Worrell calls for ‘smart justice’ as she seeks return to State Attorney’s office

ORLANDO, Fla — Tuesday could become the day Orange and Osceola County voters thumb their noses at a governor they’ve long been at odds with by installing Monique Worrell as State Attorney once again, a year and a half after DeSantis suspended her in a move widely considered political.

Read: WFTV sits down with SA Bain about key issues going into reelection

DeSantis claimed Worrell was soft on crime and ignoring some laws. He also claimed she drove prosecutors out of the Ninth Circuit in an effort to bring a more progressive form of justice to the Orlando area – accusations Worrell has rejected.

WFTV sat down with Worrell for a 40-minute conversation about herself, her priorities for a new term and her views, using a list of questions that was similar to the set posed to her replacement, Andrew Bain, one day prior.

The full unedited conversation can be found in the attached video. An abbreviated question-and-answer is included below.

Nick Papantonis: Who is Monique Worrell?

Monique Worrell: For 25 years, I’ve served our community. I started my career here as a public defender in 1999 and went into private practice before becoming a law professor at the University of Florida. I then went on to become the director of the conviction integrity unit at the state attorney’s office here in the ninth circuit, then going on to become chief legal officer of a nonprofit organization where we stood up for probation and parole reforms.

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Why do you feel like you’re the better candidate for this job?

I’ve been doing this for 25 years in several different capacities, as a defense attorney, as a prosecutor, as a law professor, as a C suite executive in a nonprofit organization. So those experiences have given me the foundation that I need to leave this office, and that’s why I’m the better candidate.

My opponent was appointed to the bench just seven years out of law school, and his most qualifying characteristics was his membership in the Federalist Society, which has produced judges that have harmed our community.

Looking back on your whole time in office, as well as the weeks leading up to that suspension, is there anything that you look at yourself now and say, ‘I would have done this differently’?

Let me be clear, I knew exactly how not to get suspended. That was to continue the systems of mass incarceration that have harmed our communities for decades, to continue the Lost war on drugs that have also harmed our community for decades, to -- even though the governor himself signed a bill telling us that we don’t need to send as many children to prison as we’ve been sending to prison, and I followed that -- used prosecutorial discretion to keep our kids in juvenile courts and whenever it was possible to do so.

To not get suspended, I could have continued all of those bad policies that I specifically ran against, that the community specifically voted against. So when I look back in hindsight, the only thing I could have done differently was not run when the governor was trying to become president.

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You’re campaigning on your experience. State Attorney Bain is campaigning on his relationships with other agencies. Which is more beneficial to the people of Central Florida?

Mr. Bain’s most beneficial relationship is his relationship to the governor. That’s why he has gotten everywhere that he is today. The relationships that I have are genuine relationships with the community that are not based upon my political advancement.

I didn’t have political aspirations. I only had service aspirations. So when we did candy in the courtyard at Halloween for the kids in the community to have a chance to come to the courthouse in a non-threatening manner, in one that was fun and gave them the opportunity to enjoy themselves when they were here, that was building relationships with the community.

When I did town halls in the community and invited the community to come out and speak to me and ask and tell me anything that they wanted to, or when I invited them to come into the office and have that same opportunity, those were building relationships.

When I developed the Violent Crime Prevention Task Force, which was a collaboration between local federal law enforcement and my office in the United States Attorney’s Office. Those were building relationships.

What is the biggest issue Central Florida’s justice system has at the moment, and what do you plan to do to address it?

The biggest issue that Central Florida’s justice system has right now is that we’re not doing justice. We’re doing the bidding of the governor, and the governor wants us to have this harsh on crime, and I was smart on crime.

Yes, violent offenders have to be held accountable, and under my administration, they were. But we also introduced programs and resources to the community that are data driven, that show us how you can make communities stronger and safer. And that’s why, under my administration, we saw the lowest violent crime rate that this community had in more than a decade.

