DeSantis removed this prosecutor who then won back her seat. Could she be ousted again?

All through last year’s campaign season, a question loomed: If Andrew Warren won the race for Hillsborough County state attorney, would Gov. Ron DeSantis remove him from office again?

Warren lost the November election, so the question in Tampa was rendered moot. But 80 miles east on Interstate 4, what could have happened is playing out in real time.

Monique Worrell was sworn into office last month for a second term as the elected state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties. She took the oath amid whispers of a confidential executive order and a state grand jury investigation in a neighboring county, apparently focused on her.

Like Warren, Worrell is a progressive Democrat who ran on reforming the criminal justice system. Like Warren, she was removed after DeSantis accused her of refusing to enforce state laws. Unlike Warren, she won reelection.

No one with knowledge of the grand jury probe, including Worrell herself, will talk about it. Warren said he did not know enough to comment. Her allies speculate the panel’s purpose is to give the governor the justification he needs to — again — yank her from office.

The prospect brought an air of unease at her swearing-in ceremony.

Said Bob LeBlanc, a retired circuit judge who supported Worrell’s reelection: “Some of us were expecting the police to barge in and arrest her.”

A grand jury

Four days before she took the oath of office, Worrell was seen with a pair of lawyers walking into the Polk County Courthouse in Bartow. A TV crew spotted her. She declined to discuss why she was there.

They also saw Bill Gladson. He’s the state attorney for a five-county judicial circuit based in Ocala.

What was Gladson doing in Polk County? He wouldn’t say. Polk County is under the jurisdiction of State Attorney Brian Haas. He and Gladson are Republicans.

Gladson and Worrell went to a room next to the local state attorney’s office and spent more than two hours inside, according to the TV station.

As rumors swirled, some have pointed to an executive order DeSantis authored Dec. 10. While most of the governor’s orders are public, this one remains sealed.

Grand juries are secretive by design. Public officials involved in the proceedings and witnesses called to testify can get in trouble for merely acknowledging that one is meeting. They typically convene for weeks to investigate claims from a state attorney that a crime has been committed. They can approve or deny the issuance of an indictment.

Unlike in trials, there is no defense attorney present. All the evidence the panel hears comes from the prosecutor.

After the Tampa Bay Times asked Gladson’s office for recent emails and text messages mentioning Worrell, a response noted that some items were being withheld due to an “active investigation.”

When the Times asked for Gladson’s messages with Ryan Newman, general counsel to the governor, Gladson’s office said the items were confidential. That response cited a Florida law that deals with shielding from public view certain executive orders from the governor.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat and Worrell ally, said speculation in Orlando legal circles is that the grand jury is investigating the destruction of public records related to the office’s use of social media around the time Worrell was suspended.

“I don’t think there is a legitimate reason (to charge her),” Eskamani said. “If you’re going to do some sort of charge on public records, it seems really desperate.”

Some of Worrell’s staff haven’t bothered to unpack their office supplies, believing they might have to leave again soon, Eskamani said.

“People are very traumatized by what happened before,” she said.

Melissa Vickers, the public defender for Orange and Osceola counties, said she has developed a good working relationship with Worrell. She fears another suspension would reverberate throughout the criminal justice system, worsening case backlogs and causing other problems.

“It’s extremely disruptive,” she said. “I think it threatens democracy in a terrible way.”

Changing the players

Monique Haughton Worrell came to the Sunshine State in the 1990s. Brooklyn-born, she attended law school at the University of Florida, where she became a professor. After a stint as an Orlando public defender, she ran her own practice for 17 years, focused on public interest law and criminal defense.

In 2018, she joined the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office to lead a new conviction integrity unit that examines closed cases in which defendants claim they were innocent.

A year later, Worrell left to be the chief legal officer for the Reform Alliance, an organization that seeks to change sentencing laws. Its founders include the rapper Meek Mill and record producer Jay-Z.

She ran for state attorney in 2020 on a platform that emphasized police accountability, addressing mass incarceration and improving fairness in the juvenile justice system. She was arguably the most progressive of four Democratic candidates. She landed endorsements from singer-songwriter John Legend, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and then-Sen. and future Vice President Kamala Harris.

She campaigned amid a backdrop of nationwide protests and civil unrest over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. One hot summer day, the Orlando Sentinel reported, she stood on the steps of City Hall and told a crowd the only way to change the criminal justice system was to “change the players.”

She benefited from outside financial support, with contributions totaling more than $1 million. Part of that came by way of a political action committee linked to billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Soros is well known for his financial support of progressive causes and candidates. His political activity has made him a reviled figure among the American right. His influence in criminal justice politics has been used as an attack line intended to discredit candidates who espouse a reform philosophy. Warren, in his Tampa campaigns, was frequently derided as “Soros-backed.”

In Orlando, though, progressive sentiments tend to make for a winning message. Democrats in Orange County outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1. In Osceola County, which is part of the same judicial district, Democrats similarly dominate in voter registration. The region as a whole tends to see Democratic candidates trounce their opponents.

Worrell cruised to victory in the primary and went on to win 66% of votes in the general election.

The suspension

In her first term, Worrell pledged to build relationships with local law enforcement, which critics said her predecessor never had done. She helped create a civil citation program for adults. She created a narcotics unit to focus on dismantling drug trafficking organizations. She pursued murder cases against the sellers of drugs linked to fatal overdoses. She created a traffic homicide unit to clear a case backlog.

