Florida’s Aug. 18 primaries were marred once more by the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of voters due to harsh felony disenfranchisement statutes and to the confusion wrought by the state’s 2019 mandate that people with felony convictions pay off their court debt before voting.

Voters in Orlando’s metropolitan region still signaled for the second time in four years that they wanted the state’s Ninth Judicial Circuit to embrace criminal justice reform. 

Monique Worrell, the most progressive candidate in a four-way Democratic primary for state attorney in Orange and Osceola counties, prevailed on Tuesday. She will be heavily favored to win this blue jurisdiction in November against independent candidate Jose Torroella. 

“Our communities cried out for criminal justice reform, and their cries were answered,” Desmond Meade, the executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition who supported Worrell, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. 

In 2016, Aramis Ayala won the prosecutor’s race with a reform-minded platform, becoming the first Black state attorney in Florida’s history. During her term, Ayala clashed with other public officials who pushed back against her agenda. When Ayala announced a policy of never seeking the death penalty. Republican Governor Rick Scott stripped her of cases eligible for the death penalty. Ayala, who is one in a number of Black women prosecutors nationwide who have faced retaliation for promoting criminal justice reform, pointed to that war of attrition last year to explain her decision to not seek reelection. 

“Ayala has been a nationally visible leading proponent of criminal justice reform, and any time that happens, there are folks that either want to turn back the clock or advance the momentum,” Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, told Samantha Schuyler in The Appeal: Political Report this month. “That is what is on the ballot on the 18th of August.” 

Worrell’s primary win is a vindication for Ayala, who endorsed her. Worrell, who worked as the head of the conviction integrity unit in Ayala’s office, was also backed by other prominent progressives, such as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

But if she wins in November, Worrell would face a broadly similar political context as Ayala since Republicans still run the state government. The shadow of retaliation was evident during the primary campaign, Schuyler reported. Worrell has not reiterated Ayala’s pledge to never seek the death penalty, and she said she is aware that reform opponents “will use any means necessary.” Other candidates indicated they were likelier to roll back Ayala’s policies.

One of Worrell’s most significant commitments involves youth justice: She said she would not use Florida prosecutors’ unchecked discretion to “direct file” a case involving a minor in adult court, unless there is “loss of life.” As Schuyler wrote, “Florida transfers more children into the adult system than any other state in the country,” most of them for nonviolent offenses.

Worrell also participated in Black Lives Matter protests in Orlando in June. “If you want to change the system, you must change the player,” she said in a speech at a rally. 

As state attorney, Worrell would at least not have to contend with one of Ayala’s chief local adversaries, Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson. Gibson, who complained to Scott about Ayala’s death penalty position, lost his re-election bid in a Democratic primary on Tuesday to Marco Lopez. Lopez did not respond to a request for comment.

There were many other elections for prosecutor and sheriff on Tuesday.

A new prosecutor in Broward County

Further south, in Broward County, the prosecutor’s office will most likely undergo reforms after 44 years under the same state attorney who managed it with a punitive outlook. But the county came within two percentage points of veering far further to the left.

Harold Fernandez Pryor, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who ran on qualified reform proposals, won the Democratic primary with 21.2 percent of the vote. Joe Kimok, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed defense lawyer and former prosecutor who ran as the most decarceral candidate, ended up as the runner-up in this eight-way race, with 19.9 percent of the vote. Kimok had pledged to not prosecute cases linked to marijuana, sex work, and poverty, and to end the use of cash bail, as Jerry Iannelli reported in the Political Report last week. The candidate endorsed by the retiring prosecutor, who was least sympathetic to reform, came in third, and the candidate endorsed by the local police union came in fifth.

Pryor is now heavily favored to be the county’s first new state attorney since 1976. In this blue bastion, he will face independent Sheila Alu and Republican Gregg Rossman in November. If he wins, he would be Broward’s first Black state attorney.

Pryor has promised “change from within,” but did not respond to Iannelli’s questions on what exact policies he would implement to make it so. He has said he opposes the use of cash bail for lower-level offenses; he has also said he would advocate for repealing Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. In a questionnaire with the Orlando Sun Sentinel, he mentions “combating racial sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system” as one of his three priorities; asked how he would lower disparities, he mentions changes in office culture, including recruiting “a diverse force of prosecutors,” implicit bias training, and audits, though not changes to charging and sentencing policies. He also tells the Sun Sentinel he will be open to seeking the death penalty.

Miami’s longtime prosecutor secures a new term

Miami-Dade County’s 27-year state attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, defeated reform challenger Melba Pearson by a comfortable margin on Tuesday.

