{"id":34794,"date":"2022-08-14T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-14T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/14\/prosecutor-andrew-warren-clashed-with-desantis-now-hes-out-of-a-job\/"},"modified":"2022-08-14T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-14T14:30:00","slug":"prosecutor-andrew-warren-clashed-with-desantis-now-hes-out-of-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/14\/prosecutor-andrew-warren-clashed-with-desantis-now-hes-out-of-a-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutor Andrew Warren clashed with DeSantis. Now he\u2019s out of a job."},"content":{"rendered":"

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The ouster has alarmed many in Florida, who say DeSantis usurped the will of the voters by removing a local elected official who disagreed with him politically<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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August 14, 2022 at 7:30 a.m. EDT<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Suspended<\/div>
Suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren outside his home in Tampa, Fla. on August 7. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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TAMPA \u2014 State Attorney Andrew Warren was waiting for a grand jury to issue indictments in two rape and murder cases he had been working on for three years when he glanced down at his phone and saw an email from an attorney for Gov. Ron DeSantis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It said he was suspended from his job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stunned, Warren quickly went to his office to consult with his staff. Not long after, there was a knock at the door. An armed major from the county sheriff\u2019s office and a man in a suit from the governor\u2019s office carrying a copy of DeSantis\u2019 executive order suspending him were looking for him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHe said, essentially, \u2018The governor has suspended you and you need to leave the office now,\u2019\u201d Warren, a Democrat, recalled of DeSantis\u2019 aide. \u201cSo within maybe seven minutes from getting the email, I was outside, on the street. The major offered me a ride home because they took my car.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The dramatic ouster has alarmed many in Florida, who say DeSantis \u2014 widely considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate <\/b>\u2014 usurped the will of the voters by removing a twice-elected local official who disagreed with him politically. Warren had initiated police reforms unpopular with some local law enforcement officers, and in the past year signed two statements pledging not to use his office to \u201ccriminalize\u201d health care, including prosecuting women who get abortions and people seeking gender-affirming medical treatments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In announcing the suspension, DeSantis excoriated Warren for being a \u201cwoke\u201d prosecutor more interested in social justice than in enforcing the law. He warned of a \u201cpathogen\u201d spreading in U.S. cities \u2014 progressive prosecutors trying to reduce incarceration rates they see as overly punitive and that disproportionately impact people of color. He said prosecutors like Warren have caused \u201ccatastrophic results\u201d in other states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are not going to let that get a foothold here in the state of Florida,\u201d DeSantis said a news conference in Tampa<\/a>, while across town Warren was being physically ejected from his office. The governor was flanked by more than a dozen officers who hailed the move to oust Warren.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The clash comes as political parties pay more attention to state attorney elections than they have in the past and as prosecutors around the country are now faced with a slate of new laws restricting or outright banning abortion care after the fall of Roe v. Wade<\/i>. For Warren, who left a job as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., to run for office in his home state, the suspension was the latest in a series of dust-ups with the governor. He said he was not planning to ignore the law, only that he planned to exercise prosecutorial discretion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMy job is about anything I can do to make our city safer and our system more fair,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is much broader in the terms of the spectrum of criminal justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018I\u2019m doing the right thing\u2019<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

