Months before her office became the subject of an inquiry by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, State Attorney Monique Worrell and Orange County Sheriff John Mina had a contentious conversation that foreshadowed much of the fallout from the deadly Pine Hills shooting spree.
Mina’s statements during the July 8 meeting – which Worrell chronicled in a detailed email obtained by the Orlando Sentinel – accused the State Attorney of not properly pursuing charges against repeat offenders, the central criticism of Worrell’s office by the governor.
The sheriff also said he was actively tracking how her prosecutors were resolving cases.
Worrell said she was uncomfortable during the meeting and, looking back, feels Mina “was trying to provide the governor with evidence that the governor could use to justify my suspension.”
Mina denies this.
“I know this has been asked and answered, but I have not cooperated with the Governor or his office to help them build a case to remove the State Attorney from office,” he said in a statement to the Sentinel on Monday, adding: “However, I will give my opinion if anyone should ask.”
The State Attorney also later said there is a clear “before and after” regarding her relationship with Mina and that “it’s been all downhill since” the meeting.
“I thought we had a good working relationship … we had been pleasant to each other before,” she said. “It really caught me off guard, this meeting that we had where he came at me in a very accusatory tone.”
Their encounter came after the governor’s public safety czar, Larry Keefe, began soliciting complaints from Florida sheriffs about their local prosecutors. This search eventually led DeSantis’ office to zero in on former Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, who he suspended on Aug. 4.
Keefe’s call for grievances also yielded complaints from Mina about Worrell that mirrored those against Warren, according to Keefe’s testimony during a November trial in a lawsuit filed by Warren. The former prosecutor is waging a legal fight to regain his position.
Worrell said, in an interview with the Sentinel, that the Warren case put her conversation with Mina into context.
“One of the things that [Mina] said repeatedly throughout the meeting was, ‘Well, people are asking, so I want you to hear it from me before you hear it somewhere else,'” she said. “At that time, I didn’t understand what he was saying or what he meant, but one month after our meeting, Andrew Warren was suspended, so I think it became clear what he meant at that point in time.”
Last month, DeSantis publicly accused Worrell of negligence, saying her office failed to prosecute Keith Moses for a misdemeanor drug charge more than a year before he was charged with killing three people, including a journalist and a 9-year-old girl, and injuring two others in multiple shootings in Pine Hills.
DeSantis’ general counsel Ryan Newman sent a letter to Worrell’s office days later, demanding records from Moses’ previous cases which, except for one, occurred before Worrell took office. He further requested records of every instance in which a person arrested for a felony or in violation of probation was not charged by her office.
Worrell complied with the request but called it an effort to “build a case” to eventually justify her suspension.
Worrell said DeSantis’ office has been working Mina and Osceola Sheriff Marcos López, interviewing local law enforcement as well as speaking to her former employees to find out if she has policies of non-prosecution — a key factor in Warren’s suspension.
She said her office does not have any such policies.
“We don’t have any policies about non-prosecution but that is a ugly whisper that has been created again, I think, for the purpose of giving the governor some action against me,” she said. “We look at every single case on a case-by-case basis.”
‘Unfortunate turn in our working relationship’
On June 14, a representative from the Sheriff’s Office emailed the State Attorney’s Office, asking for three or four dates that Worrell would be available to speak with Mina, according to an internal email obtained through a public records request.
The topics of conversation would include, the email said, “repeat offenders, deputy-involved shootings and the Brady list,” which is a log of law enforcement agents whose credibility has been damaged by, for example, a use of force violation.
Less than a month later, Mina and Worrell, as well as other members of their respective offices, met over Zoom.
Worrell told the Sentinel that a notification when she and other members of her staff joined the meeting said it was being recorded. In a statement, the Sheriff’s Office said it did not record the meeting. The agency also denied record requests for the recording, saying none existed.
Worrell later said she wrote the follow-up email because “the whole situation made me very uncomfortable and I felt I needed to make a record of what was being discussed.”
In her July 15 email, Worrell seemed most affected by Mina’s affirmation that he was actively tracking the way her office was prosecuting cases.
“At several points during our meeting, you made a point to inform me that you were keeping track of how my office is resolving cases and that you wanted me to hear it from you before I heard it elsewhere,” Worrell said, adding: “This conversation was an unfortunate turn in our working relationship.”
She then said she supports his tracking of her office.
“I am not above accountability. I encourage you to keep track. I also encourage you to ensure that in doing so, you are communicating accurate information,” she said. “Your disagreement with how cases are resolved is not an indictment on whether those cases are being handled appropriately.”
In a statement to the Sentinel, Mina said he began tracking her office because he wanted “to confirm if there was a pattern” of non-prosecution in gun cases.
“That tracking wasn’t necessary in the past, as former State Attorneys, with the exception of Ms. [Aramis] Ayala, routinely sent Law Enforcement executives those breakdowns annually – of how many cases were sent to the State Attorney’s Office and how many of them were dismissed, filed, pleaded down to lesser charges and prosecuted,” he said.
