Gov. Ron DeSantis removes Black elected State Attorney Monique H. Worrell

Get the Point!

Early this morning in Tallahassee, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his suspension of Orlando area State Attorney Monique Worrell (D) for what he alleges is her refusal to pursue “appropriate” charges in serious cases.

In full disclosure, I have known State Attorney Worrell since our school days at the University of Florida Levin College of Law in the late 90’s, so I can personally vouch for her perspicacity and commitment to justice.

That said, Worrell becomes the latest democratically elected prosecutor to draw the ire of a Republican governor using racial dog whistles to intimate that Democratic prosecutors, in general, and Black elected prosecutors, specifically, are “soft on crime.”

State Attorney Worrell (above), responding to Florida's petulant governor, “…This could flip any day — we could get a Democratic governor who then decides to go around suspending all Republican prosecutors because we are not in alignment in ideology. It has to stop. This is a dictatorship. This is not a democracy.”

As with most things these days, the truth—or lack thereof—of these Republican talking points is sorely lacking! You see, the main issue in these matters over the past decade has been prosecutors using their constitutionally based discretion to seek alternative sentences on drug possession crimes, or, to limit instances within which the death penalty is sought for capital murder charges, who have drawn the ire of Republicans who like to see those charged with such offenses—disproportionately Black or Brown—face long prison sentences.

Indeed, self-styled “tough on crime” types like DeSantis and his predecessor, now Sen. Rick Scott, have used their executive branch authority to suspend prosecutors who were reticent to lead legal lynch mobs against defendants accused of first degree murder.

Ol’ Hobbs facing off with then Florida Gov. Rick Scott in his office during a tense moment weeks after Trayvon Martin’s murder a decade ago…

Curiously, Sen. Scott, while governor, meddled in the affairs of Worrell’s prosecutorial predecessor, Aramis Ayala, allegedly due to her refusal to seek the death penalty against Markeith Loyd, a Black man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend and Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton in 2017. Ayala was the first Black person elected prosecutor in Florida’s long (and mostly segregated) history, but she ultimately lost her legal challenges to Scott’s removal of her cases when the Florida Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, sided with the governor.

At an early fundraiser for Aramis Ayala during her 2022 race to become Florida Attorney General. Ayala ultimately lost to Republican Ashley Moody, the same politician who stood next to Gov. DeSantis this morning during his press conference to remove Monique Worrell as Orlando's State Attorney.

Earlier this year, DeSantis removed Tampa State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democrat, because the twice elected prosecutor indicated that his office would not pursue abortion related charges in the wake of Florida's draconian anti-abortion laws that were passed not long after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade via the Dobbs decision last summer.

Since announcing his presidential bid earlier this year, Gov. DeSantis has deliberately chosen to stake his Oval Office ambitions on being farther to the right of even Donald Trump on “culture war” issues. To be clear, that means that DeSantis is seeking to “out-bigot” Trump, arguably the most outwardly bigoted president that America has had since Woodrow Wilson a little over a century ago!

Whether it has been Desantis’ ill advised and unwinnable war against the Disney Corporation—Florida’s most prominent private employer—for its refusal to back down on criticizing his homophobic agenda, or his doubling down on refusing to teach real Black historical facts, DeSantis, trailing Trump by nearly 40 percentage points, is too tone deaf to hear that even among Republican Primary voters, the majority DO NOT CARE about his “anti-woke” agenda. As Donald Trump, of all people, pointed out several weeks ago, DeSantis “can't even define woke”—and is making a fool out of himself as his campaign has struck ice and is going down faster than the Titanic!

Thinking himself clever, DeSantis tapped Orange County Judge Andrew Bain, a former star football player at the University of Miami and graduate of the Florida A&M University College of Law, as Worrell's replacement.

Judge Andrew Bain

What you must know is that Judge Bain is a member of the Federalist Society, a hard core conservative group that has backed recent Supreme Court judicial nominees Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, among others. Meaning, Judge Bain is cut from the same ideological cloth as DeSantis, a fact that now allows the governor to say, “see, how can I be called a racist if I appointed a Black replacement prosecutor?” But the simple reality is that State Attorney Worrell, elected with better than 67% of the vote, has been replaced with someone who will do the governor's ideological bidding!

Over two decades ago, I served as an assistant state attorney in Tallahassee and I can attest that one of the best aspects of the job was the ability to use my own judgment in determining just outcomes in thousands of cases. Because of that, I cannot imagine the frustration that State Attorneys Worrell, Warren, and Ayala must have felt in knowing that a sitting governor, playing politics, was there lurking and waiting to usurp their authority.

Similarly, as one who tried countless murder cases across Florida after I left the State Attorney’s office, including multiple capital murder cases where the death penalty was sought, I can attest that the principal purpose of the death penalty, which is to deter future murders and murderers, simply DOES NOT work; even a cursory glance at the local news each night shows that folks are being killed every single day in cities and towns across Florida. Thus, who can blame elected state attorneys for seeking ways to address crime in Florida as the old ways surely have not lessened crime rates one bit?

Now, if you are wondering “what can be done,” I remind my readers now, as I always do during election season, to get out and VOTE! Yes, presidential and gubernatorial races are important, but local prosecutor races are critically important, too! If you do not know the name of your local district, state, or state’s attorney, find out who they are and if you're living in a red state with a blue prosecutor in your district or circuit, be prepared to write letters to the federal or state level appellate courts in support of the person you helped elect should they find themselves compromised by some ambitious (if not mischievous) Republican governor.