Ayala may challenge removal from Markeith Loyd cases
Saying Scott ‘overstepped,’ she asks temporary halt in prosecution
Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala on Monday said she is not willing to surrender the murder cases against Markeith Loyd, accused in the killing an Orlando police officer.
Gov. Rick Scott removed her from the cases Thursday, outraged when she said she would not seek the death penalty. He appointed a special prosecutor, Brad King.
At a court hearing in Orlando on Monday, Ayala sat one seat away from King, the state attorney for Florida’s Fifth Judicial Circuit.
What the governor did was unprecedented, Ayala told Orange-Osceola Chief Circuit Judge Frederick Lauten, and “overstepped his bounds.” She said she may file a legal challenge and asked the judge temporarily to halt the two murder cases involving Loyd while she figures out what to do.
Loyd is charged with killing Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton on Jan. 9 and, several weeks earlier, his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon. Ayala said she at least wants to be part of Loyd’s prosecution.
More than 100 lawyers, including two former
Florida Supreme Court justices and Gil Garcetti, who prosecuted celebrity O.J. Simpson during his 1995 murder trial, are backing Ayala. They have signed a letter asking Scott to give the case back to her. She is an independently elected official, and Scott is guilty of overreach, they say.
In Tallahassee, Scott defended his decision. When asked whether he would consider removing Ayala from office, he said, “We’ll continue to look at our options. Right now I’m focused on Markeith Loyd.”
Asked if he would get involved in other potential death-penalty cases in Orange and Osceola counties, he said, “I’ll deal with that at the time.”
On Monday, the assistant finance director at the Seminole County Clerk of Court Office was placed on paid administrative leave after posting Facebook comments saying Ayala “should be tarred and feathered if not hung from a tree” because she refuses to seek the death penalty.
Stan McCullars, author of the post, later deleted it. He could not be reached for comment. His boss, Grant Maloy, said those comments “don’t reflect my beliefs.”
Ayala is the first AfricanAmerican state attorney in Florida and took office Jan. 3, serving Orange and Osceola counties. During her five-month election campaign, she did not state her position on the death penalty.
Scott called Ayala about 3:20 p.m. Thursday to tell her he wanted her off the cases, she said. Court records show that about an hour later, she formally filed paperwork in both cases, saying the state would not seek the death penalty.
King, who is the elected state attorney in Lake and four other counties, told the judge Monday he had no idea Ayala had filed that paperwork. He also had not seen a motion she filed Monday to halt Loyd’s proceedings temporarily.
She no longer has jurisdiction to make any decisions related to the case, he argued. The judge did not rule on Ayala’s motion.
Shortly after Monday’s hearing started, Ayala stood to address the judge.
“I need to be clear: I think the governor overstepped his bounds,” she said.
Although she is not yet sure what she’ll do, she said she will not interfere with King and wants to see Loyd successfully prosecuted.
Loyd also criticized Scott: “The governor don’t know nothing about my case.”
He suggested that Scott didn’t want Ayala to handle it “because she’s a woman, a woman of color.”
Ayala wrote in Monday’s motion that when she was sworn in, “it was my expectation that if the Florida Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, then in appropriate cases, I would seek the death penalty.”
The document did not explain why she changed her position.
She did, though, state that the governor removed her without due cause.
“Giving the Governor the tremendous and unfettered discretion to interfere with … decision making would be unprecedented and could undermine the entire justice system in Florida,” she wrote.
For the first time since his arrest Jan. 19, Loyd was not the center of attention at one of his court hearings. In the past, he has gone on long profane diatribes and claimed that the murder charges were filed against a corporation named “Markeith Loyd” — not him.
On Monday, he was calmer. He made an obscene gesture at reporters before the hearing began, but generally sat quietly until the judge addressed him directly.
He again told the judge that he does not want an attorney, but he said he does want someone to make the jail give him better medical care.
He was kicked in the head and hit with guns, he said, and suffered a broken jaw, broken nose, head trauma and such severe damage to his left eye that it will have to be surgically removed.
Lauten scheduled a hearing for 9 a.m. March 28 to consider whether Ayala has the authority to ask for a delay in the cases.
He will also consider whether to appoint a mental health expert to determine whether Loyd is competent, and he will again take up the issue of whether to appoint a defense attorney.
The injuries that Loyd described, the judge said, may having some bearing on his decision about whether to ask for a mental evaluation.
Also Monday, Kevin Morenski, 31, announced plans to run as a Republican against Ayala in 2020.
He said if elected, he would name Ken Lewis as his top assistant. Lewis was fired from that office last year after writing a Facebook post shortly after the June Pulse nightclub massacre in which he called downtown Orlando a “melting pot of third world miscreants and ghetto thugs.” Gray Rohrer, Steven Lemongello and David Harris of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.