TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in former Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell’s lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis over her ouster.
Worrell was elected in 2020 and got suspended Aug. 9 of this year in an executive order signed by DeSantis, who went on to replace the state attorney with Orange County Judge Andrew Bain.
DeSantis and fellow state leaders have accused Worrell of 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, among some other claims, altogether calling Ninth Circuit justice a “coin flip” during her tenure.
The former Orange-Osceola state attorney filed a petition in September with the Florida Supreme Court to challenge DeSantis’ suspension and get her job back, disputing the governor’s allegations. Last month, Worrell held a news conference in Orlando to share her enthusiasm for Wednesday morning’s oral arguments, comparing Florida to the famous Boiling Frog Experiment as a way to dress DeSantis’ actions as those of authoritarianism abetted by collective complacency.
“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 in November. “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.”
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News 6 met with some of Worrell’s supporters early Wednesday at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Orlando before they boarded a bus to Tallahassee.
“There’s a process. If someone is voted in and they’re not doing their job, guess what? We get to vote them out. You don’t get to remove them if they haven’t done anything egregious or committed a crime,” said Orange County voter Sandra Fatmi-Hall.
Both sides had 20 minutes each to lay out their case to the state justices on Wednesday.
Worrell’s attorney Laura Ferguson said DeSantis provided no evidence of misconduct.
“If a governor were able to remove a prosecutor of a different political party simply because he disagreed with their policies and categorized that as neglect of duty or incompetence, then that will have a substantial chilling effect on how state attorneys perform their roles or their willingness to serve,” Ferguson said.
An attorney for the governor meanwhile said this is not a case of prosecutorial discretion, adding that the issue should be left to the state Senate and not the Florida Supreme Court.
“The governor properly suspended Mrs. Worrell from office because of practices or policies that she adopted as state attorney that contravene legislative policies and simultaneously resulted in the gross underperformance of her office,” he said.
After hearing Wednesday’s arguments, the justices will file a response at a later date.
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