The election drew most attention in recent weeks due to Rundle’s record on law enforcement oversight. She has never charged a police officer for killing someone while on duty; she also took no action in 2012 when four prison guards allegedly placed a man under a 180-degree shower for hours until he died. Rundle, who will face no opponent in November, stressed in her victory speech that she had heard her critics and would re-examine Miami’s system.

Sheriffs ousted in Alachua and Clay counties

In Alachua County (Gainesville), Sheriff Sadie Darnell lost against Clovis Watson Jr., a legislator and former police officer, in a Democratic primary unfolding against the backdrop of COVID-19 outbreaks in the local jail. Watson has indicated some support for policing reforms, including fewer arrests over low-level offenses. The results could be felt in statewide politics: Darnell, who endorsed Republican Rick Scott in the race for U.S. Senate in 2018, is the former president of the state’s sheriffs association. The Gainesville Sun’s editorial board notes that Watson has backed reforms the association has fought, such as reducing mandatory minimums. 

In Clay County, Sheriff Darryl Daniels lost to Michelle Cook in the Republican primary over an abuse of power scandal that led to his arrest last week. Separately, in June, he released a video warning Black Lives Matter protesters that he would “handle” them by making “special deputies” out of the county’s gun owners.

In other closely watched primaries, the incumbent sheriffs prevailed in Broward County, Hillsborough County (Tampa), and Orange County (Orlando).

Voters set up the general election

Of the 19 judicial circuits that are electing prosecutors this year, just 6 will feature multiple candidates in November—and most of those are highly unlikely to be competitive because of how staunchly they lean toward one party or the other. 

Two districts could be competitive. In the 13th (Hillsborough County, Tampa), Democratic incumbent Andrew Warren is allied with reform DAs nationwide. He faces Republican Mike Perotti, who works at the sheriff’s office and criticized Warren for his reform outlook when he launched his bid. “Decriminalization, reduced sanctions, and justice reform cannot overshadow individual accountability and victim advocacy,” he said in a statement declaring his candidacy in February. In the 16th (Monroe County, Key West), Republican incumbent Dennis Ward faces Democrat Donald Barrett, who mentions among the reasons for his run that he is looking for alternatives to “warehousing people in jails.” But his campaign website currently provides no policy commitments. Barrett also used to work as the county’s chief deputy prosecutor under Ward.

The state’s most consequential county-level election this fall may be the sheriff’s race in swing Pinellas County (St. Petersburg). 

Republican incumbent Bob Gualtieri is a nationally prominent sheriff who has championed closer cooperation with ICE and advocated arming teachers in the wake of the Parkland High School mass shooting. On Tuesday, Democrats nominated Eliseo Santana, a former communications maintenance supervisor at the sheriff’s office, who has stressed wanting to counter the “militarization” of police and roll back Gualtieri’s assistance with federal immigration enforcement. He also said in a League of Women Voters’ questionnaire that he “agree[s] with the strategy” of reallocating funding toward social programs. “Crime does not exist in a bubble, and we need a whole-community approach to addressing it,” he writes. 

Florida is voting for all of its elected sheriffs this year, and all but one of its state attorneys.

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In November 2016, Aramis Ayala was elected state attorney for the Ninth Circuit of Florida, becoming the first Black chief prosecutor in the state’s history. Three months after taking office, Ayala made national news by announcing that the circuit would stop pursuing the death penalty. 

Hours after her announcement, then-governor Rick Scott issued an executive order removing her from a high-profile, first-degree murder case of a man accused of murdering his pregnant ex-wife as well as an Orlando police officer. That was only the beginning of the backlash, which escalated to the point that Ayala announced in May 2019 that she would not seek re-election.

Now, the upcoming election to replace her raises questions about how prosecutors can seek criminal justice reform in the aftermath of unprecedented retaliation by the state’s executive branch.

On Aug. 18, voters in Orange and Osceola counties will choose between four Democratic primary candidates whose campaigns have taken shape in the shadow of Ayala’s ordeal. The winner will move on to face independent Jose Torroella in the general election (no Republican has filed), and will be favored in this blue jurisdiction.

All but one have pledged to roll back at least some of Ayala’s reforms. Monique Worrell, a former defense attorney, has indicated that she would possibly maintain what ground Ayala staked. 

Prosecutorial discretion—the power to decide what charges to issue and what sentences to seek—has long been left unchecked, but punitive politicians are now pushing back when it is used in a way that promotes criminal justice reform. Although this dynamic has spread around the country, no one has suffered from it quite as publicly as Ayala. 

If the state’s retaliation makes the upcoming prosecutor wary of using the office’s vast authority for progressive change, it would have a major effect on whether the Ninth Circuit ramps up or scales down mass incarceration. Florida prosecutors, for instance, solely decide whether to charge children in adult court, which has led to starkly punitive and racially unequal outcomes including over nonviolent charges. Only Worrell committed to not using her “direct file” discretion to charge youth as adults, though she included a carve-out if there is a “loss of life.”

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Ayala ran on a platform similar to other criminal justice reform prosecutors that have arisen over the last several years. Though others have also faced backlash, none have been so directly attacked by state officials. 

Scott followed the first removal with executive orders transferring 22 more first-degree murder cases from Ayala’s purview to the Fifth Circuit, headed by Brad King, a longtime proponent of the death penalty. King has lobbied against legislation requiring a unanimous jury recommendation in death penalty cases; at the time, every state other than Florida and Alabama requried a unanimous jury to decide whether a defendant lives or dies. Ayala sued Scott for transferring the cases, but the state Supreme Court sided with the governor, concluding that a blanket policy to not consider a sentence is the same as denying the office the use of discretion. Even after the office instituted a death penalty review board, the reassignments continued: In total, both Scott and the current governor, Ron DeSantis, have transferred more than 30 first-degree murder cases from Ayala’s office to King’s. 

This has created an environment that is perceptibly hostile to criminal justice reform, said Alfredo Zamora, an Orlando defense attorney. “In Florida, Orange County is as blue as it gets,” he told The Appeal: Political Report. “We should be a beacon of criminal justice reform in the state.” 

Yet the governor’s retaliation has had a chilling effect on would-be reformers. “It put me on notice that the rules of the game have changed significantly,” Worrell told the Political Report. “And those opposed [to criminal justice reform] will use any means necessary.”

Endorsed by Ayala and Bernie Sanders, Worrell is the most reform-minded of the four state attorney candidates for the Ninth Circuit. Her opponents are Ryan Williams, a prosecutor who switched to King’s circuit from Ayala’s after her death penalty announcement, Deborah Barra, the current chief assistant state attorney, and Belvin Perry Jr., a former Ninth Circuit judge best known for presiding over the Casey Anthony trial in 2011, a sensationalized murder case that was called the first social media trial of the century. 

Worrell has brandished her background as a criminal justice reformer and touted the fact that she has never prosecuted a case. But she is running on a platform that is significantly less assertive than Ayala’s and has backed away from Ayala’s death penalty position. All the candidates, when asked about the death penalty, have pledged to “follow Florida law,” despite the fact that there is no law compelling a state attorney to consider the death penalty. Rather, the state Supreme Court concluded that it was against Florida law to refuse to consider all sentencing options for each case. 

Williams, Barra, and Perry have said that Ayala’s death penalty policy damaged the credibility of the state attorney’s office, and each has pledged to restore it. For Williams, this means projecting an image of an office that law enforcement and state officials can trust. 

“Number one is to demonstrate a willingness to follow the law,” Williams told the Political Report. “A state attorney that law enforcement trusts because he or she has held criminals accountable is much more likely to get a more positive response [to reform] than to someone who has never done the job.” 

At the same time, Barra and Williams have spoken about the need for different reforms. Barra has proposed adding a unit that would “go after corrupt politicians.” Williams said he wants to decrease incarceration rates, expand the use of diversion programs, and even enact bail reform. But criminal justice reform advocates question whether these candidates would fundamentally alter how the county approaches such changes. Both Williams and Barra have emphasized the need to get buy-in from law enforcement and state officials, a stance that seems to many like business as usual.

“Changing the laws and getting reform requires Republican help. Anyone who says differently, I think they’re just wrong,” Williams said. “A role I would take on is going through our Republican legislature and saying: You can’t say I haven’t enforced law and kept our community safe.”

Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, takes issue with the idea of lost credibility. “If you talk to the general population, [Ayala] has enormous credibility. Do I doubt for a moment there might be other law enforcement-centric institutions where credibility has been diminished? Probably. But in the community at large? I don’t buy that,” he told the Political Report.

“Positing that as a problem in need of a solution tells you something about the culture that we have to address,” Kubic added. “Is it really more important to be in the ‘in crowd’ with other prosecutors and the police, or the community at large?”

Zamora, who has also worked as a prosecutor in Miami and who donated to Worrell’s campaign, said this perception that change only happens with support from law enforcement and state officials is common among career prosecutors. 

“For far too long, prosecutors’ offices and law enforcement have looked at each other as cousins—if you make a mistake, I will fix it in the courtroom,” he told the Political Report. Without working to fundamentally transform these relationships, he said, there will be no material change.

But according to Barra, there are many competing priorities within the office—reforms are just one. “I get it, criminal justice reform is the big topic, but the job of the state attorney also entails protecting victims,” she said. “You need to be focused on reform and protecting innocent people who made mistakes, but if you only come at this job from one aspect, you’re not going to be successful.” 

Organizers in the Movement for Black Lives have challenged the notion that public safety and criminal justice reform are separate concerns. Andrew Smith, electoral manager of the Dream Defenders, said that without fundamentally reorienting its goals and purposes, “we could end up with an office that has a definition of safety that we don’t think works, that defines itself by conviction rate and not actually keeping Black and brown folks safe.”

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The idea that the top prosecutor’s office has the capacity to transform the criminal legal system—and that this is only possible with a change in culture—rests on its power of discretion. The state attorney sets policies and standards within the office that directly influence the ways that prosecutors make decisions about who to charge and to what degree. 

Worrell has been running her campaign primarily on a promise to change the culture of the office, and what seems to set her apart is her desire to use discretion to create entirely new norms. She told the Political Report that, as a defense attorney, she worked on cases that showed how taking a different approach to discretion can either funnel people into the prison system or divert them from it.

Worrell recounted defending a woman who was charged with a misdemeanor for driving with a suspended license and a felony for attempting to flee police. The police body camera footage later showed that the officer had tried to pull her out of her car during the stop, so she drove away. “You could hear her scream,” Worrell said. “That was the only reason I could plead down from a felony to resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.” 

Worrell said prosecutors approach charges as a negotiation—start high and use your discretion to plead down in exchange for something else. In this case, she said, the woman driving away wasn’t putting anyone in immediate danger—she drove away because she was justifiably afraid for her life. In that scenario, Worrell asked, why not give the woman a misdemeanor for the suspended license, and the money paid for the fine could go to getting her license renewed? Why not, after the license is renewed, drop the charges? 

“That’s something that requires discretion,” Worrell said. “That’s not the way it’s done. But it can be done that way.”

One of the most powerful ways a state attorney can use their discretion in Florida is through the state’s direct file statute. By direct filing, prosecutors alone have the full authority to charge a youth as an adult, entering them into the adult court and prison systems. Among the 13 states and Washington, D.C., that have a direct file option, only four, including Florida, do not allow for a judge to appeal their decision.

Florida transfers more children into the adult system than any other state in the country. Human Rights Watch found that over 60 percent of children direct filed in Florida from 2009 to 2014 were prosecuted for nonviolent felonies, and in 2016, data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice showed that 62 percent of kids sent to adult court were Black. Reformers in the state have attempted to change the system, but three bills that aimed to institute due process for direct-filed children died in committee last year. 

Barra, Perry, and Williams have defended a prosecutor’s ability to wield the direct file option, with Williams and Barra saying they plan to vastly cut back on its use. Worrell responded “Yes” to a ACLU survey asking, “Do you commit to not direct filing youth in the adult system?” but added the caveat that when cases result in loss of life, “adult court may be the only option to ensure public safety.”

All the candidates are acutely aware of the potential consequences for making blanket statements on policy. Williams told the Political Report that Scott’s retaliation against Ayala’s death penalty policy “raised an issue that was not previously on the minds of many elected officials.” 

He also believes that, based on the state Supreme Court ruling, even a blanket policy that is not made public, rather simply a pattern, could also be grounds for the governor to remove cases. 

“What it always comes down to for me is, if you use the law as your guiding point, then usually you’re going to be OK,” Williams said. “When you talk about discretion, discretion exists to make sure justice can be flexible in every circumstance while still following the law.”

But criminal justice reform advocates are hoping for a candidate who understands the limitations of the law, especially in a state where some—like the death penalty and the direct file statute—are ultimately detrimental. Though Ayala’s use of discretion to challenge unjust laws led to intense backlash, advocates are hopeful that her legacy will inspire prosecutors to take similar action, and to make their decisions even stronger and more impervious to retaliation.  

“Ayala has been a nationally visible leading proponent of criminal justice reform,” Kubic said, “and any time that happens, there are folks that either want to turn back the clock or advance the momentum. That is what is on the ballot on the 18th of August.”

“They will use every tool at their disposal. But what is also true is … that there is a growing movement for reform that extends well beyond the bounds of Orange-Osceola counties,” he added. “And there is power in that movement.”

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