Local View: Ashton says Ayala must obey law first.
I have often been teased for something I said in a lecture to my prosecutors a few years ago that was featured in a 2014 article in the Orlando Sentinel. In attempting to make the point about mandatory-minimum sentences for the use of firearms, I stated, “It’s mandatory, morons” — the point being that if someone is convicted of the crime specified by the statute to carry a certain sentence, that sentence was required by law.
No one, not even we prosecutors, had the authority to circumvent that statute. Even if no one complains — certainly the defendant wouldn’t — it’s still not legal. I wish Aramis Ayala had been present for that discussion.
The current debate over Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala’s unilateral decision to refuse to follow Florida Statute 921.141 in first-degreemurder cases overlooks this most fundamental question: Does she in fact have the discretion she now seeks to assert?
The law has long recognized the almost absolute discretion of the prosecutor in deciding who and what to charge. Had Ayala simply refused to charge Markeith Lloyd with first-degree murder and charged him with something less, I would fully defend her right to do so, as much as the outcome would offend me, but that is not what happened here.
Power, and the discretion to use it, can flow from only two sources. The power must emanate from either the constitution or a statute. I’m sure that even a distinguished Ayala defender like retired Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. would agree that nothing in Florida Statute 921.141 grants this discretion to a prosecutor.
The statute is what we refer to as self-executing: The procedures are initiated by the indictment from the grand jury, not by any affirmative decision by the prosecutor. Chapter 27 of the Florida Statutes, which created our present prosecution system, is silent on the issue as well. I can find no statute that grants such broad authority to a state attorney to exclude the judge and jury from their legally mandated role in this process.
One might argue that implicit with the statute is an ethical obligation on the part of the prosecutors to evaluate the underlying facts to determine whether sufficient aggravating circumstances exist to support the death penalty in an individual case. I wholeheartedly agree.
In fact, the very form Ayala attempts to misuse now was developed by me and my colleagues back in the 1990s for just that purpose. Instead of following the dictates of the statute and exercising appropriate discretion in that evaluation, she has unilaterally decided to throw out the entire system.
Progressives applaud this decision as brave because they like the outcome. I ask them to imagine the chaos if every prosecutor were to decide to pick and choose those laws to follow and those to ignore. Perhaps the next law to be ignored would be one you would miss. Adherence to the statute is mandatory, morons.