I’ve been criticized for saying that because they said, “Well, you’re not responsible for the lowest violent crime rate.” Let me be clear, that was absolutely a collaboration. But what that proves is that there aren’t any programs or initiatives that I implemented that led to an increased crime rate.

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I remember us talking about your proposed [juvenile justice] reforms. Is there any of those that sticks out to you as this is the one that we need the most?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s giving us a longer period of time to have supervision over kids in the juvenile justice system.

The answer has been just put them in adult court. But that’s not the answer, because one, once you put them in adult court, they forever remain in adult court. And calling a child an adult for the purpose of prosecution doesn’t make it true. It’s only a legal fiction… What I found as state attorney was that we had an increase in violence among our children.

One of my proposals said some of these kids, we need to maintain jurisdiction over them until their 21st birthday. So let’s do that so that we can ensure that they’re being rehabilitated, that they’re going to school, that they’re participating in programs, that they are getting counseling if they need counseling, all of the things that would give them the tools that they need to succeed.

Putting them in adult court, sending them to adult jail, that’s not going to help them. They’re just learning how to become better criminals.

Do you support legalizing marijuana? And if you do, would you support expunging past convictions for possession?

I support legalizing marijuana for a few reasons.

A very practical reason: it overburdens the court system. We processed over 150,000 cases for the two and a half years that I was in office. Many of those were low level marijuana cases. We don’t have the resources for that. And when we look at our system and we say, “Oh, well, why are things happening and violent people are not being held responsible.” Well, sometimes it’s simply because of the sheer workload.

Sometimes it’s simply because each prosecutor has hundreds of cases that they have to review, and if we can take this off their plate, then it’s going to free up their time to deal with more serious offenses that are actually endangering our community.

Another reason, though, is that black and brown people are the targets of marijuana prosecution and arrests. They are the ones who have suffered the most.

So, if we want a legal system that is fair and just for everyone, this is one place that we can start that can chip away at some of the disproportionate minority representation in the criminal legal system.

Finally, yes, I support expunging convictions for marijuana possession.

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This circuit has had a history with capital punishment that predates your time in office, but what are your thoughts on capital punishment?

As the director of conviction integrity, I know that Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations. We have, I think, right now, 30 individuals who were exonerated off death row, meaning they were convicted and sentenced to death for crimes that they didn’t commit.

One of the first things I did as state attorney was implement a capital case review panel.

When a homicide lawyer wanted to seek death in a case, they needed to write a memorandum telling us why they believed that this case was appropriate for the death penalty. And we reviewed the statutory aggravators and mitigators to make a determination as to whether or not we should file a notice of intention to seek death.

In that case, I believe there were three or four cases during the two and a half years that I was in office that my capital case review panel brought me cases where they thought that we should seek death. And in those cases, I signed off and said, “Yes, we will go ahead and file the notice of intention to seek death.”

Now was I personally okay with that? That’s not what I think is the right thing to do. That’s not what I want to do. But as the state attorney, I understand that my job is to enforce the law as it is written.

Are Florida’s current mandatory minimum sentences, fair, too strict or not strict enough?

In some cases they are. In some cases they’re not. Whenever you have a mandatory minimum, it takes away discretion, right? And the problem is that the legislature can’t read the facts of every single case and know whether or not the mandatory minimum in a particular case is appropriate.

I represented an individual who was convicted of trafficking and conspiracy to traffic, which were two charges that used to go hand in hand, and they each had a 15 year minimum mandatory sentence, which were implemented consecutively, which means that any individual who was convicted of that set of charges would face 30 year minimum mandatory sentence.

Well, this individual had no prior criminal history, this individual had never so much as had a jaywalking ticket, and this individual literally just drove a car with drugs in it at the request of someone else, and they were convicted, and they were sentenced to 30 years in prison for this trafficking and conspiracy to traffic charge. Now that’s not justice.

It is disingenuous and quite frankly, dishonest to say that the state attorney doesn’t have discretion to not charge something as a minimum mandatory sentence, because we absolutely do.

The state has gone a step further in making it easier by taking away the requirement to sending a explanation to the state every single time the state attorney decides that they’re not going to charge something as a minimum mandatory sentence.

