Ron DeSantis suspends state attorney Andrew Warren, over claims he won't enforce new Florida laws
Interesting legal situation playing out in Florida.
Ron DeSantis, who is very good at reading the middle-of-the-road voter's pulse on hot-button issues, has engaged in a lot of high-profile decisions presumably meant to bolster his chances to eventually become President.
He's been very good at it, and I agree with nearly all of these actions, though with some of them I've questioned if they have enough teeth to become reality.
The latest one was aimed at the disturbing trend of woke prosecutors refusing to prosecute the breaking of certain laws. This has become common in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, and is aimed at "racial equity", but has had predictably disasterous results. If you state up front that certain criminal offenses will NEVER be prosecuted, then criminals become emboldened to break those laws, and in fact organized rings appear which take advantage of these -- even seemingly minor ones like shoplifting. These also eventually result in more violent crime, as citizens who attempt to stop these crimes are often beaten or killed.
In any case, there has been no real attempt from an executive standpoint to stop these woke DAs from their one-man rewriting of state legislation. The closest that has happened was a successful recall in San Francisco, of all places, against DA Chesa Boudin.
Ron DeSantis has decided to change that. While he is powerless to stop anything occurring in California or New York, he focused upon a woke state attorney (roughly equivalent to a DA) in Hillsborough County, near Tampa. This state attorney, Andrew Warren, signed a pledge to never prosecute anyone for providing "gender affirming care to minors" (meaning mutilating kids who claim they feel like the other gender at the moment), as well as never prosecuting anyone for getting or providing an abortion in Florida.
Note that Florida allows early term abortion up to 15 weeks. Warren is essentially stating that his office will never prosecute any providers who blatantly break that law. For example, if a doctor in Hillsborough County gives an non-medically-necessary abortion to an 8-months-pregnant woman simply because she doesn't want it anymore, Warren will not prosecute it. Same goes for mutilating kids who want damaging and irreversible hormones or operations. Warren will not prosecute this, even though Florida has laws against providing this type of "care".
Regardless of how you feel about transgender operations/hormones for kids, or about late term abortion, the position of state attorney is to enforce state law. It is not up to them to decide whether or not they agree with state law. They need to prosecute any case where they feel a conviction is likely, and where there aren't extenuating circumstances where non-prosecution would be sensible. They are NOT supposed to become a one-man re-legislating machine, deciding which state laws are worthy of enforcement. That is for the voters and state legislators to decide.
DAs and state attorneys ARE expected to evaluate each case on their individual merits. If a conviction is unlikely, or if strong extenuating circumstances exist for this individual crime, or if the office simply lacks resources to prosecute certain minor cases, it is considered acceptable to decline prosecution. For example, if a woman steals food from a store, and is arrested for it, if it's found that she did it to feed her starving kids, it would be within the state attorney's rights not to prosecute. However, it should NOT be within the state attorney's rights to say, "We will never prosecute any shoplifting for less than $900 of stuff, under any circumstances", as that is a case of one man deciding to rewrite state law.
DeSantis is not accusing Warren of refusing to prosecute shoplifters or other minor criminals, though it should be noted that Warren refused to prosecute 67 semi-violent BLM protesters in 2020. DeSantis is instead stating that Warren is already announcing he will not prosecute for violations of Florida abortion law and Florida transgender operations on minors law, and therefore he is not doing his job as state attorney.
Warren counters that he hasn't done anything yet, and simply stated his intent for the future. He claims that it's "Orwellian" that he's being suspended for something he hasn't done yet.
I disagree. If you are a state attorney and announce you will not ever prosecute certain state laws, you have already committed a dereliction of duty.
Warren has already been locked out of his office, and was replaced by a new appointee by DeSantis. Warren is claiming that this suspension was illegal, as he's an elected official, and that he can only be removed via a recall election.
I am not sure who is right legally here, but I'm glad to see things like this happening. Cities like LA, NY, and SF have become shitholes thanks to woke prosecuting, arrest, and sentencing policies.