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The day he lost his job was supposed to be a day of triumph for Warren, one of the highlights of his six years in office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Four years earlier, he had launched a Conviction Review Unit to examine innocence claims. One of those claims came from Robert DuBoise. He\u2019d served 37 years behind bars after being convicted in the rape and murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams in 1983. But prosecutors had built their case on problematic bite-mark evidence and a jailhouse informant. A fresh look at the crime found DNA evidence that instead linked two other men to the crime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not only did the new probe conclude that Abron Scott and Amos Earl Robinson were responsible for Grams\u2019 death; further investigation also tied them to the rape and murder of Linda Lansen<\/a>, 41, who was killed around the same time. Lansen\u2019s case had gone cold for nearly four decades. Warren was going to announce that a grand jury had indicted the men in both murders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He invited family members of the victims, as well as several local law enforcement officers who had helped solve the cases. He sent out a press release for media to join him at the state attorney\u2019s building in Tampa. Instead, after his suspension, he held a briefing at a downtown office building.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe governor\u2019s political circus potentially jeopardized two three-year old cold case investigations into serial rapists and murderers from 39 years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was my focus. … I was worried that they were going to disband the grand jury. In the back of my mind was the promise I made to those families, and that was my focus.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warren grew up in Gainesville, Fla., the son of a university professor turned real estate developer. After graduating from Columbia University law school, he served as a federal district court clerk in San Francisco. Later he went on to work as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice focusing on financial fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He stunned Tampa in 2016 when he returned to Florida from D.C. to take on a longtime Republican prosecutor for the state attorney\u2019s office in one of the state\u2019s most populous counties. During the campaign, he promised to focus on violent crimes and send low-level offenders into diversion programs instead of jail.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen I ran in 2016 I wanted to change the criminal justice system, to improve it, to revolutionize it,\u201d he said, sitting in the living room of his Tampa home on a recent morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He put that philosophy into action during the summer of 2020, when protests over the murder of George Floyd by police officers erupted across the country, including in Tampa. Warren declined<\/a> to press charges against 67 people who had been arrested for unlawful assembly \u2014 angering local law enforcement officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere were a lot of peaceful protests, and there was a night of violent rioting,\u201d Warren said. \u201cWe prosecuted 150 people for felonies. We prosecuted the people who we had evidence were actually committing crimes. We didn\u2019t prosecute the people where there was no evidence besides the fact that they were fully protesting. It was pretty simple.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warren has publicly clashed with DeSantis before. He criticized<\/a> <\/a>an \u201canti-riot\u201d law that DeSantis signed in 2021 stiffening penalties<\/a> for demonstrators in the aftermath of the 2020 protests, saying it \u201ctears a couple of corners off the Constitution.\u201d After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade<\/i> in June, Warren joined dozens of prosecutors from around the country in signing a pledge<\/a> to \u201cdecline to use our offices\u2019 resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A year earlier, he signed a similar statement<\/a> regarding gender-affirming care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warren called the pledges \u201cvalue statements\u201d that addressed prosecutorial discretion, and not promises to ignore the law. Florida recently instituted a 15-week abortion ban, and while the state will soon deny Medicaid coverage<\/a> for transgender-related surgeries and medication, there is no law forbidding such treatments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSo if a doctor at Tampa General Hospital performs an abortion at 24 weeks and there\u2019s a question of, \u2018Is it 23 weeks and six days, or 24 weeks and one day,\u2019 that\u2019s a different case than a back-alley abortion performed at 35 weeks,\u201d Warren said, explaining that he\u2019d pursue charges in the latter. \u201cThat\u2019s reckless and negligent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He said \u201cthere have been occasions where I\u2019m getting yelled at from far left, and I\u2019m getting yelled at by the far right. To me that demonstrates that I\u2019m doing the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warren handily won<\/a> his reelection 2020 \u2014 but not everyone was happy with his approach to the law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In his executive order suspending Warren, DeSantis listed examples of what he called Warren\u2019s \u201cfundamentally flawed and lawless understanding of his duties.\u201d One of those was Warren\u2019s decision<\/a> not prosecute people on bicycles who are stopped by police for resisting arrest without violence. A report by the U.S. Department of Justice after an investigation<\/a> by the Tampa Bay Times found that 80 percent of the thousands of biking tickets issued by Tampa police were given to Black people, a practice local residents criticized as \u201cbiking while Black.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe need our prosecutor to prosecute crime \u2014 the same as we enforce crime,\u201d Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister told a local television station<\/a> after Warren\u2019s suspension.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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DeSantis said he decided to suspend Warren after he ordered his staff to find any examples in Florida of prosecutors who \u201ctake it upon themselves\u201d to decide which laws to enforce. Law enforcement officers and district attorneys routinely utilize prosecutorial discretion to decide which crimes to focus their attention on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But DeSantis was touching on a growing angst<\/a> over prosecutors seen as light on crime at a time when homicides <\/a>have risen in many cities, including Tampa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are going to make sure that our laws are enforced and that no individual prosecutor puts himself above the law,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cAnd I can tell you, the states and the localities that have allowed this to happen, they are ruing the day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alissa Marque Heydari, deputy director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College New York City, said there has been an uptick in state legislators and governors attacking prosecutors who are reform-minded. In San Francisco, former District Attorney Chesa Boudin<\/a> lost a recall election after venture capitalists, doctors, lawyers, and estate developers raised millions to boot him from office<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBut law enforcement is local \u2014 it\u2019s up to the community to prioritize how they want the laws enforced,\u201d she said. \u201cIf Andrew Warren said he didn\u2019t want to prosecute certain types of crimes and the community was upset about that, it was up to them to vote him out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018Something Putin would do\u2019<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

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For DeSantis critics, Warren\u2019s suspension is a troubling sign of abuse of power from a governor whose administration routinely employs hostile tactics<\/a> to silence opponents. The suspension isn\u2019t final until the state Senate approves it, but the Republican-majority chamber is all but certain to usher it through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is something that Putin or Castro or Maduro would do,\u201d said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat who has represented parts of the Tampa Bay area in Congress for 15 years. \u201cPeople in Hillsborough are outraged.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Peter Bergerson, a political science professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, concurred, describing it as a decision with \u201cheavy overtones of political, election-year issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt sounds like more of an ideological decision, rather than one that\u2019s based on actual poor performance or fraud,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Others have sprung to the governor\u2019s defense, including local law enforcement leaders, Republican colleagues in the state legislature and others who say Warren\u2019s approach was ultimately problematic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Joseph Cillo, a former defense attorney and an assistant professor of criminal justice at Saint Leo University in Tampa, said he likes Warren and respects his right to free speech. But he said DeSantis was doing his job and also sending a message by removing Warren from office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou can have discretion on individual cases. There\u2019s always prosecutorial discretion,\u201d Cillo said. \u201cBut when you come out and say, these are one or two statutes that I believe are unconstitutional, that\u2019s an individual opinion. And to say, \u2018I\u2019m just not going to prosecute these crimes,\u2019 that\u2019s an omission under Florida law.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The suspension \u2014 and what followed \u2014 offer a window into DeSantis\u2019 approach to the law, were he to pursue federal office. He appointed Susan Lopez to fill Warren\u2019s position, a longtime assistant state attorney the governor had recently named a county judge. Warren may have had no warning that he was about to be fired by the governor, but Lopez said the governor called her days earlier to offer her the job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lopez is a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative group that advocates for an \u201coriginalist interpretation\u201d of the Constitution. U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are also members.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The new top prosecutor reversed many of Warren\u2019s policies in her first days in office, including his policy to cut down on bike-rider prosecutions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warren, for his part,<\/b> has assembled a team of lawyers to figure out his next step. He published a video message<\/a> three days after his suspension, saying \u201cI refuse to let this man trample on your freedoms to speak your mind, to make your own health care decisions, and to have your vote count.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As he strategizes on a way to get his job back, Warren said he\u2019s been buoyed by support from voters and friends.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve heard from people who told me they didn\u2019t vote for me, and they don\u2019t know if they\u2019ll ever vote for me, but they support me on this,\u201d he said. \u201cThey recognize how wrong this is.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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