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Do you have an issue with being labeled as a reformist?

I have an issue with any labels. I would like to be labeled as someone who seeks justice for our community, because that’s what I’ve done through my entire career. We have made labels like “reform” and “progressive” to make them somehow have a negative connotation, which always baffles me how anyone can look at the word progress and see something wrong with that.

In most instances, the smallest percentage of individuals in our prison right now are there for violent crime. So let’s continue to send people who are a danger to our community to prison because we have to keep the community safe. And let’s find alternative methods to deal with individuals who mostly are a danger to themselves, and help them so that they can become productive members of our community.

That has been my only agenda as state attorney and as an attorney for the last 25 years, and that’ll continue to be my agenda when I’m reelected.

One of your opponent’s claims is that he brought experienced prosecutors back to this circuit. Was there an exodus during your tenure? What will you do to create a better working environment in your next term?

If I answer the question, “What would I do to create a better working environment,” that acquiesces to the fact that there wasn’t one, and reject that wholeheartedly.

My opponent is a dishonest man, and it’s important for people to understand that since I left that office upon my last check -- and by check I mean public records request, which I invite you to do -- more than 60 people left the office since I left on August 9, 2023.

So if we’re talking about a mass exodus, why aren’t we talking about that? He brought back prosecutors who are in alignment with this lock them up and throw away the key mentality. Those weren’t the kind of people that I wanted working under my administration.

In the first quarter of 2023, prior to my removal, we had a more than 90% conviction rate for all felonies. So I’m completely unconcerned with who he brought back to work in the office. The people that I hired were doing the job that the 497,000 people who elected me to be their State Attorney elected me to do, and I’m very proud of it.

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When you were suspended there were there appeared to be some strained relationships between your office and some of our local law enforcement agencies. If you are reelected, can you work with those agencies?

When I was elected in 2021, one of the very first things that I did was sit down individually with every single elected or appointed law enforcement chief. I did that because I knew that they had preconceived notions about me coming in, and I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.

For the very first three months of my administration, we collectively drafted a Brady policy that they all could be in agreement with.

The narrative that I didn’t have relationships, working relationships with local law enforcement, is just not true.

At a forum held by Tiger Bay between the sheriff and myself, we discussed the fact that we don’t ideologically agree on many things, but the reality is, is that our command staff worked very well together to keep our community safe. That’s what we’ll continue to do when I’m reelected

On Seth Hyman’s candidacy and the issues surrounded that, if there is, in fact, a conspiracy to keep you from office, what would you say about the possibility of being removed again?

People need to look at what’s happening behind the scenes and ask yourselves, why? Why? If this is the right thing to do, which is the only thing that we should be focused on doing, then why do we need to do so many underhanded things to get there?

Their entire narrative has been false, and they’ve been using gamesmanship to deceive the voters, and that’s what we really need to be focused on. We need to be focused on the attack on our democracy, removing duly elected officials and replacing them with extremists.

So to your question: if it happens again, what will the voters do? What will the community do? There were 497,000 people who elected me in 2020. Their votes were stolen from them, and that is wrong. And whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you should see that that is wrong and you can’t win by any means necessary, especially not as the state attorney.

You say that there are many misconceptions about you, which is the biggest misconception about you?

Someone was in a salon the other day, and they were speaking with a law enforcement officer who said “she hates cops,” and that was like a dagger to my heart.

I don’t hate anyone, even the people who have participated in my oppression. I absolutely don’t hate cops, and that is the biggest misconception.

What I did as state attorney was try to weed out those cops. Just like in every profession, you have bad lawyers, you have bad accountants, you have bad presidents, I tried to weed out those cops that were breaking the law so that those who were taking seriously their oath to protect and serve could receive the respect and the credibility that they deserve.

See the full interview below.

SAO 9th Circuit candidate Monique Worrell 1-on-1 Channel 9's Nick Papantonis sits down with SAO 9th Circuit candidate Monique Worrell (WFTV)

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