finding role,” the ruling stated.
“What is more, we have said that a suspension order does not infringe on a state attorney’s lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion where it alleges that such discretion is, in fact, not being exercised in individual cases but, rather, that generalized policies have resulted in categorical enforcement practices. While broad in its lawful scope, prosecutorial discretion is no complete defense to an allegation of incompetence or dereliction of duty.”
Supreme Court of Florida justices Carlos G. Muñiz, Charles Canady, John D. Couriel, Jamie Grosshans, Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso held the majority opinion.
Justice Jorge Labarga held the lone dissenting opinion. Labarga wrote that “the allegations in the executive order are insufficient to provide her with sufficient notice to allow her to mount a meaningful defense.”
Labarga added that it was “not unusual for state attorneys to make fundamental changes in the direction of a case, such as declining to pursue certain charges” – for example, “in order to reach a negotiated final disposition, a state attorney may deem it necessary to drop a firearm charge even though it carries a mandatory prison sentence because trial preparation reveals evidentiary problems that would diminish the likelihood of a guilty verdict from a jury.”
“Indeed, state attorneys commonly engage in such practices when required by the facts and circumstances of a specific case. For this reason, it is difficult to grasp how Worrell, given the specific challenges and circumstances posed by her diverse circuit in dealing with specific cases, will be able to mount a meaningful defense to allegations of ‘incompetence’ and ‘neglect of duty’ – for basically engaging in similar practices, even if with greater frequency, as other state attorneys throughout our state,” Labarga said.
“If this Court permits Worrell’s suspension to stand based on the allegations set forth in the executive order, any time a state attorney’s office in Florida engages in similar case dispositions with some regularity because the specific challenges of the moment in the circuit require it, that state attorney may also face suspension and replacement despite having been overwhelmingly elected by the voters of the circuit.”
Supreme Court of Florida case SC-2023-1246
From the Florida Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com