Aramis Ayala pledges change in how circuit considers death penalty cases

In a debate Thursday between Orlando’s top prosecutor and public defender, new State Attorney Aramis Ayala said she is looking at rethinking how the 9th Judicial Circuit considers death penalty cases, while Public Defender Bob Wesley urged her not to change policies.

Ayala, elected on a judicial reform platform last fall as the top prosecutor for the Orange and Osceola counties’ 9th Circuit, told the Tiger Bay Club of Central Florida that she intends to have her office review policies dictating when to pursue death penalty prosecutions, and when to not.

“I think it is something that has to be addressed. I admit that our system is broken and we need to have something in place, a process by which we determine whether or not to proceed,” Ayala said.

Wesley, whose office clearly opposes death penalty prosecutions, responded by defending the recent past practices of the 9th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office He essentially argued that the system there has not been broken, that he prefers it to what’s going on in other parts of the state, and that he’s very concerned if Ayala intends to change things.

“We’ve had a very, very rational approach to the death penalty in our community for many years,” said Wesley.

“It has not been sought randomly or capriciously here,” Wesley continued. “There’s room for good dialogue. But if the prosecutor tries to ratchet it up and said she is seeking death, she just spent a half million dollars of your money for our preparation. And by doing it as a negotiation ploy, to not pull off it the day before a trial is worrisome. We have not had that culture here.

Ayala takes over from State Attorney Jeff Ashton, a fellow Democrat who also ran on a reform platform when he was elected in 2012. The death penalty cases that Wesley’s office is dealing with, and has dealt with for most of the past four years, came from Ashton’s policies.

‘The cases I have with death penalties right now, are guys that are 50 or older, that have prior homicides,” Wesley told Tiger Bay. “That might be the kind of case that might be, in most any jurisdiction, targeted. And we’re not giving up on any of them, and we’re working them up. But we don’t have 23 year olds that had a bad argument with someone else.”

Ayala did not get a chance to follow up, and when asked later to clarify her statements about a broken system and her expectations for reform, she declined to elaborate for now.

The issue offered what was perhaps the strongest difference between Ayala and Wesley, also a Democrat, though the two dug into their natural confrontational positions on a few other points ranging from domestic violence prosecutions to hit-and-run prosecutions.

Still, the death penalty case may have raised confusing assumptions, based on who Ayala is, and the judicial reform pledges she had made during her 2016 campaign and to which she renewed pledges Thursday.

Ayala is the first African American state attorney in Florida’s history. She has expressed sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement and concern for judicial reform involving minority communities, saying that she cannot un-see, un-unexperience or unlearn all that she has seen, experienced and learned as a black woman.

Yet much of criticism of the death penalty has surrounded its typical disproportionate application to black and other minority suspects. It’s possible the reform Ayala is considering  would amount to reining in its use even more, but she did not say.

During the meeting, she said said that when her office develops new guidelines, she will go public with full disclosure.

“That is something not to be taken lightly. I don’t take it lightly,” she said. “And I will present what our office comes up with when the time permits.”