Then came Warren’s suspension. DeSantis accused the Tampa Democrat of neglecting his duty. He cited a pair of statements Warren signed with other elected leaders pledging not to prosecute abortions or cases involving gender-affirming care, along with Warren’s policies that discouraged prosecutions of some low-level, nonviolent crimes.

As controversy ensued, there came whispers that the same thing might happen to Worrell. Those whispers turned to talk in early 2023, when Newman, the governor’s general counsel, sent Worrell a letter. He demanded information about a teenage gunman who killed a 9-year-old girl, an adult woman and a TV journalist.

The teen had a juvenile arrest history, which was complicated, with some charges predating Worrell’s time in office.

The governor needed to determine if the gunman was enabled by gaps in sentencing laws, “or, to be frank, your office’s failure to properly administer justice,” Newman wrote.

Worrell defended her office’s handling of the suspect’s cases, saying they’d followed the law.

That April, Worrell said a local Republican official had called her office asking about two human trafficking cases where charges were dropped. About that same time, the Central Florida Police Chiefs Association asked her office for prosecutorial data.

Worrell alleged the governor’s allies were fishing for information that could justify her suspension.

In June, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice released a report that claimed Worrell’s office in a one-year period dropped far more violent felony and firearm-related cases against minors than any other state attorney’s office. Worrell called the report “manufactured,” pointing out that DeSantis has authority over the department and that such a report had never before been produced.

In August, two Orlando police officers were shot and wounded. The gunman had months earlier bailed out of jail while awaiting trial for sexual battery. Orlando’s police union blamed Worrell. Worrell blamed the judge who set bail.

Two days later, Worrell got a call at home with the news she’d anticipated for months. Don’t bother coming to work, she said she was told. You’ve been suspended.

‘The whim of the governor’

Worrell walked across the courthouse steps the morning of Aug. 9, 2023, and stood beneath hot camera lights.

“I am your duly elected state attorney for the 9th Judicial Circuit,” she said. “And nothing done by a weak dictator can change that.”

She spoke of “tyranny” and of suspensions occurring for “political purposes” at the “whim of the governor.”

“No matter how you feel about me,” she said, “you should not be OK with that.”

The suspension order differed from the one DeSantis used to oust Warren, who had argued that the governor targeted things that were protected as free speech.

The Worrell order seemed to anticipate similar arguments. It instead accused her of a litany of wrongs, like failing to impose minimum mandatory penalties and letting juveniles avoid jail time for serious offenses.

“We had a duty to act,” DeSantis said at the time, “to protect the public from this dereliction of duty.”

To replace Worrell, DeSantis selected Andrew Bain, a former prosecutor whom he in 2020 appointed to be a county judge.

The sheriffs in Orange and Osceola counties, John Mina and Marcos Lopez, both Democrats, were not present for DeSantis’ announcement. In public statements, they avoided directly criticizing Worrell and said they looked forward to working with Bain. Orlando’s police chief, Eric Smith, likewise said he would work with Bain.

Worrell accused local law enforcement of giving information to the governor to help remove her. She vowed to fight the suspension in court but anticipated she would lose, as DeSantis appointed most of the Florida Supreme Court’s justices.

Indeed, six of the court’s seven justices essentially said it wasn’t their job to decide the merits of the suspension.

It was to the voters that Worrell next took her case. In November, she defeated Bain with 57% of the vote.

A new suspension

One frigid Tuesday morning last month, Worrell stepped across a stage outside the Orange County Courthouse. It was on these same steps 18 months earlier that she delivered her defiant speech upon being suspended.

She clasped hands with her husband. She sang along to a gospel song and raised an arm as if in worship before she approached a lectern. Hundreds looked on — lawyers, judges, lawmakers and political friends — as State Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis administered her oath of office. When she recited the line declaring that she was “duly qualified to hold office,” there came cheers. Worrell smiled.

“Today is about more than reclaiming a position,” she told the crowd. “It is about reclaiming our democracy. It’s about honoring the will of the people and restoring faith in the systems meant to serve us all.”

That morning, DeSantis was in Tampa. He watched as former Attorneys General Pam Bondi and Ashley Moody administered the same oath to Suzy Lopez, the longtime prosecutor he appointed to replace Warren.

In a gathering with reporters afterward, DeSantis was asked: Would he suspend Worrell again?

He didn’t answer directly, but he mentioned that her first suspension didn’t occur until he could justify it.

“Trust me, I had people beating down my doors for two years, begging me to suspend her,” he said. “And I said, I need the goods. And so we laid it out and did it.”

He lamented that Worrell and Warren both sought relief from courts rather than face judgment in the state Senate — which is dominated by Republicans — as the state constitution dictates.

“We are going to make sure all state attorneys uphold their oath of office,” DeSantis said.

Kenneth Nunn, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida College of Law, met Worrell when she was a student and later worked alongside her as a professor. He said he thinks the episode has more to do with political gamesmanship than anything Worrell has done.

“I hear a lot about how various organs of government have been weaponized to go after people,” Nunn said. “I think the people who make the most noise about it are those engaged in the process of weaponizing the government.”

“I’ve known Monique for many years,” he said. “I don’t think there is any reason for me to suspect, or anyone to suspect, that she has done anything illegal.”