Ayala’s lawsuit cost $375K, office says

Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala’s legal bill for her ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott, who took 29 first-degree murder cases away from her office when she announced she wouldn’t seek the death penalty, cost $375,273, her office said Tuesday. “I think it’s very clear that this was a litigable issue,” Ayala said at a news conference last week. “I do not believe that it was a waste of taxpayer money.” The money came from the state attorney’s general revenue fund, made up of taxpayer money and collected fees. The office had a $29.4 million budget last fiscal year. Ayala hired Washington, D.C.-based attorney Roy Austin Jr. as outside legal counsel to represent her. Scott used the state solicitor general’s office. The Florida Supreme Court issued a 5-2 opinion last week saying Scott did have the authority to take cases away from Ayala’s office because she effected a blanket policy, not one that considers the facts of any individual case. Ayala responded by agreeing to again seek the death penalty in some cases and appointing a panel of seven assistant state attorneys to look at future first-degree murder cases and decide if it would be legally appropriate and feasible to seek capital punishment. She said her personal opinion about the death penalty has not changed, but that she had to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling. Ayala won’t try to get the 29 transferred cases back from Ocala-based State Attorney Brad King, she said. Her federal lawsuit against Scott, which she filed alongside her suit with the Florida Supreme Court, should be resolved “in short order,” she said last week.