State to review complaint against Broward sheriff over paperwork
Sworn affidavit asserts he never had a criminal record sealed, expunged
Florida’s top law enforcement agency confirmed Wednesday it will look into Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony’s sworn affidavit that asserts that he has never had a criminal record sealed or expunged, and pledging that all the answers he provided were “true and correct.”
The move comes days after it came to light that Tony had kept it a secret that he shot and killed a man in 1993.
“We did receive a complaint and we will review the complaint,” said Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “We do not have an active investigation.”
As the South Florida Sun Sentinel first reported on Tuesday, Broward prosecutors sent the socalled “affidavit of applicant” to the FDLE for review. Any untruthfulness on the form would be a second-degree misdemeanor.
The FDLE didn’t elaborate on the complaint it plans to review. If it were to open an investigation, it may have to determine whether the sheriff lied in paperwork about killing a man when he was a teenager.
Tony signed an affidavit this January, a year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him sheriff. The notarized document is kept in his employment file. The form is meant to verify that a law enforcement officer meets the state’s qualifications.
The paperwork is among the various application forms and questionnaires that Tony completed as part of his law enforcement career.
Ever since Tony’s decades-old secret came to light this week
end, first reported by the Florida Bulldog investigative news website, there has been growing scrutiny over Tony’s responses about his past on official forms.
Newspaper accounts from 1993 say Tony, then 14, killed an 18-year-old man in the Badlands neighborhood of Philadelphia. Tony told the Sun Sentinel on Sunday that he did not think he was technically “charged with a crime” and that it was a case of self-defense.
DeSantis was unaware about the killing when he appointed Tony last year. Tony said Sunday that he didn’t think such a disclosure would’ve affected the governor’s decision. “You’re saying that I should have disclosed a horrific incident that I faced as a 14-year-old kid, where I had to survive a shooting,” he said. “… Why would I put myself in a position where I’m talking about a brutal attack that I survived, for the sake of an interview? I don’t think anyone would have done that.”
The records from the case are not available for public inspection so it’s not clear what happened in court. Stacey Witalec, the spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania courts, said
Wednesday that no records are available, and she could not say whether they were sealed or expunged.
Tony is in a heated race for sheriff, seeking election for the first time this August. His campaign consultant, Eric Johnson, said Wednesday the paperwork was sealed after Tony was cleared in the case.
Still, he argues Tony committed no mistake on the form. He said a question on the form asked if a “criminal”
record had been sealed, and he said Tony had been found not guilty. “It was not a criminal record, because it wasn’t a crime,” he said.
“He certainly has an argument,” said Bruce Zimet, a well-known legal expert not associated with Tony’s case. “He has a little wiggle room because the question isn’t as precise as it should be.”
Generally, an arrest record is a criminal record, he said.
“The pertinent question is, what did he get sealed? What got sealed was his arrest record. You’d think somebody applying for a position like that, they would want to be totally transparent. Even if the question is somewhat vague. The question is vague to a degree because it doesn’t specify conviction or arrest.”
Still, “why would you seal something of no importance or significance.”
Zimet called the answer to the question “problematic but not necessarily a crime.”
On Tuesday, Tony had said his records no longer were available. “Per my parents and attorney, because of the disposition of the case there are no records.” That’s consistent with what Pennsylvania legal experts say: It’s likely the records were automatically expunged.
“The law ensures that if a case is not substantiated then the record must be deleted,” said Riya Saha Shah, the managing director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.
“If something was expunged, you shouldn’t be able to know it [the alleged crime] existed to begin with,” Shah said. “In effect, it never occurred.”
Tony has also said he was not arrested because he was a juvenile. But because his case was originally in the adult court, it’s possible he would have been arrested, Shah said. Even though the case was then bounced down to the juvenile court, his arrest would not have gone away, she said.