ORLANDO, Fla. – Former Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell said Wednesday that democracy in Florida is being boiled alive under Gov. Ron DeSantis, signaling her enthusiasm for oral arguments to take place in her case against him next month at the state’s Supreme Court.
Speaking at an Orlando law firm, Worrell’s comparison of Florida to the famous Boiling Frog Experiment was among the last things she brought up at a news conference arranged “for the purpose of updating the community of the Ninth Judicial Circuit,” according to a news release.
Recommended Videos
Worrell — who was elected in 2020 — was suspended Aug. 9 by Gov. Ron DeSantis via executive order and replaced with Andrew Bain. DeSantis accused Worrell of such things as avoiding issuing minimum mandatory sentences for gun crimes and drug trafficking offenses, of following patterns or practices allowing juvenile offenders to avoid incarceration and avoiding valid or applicable sentencing enhancements.
Worrell has since filed a petition at the Florida Supreme Court to challenge DeSantis’s suspension and get her job back, disputing allegations in the executive order.
Among the briefs filed in Monique Worrell v. Ron D. DeSantis, the latest comes from the Florida Sheriffs Association in support of the governor, arguing that Executive Order 23-160 contains “sufficient facts to support the charges of neglect and incompetence” against Worrell. That was on Nov. 3, a day after four former attorneys general — Edwin Meese III, Michael B. Mukasey, Jefferson B. Sessions III and William P. Barr — filed a friend-of-the-court brief also backing Gov. DeSantis.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
Worrell’s not without her own friends though, per se, and she’s got a brief to show for it. Filed Sept. 18, it features “a bipartisan group of 121 current and former prosecutors, attorneys general, law enforcement officials and leaders, and former judges, United States attorneys and federal officials who are committed to protecting the integrity of our justice system,” the brief states.
“A little over three months ago, I was illegally and unconstitutionally suspended from my newly elected position as state attorney. Since that time, I have upheld my promise — as I have with all of the promises that I made to the voters in 2020 — but this promise that I have upheld was to continue to fight for our democracy. You have the opportunity to see the legal process play out a bit through the filing of several briefs, and what you’ve seen is that when the facts don’t suit them, they manufacture facts that do suit them, and that is actually called lying,” Worrell said Wednesday. “What you have not seen is any evidence, not one scintilla of evidence, supporting the claims for the governor’s allegations. No evidence of neglect, no evidence of incompetence, no evidence of dereliction of duty, because this is purely about political expediency and that alone. In an effort to increase his favorability, you saw the governor brag about my suspension on the national Republican debate stage just weeks after it took place.”
Bain on Monday held his own news conference to mark his first 100 days as Orange-Osceola state attorney, going through “an overview of accomplishments, key initiatives and his vision for the future.”
Worrell on Wednesday called out Bain and accused him of appropriating some of her policies, taking credit for the good and blaming her for the bad when it comes to what she left behind.
“The appointed state attorney recently gave a report of what he’s accomplished since taking over the job that he ironically was not elected to do. Not surprisingly, most of what he reported were the exact same things that I was doing under my administration. My felony conviction rates that I reported in the first quarter of this year were actually 90% felony convictions and 100% homicide convictions. In the second quarter of this year, I reported approximately 70% felony convictions with 99% homicide convictions, so the conviction rates haven’t changed. My administration started the adult civil citation program that he spoke of expanding. My administration started the community engagement program that he spoke of, and more that he dismantled,” she said. “Despite the disagreements between myself and other agency heads, my administration collaborated at the rank-and-file level for the pursuit of justice in this circuit. Minimum mandatory sentences were not reinstated by the appointed state attorney because minimum mandatory sentences were always happening with care and with caution that they deserve, but the Florida Department of Corrections prison numbers show that under my administration, people were in fact admitted to prison with minimum mandatory sentences.”
The recently-appointed Orange-Osceola state attorney had some policy changes to announce about a month into the role that DeSantis gave him. Among them was a decision that the statewide grand jury should be allowed to determine whether charges would be brought in use-of-force cases that involve law enforcement officers.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Worrell said that grand jury cases were anything but transparent.
“No one ever knows what is said or told to the grand jury and the state has an extreme amount of influence over the decisions that are rendered by the grand jury. I also chose to independently investigate officer-involved critical incidents to provide the community with an investigation that was not done at the direction of law enforcement agencies who were investigating themselves. My independent investigations were disfavored by law enforcement admittedly, because of course they would have preferred to investigate themselves. However, that is not what the people of this circuit voted for,” Worrell said.
She otherwise characterized Bain’s state attorney’s office as one that rushes to run up conviction rates, especially in drug cases. In her warning, she pointed to a 2015 case of Daniel Rushing, a man who eventually received a settlement of more than $37,000 after being arrested in Florida by officers who were convinced that some donut glaze in his vehicle was actually crystal meth.
“This administration is pushing drug cases through the system based on presumptive field testing instead of laboratory testing from the FDLE,” she said. “Studies have proven that presumptive field tests are unreliable, and this is why FDLE lab analysis is required before taking these cases further. Under my administration, we waited for those tests to come back because we did not want to be responsible for wrongful convictions based on presumptive field testing. However, this is one of the dangers of the governor’s power over an elected — or in this case, a non-elected — official, because the pressure to achieve convictions at all costs most certainly comes at the expense of the people these individuals have sworn to protect and to serve.”
Oral arguments in Monique Worrell v. Ron D. DeSantis are set for 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6, at the Florida Supreme Court. Worrell sees the date as either a chance to uphold years of precedent, or destroy it.
“Violent crime and shootings have not stopped since my suspension, and law enforcement continues to report that crime is at an all-time low, as it was under my administration. This is authoritarianism, plain and simple. Although it is becoming more frequent, it is not normal,” Worrell said. “If you place a frog in hot water, he’ll jump out, but if you place them in cold water and gradually increase the temperature, he’ll be unaware of the danger that he’s experiencing and in that manner he can be boiled to death. That is exactly what’s happening to our democracy. It is being boiled to death.”
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: