Cities Voted For Progressive Prosecutors. Republican State Leaders Are Pushing Back.
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2023
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
We talk to Monique Worrell, who was elected state attorney for Florida's ninth judicial circuit, which includes the city of Orlando, in 2020. This month, Republican Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis suspended her and installed a replacement. He said her office had refused "to faithfully enforce the laws of Florida," in its charging decisions. Worrell called her suspension an attack on democracy.
And we talk to Carissa Byrne Hessick, director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina, explains how these sorts of battles are playing out across the country.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | August 9th started like any other day for Monique Worrell. |
| 0:10.6 | She was driving to her job as a state attorney for Florida's 9th Judicial Circuit, then |
| 0:15.6 | things took a turn. |
| 0:16.6 | I received a call from my deputy chief who started a call by saying, are you okay? |
| 0:23.2 | And I said, yeah, I'm fine, I'm on my way into the office. |
| 0:26.4 | And he said, no, I heard that you were being removed. |
| 0:29.7 | Then she says she gets another call from her chief investigator, who in a very robotic |
| 0:35.0 | tone said that he had been asked to read me a notification, and he began reading the |
| 0:41.2 | notification of my suspension. |
| 0:43.4 | A suspension basically meant she was fired. |
| 0:46.7 | Refusing the faithfully enforced laws of Florida puts our communities in danger and victimizes |
| 0:53.0 | innocent Floridians. |
| 0:55.0 | When the person who fired her was Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate |
| 0:59.3 | Ron DeSantis. |
| 1:00.7 | Effective immediately. |
| 1:02.9 | I'm appointing Judge Andrew Bain to take over a state attorney for the 9th Judicial |
| 1:08.4 | Circuit. |
| 1:09.4 | Now this was a big deal. |
| 1:11.3 | State attorney is an elected position in Florida and Monique Worrell ran in 2020 on a progressive |
| 1:17.1 | platform. |
| 1:18.1 | She promised alternatives to prison for first time and nonviolent offenders to not prosecute |
| 1:23.7 | low-level marijuana offenses in a change the way juvenile cases were handled. |
... |
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