Worrell’s office, in response, said the reports mentioned by Mina were never requested by him or any local law enforcement agency since she’s been in office. Since all agencies are notified of the outcome of each case, compiling that information would be unnecessary, spokesperson Keisha Mulfort said.
“However, if this is something they desire, seeing what it is they have received previously would be a very helpful first step in a proper partnership,” she added.
Worrell in an interview Monday said she was concerned by the tone with which Mina said he was keeping track of her office.
“I’m not aware [if the tracking] has ever been done to any State Attorney before me, but I can tell you that the tone in which it was said to me was very threatening,” she said.
Brady dispute lingers
According to her email, sometime in the initial months after Worrell took office in January 2021, Mina and other local law enforcement officials met with her to talk about the “lack of transparency” that surrounded the Brady rule and its application by Ayala, her predecessor.
The Brady rule requires the prosecutor to provide evidence that’s favorable to the defendant as well as material relevant to the credibility of a witness, including law enforcement agents. Ayala, the state attorney from 2017 through 2020, created a Brady list of current and former Central Florida law enforcement employees whose credibility her office felt had come into question due to untruthfulness or misconduct.
Worrell wrote that her administration sought to quell the agency leaders’ unease by drafting a Brady policy Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between her agency and local police agencies to lay out its parameters, such as what would lead to officers’ inclusion on the list.
Mina’s legal adviser, Austin Moore, assisted in creating over a more than three-month process that included several meetings with representatives of all local law enforcement agencies, Worrell said.
Mina and his legal counsel both signed the MOU in July and August of 2021. Less than a year later, according to Worrell, Mina was considering backing out of the agreement.
“It is very disappointing to hear that at the conclusion of such a lengthy and collaborative process, as the largest agency in the circuit, you would consider opting out of our MOU,” Worrell wrote in her July email to Mina.
According to her account of the meeting, the sheriff told Worrell that her office was inconsistent with its use of the Brady policy and disagreed with the State Attorney that deputies who had excessive use of force violations on their record should be included on the Brady list.
“Understandably, no one wants to be on ‘a list’ that is perceived as negative,” said the state attorney. “It is important to understand though, that Brady is not a policy created by my administration. It is an obligation required of us by law.”
In an email, Mina said OCSO has not opted out of the MOU as it pertains to Brady.
“We are committed to building the best cases possible by providing solid, credible evidence — and that is why we always have, and will continue, to make timely Brady notifications to the State Attorney’s Office,” he said, adding: “We continue to have issues with the SAO’s use of the Brady list.”
‘We’re lucky he didn’t kill someone’
Worrell in the email said the sheriff accused her office of “allowing repeat offenders to remain in the community, endangering public safety,” which parallels the governor’s language in his recent criticisms of the state attorney.
Mina arrived at the meeting with several case examples, for which Worrell provided explanations in her follow-up email.
She said he, for example, brought up the case of Elias Garcia, who at 17 was arrested by the Ocoee Police Department on homicide and gun-related charges in connection with the robbery and killing of Christopher Bell.
On Oct. 1, 2020, Garcia was picked up by his friend who planned to buy firearms from Bell. Multiple witnesses told Ocoee police Garcia and Bell got into an argument that escalated until the teenager fatally shot Bell in the head, according to court records.
The homicide prosecutor who handled the case determined the state could not disprove that Garcia acted legally to defend himself, and the murder charge was dropped. Worrell said there was no legal basis for her to override the conclusion made by the prosecutor, who had more than 20 years of courtroom experience.
Garcia was eventually sentenced to only 32 days in the Orange County Jail and 12 months of community control as a youthful offender in connection with the gun charge.
According to Worrell’s email, Mina, whose office was not involved in the case, was displeased with Garcia’s punishment and noted he had since been arrested on a burglary charge.
“We were lucky he didn’t kill someone,” the sheriff said, according to the state attorney’s emailed account of the meeting.
Worrell rejected responsibility for Garcia’s actions after her office’s decision not to prosecute him.
“My responsibility is to uphold the law, and to hold individuals accountable for violations of the law that can be proven within the confines of the law, not to attempt to punish people for offenses that cannot be proven,” Worrell said in the email. “Seeking a prison sentence for Mr. Garcia on a first-time offense in response to the inability to prove a homicide case against him, would have been retaliatory, unethical, and unjust.”
Mina, in response to questions from the Sentinel, said Worrell’s office declining to prosecute repeat offenders is an “issue [that] persists.”
He said the State Attorney’s July email only included “some” of the topics they discussed in the meeting a week earlier. In particular, he said, the email did not mention their talk about the length of time it takes her office to review and clear deputies who use deadly force.
“The average length of time SA Worrell’s office to clear those cases is about a year,” he said. “Other surrounding circuits take about 4-6 weeks.”
Worrell confirmed they discussed that topic and acknowledged the reviews are taking too long according to the agency’s policy, adding that she and her staff “are working to address that.”
Moses case draws GOP furor
In the case of Moses, which spawned the outpouring of chides against Worrell’s office by GOP elected officials including the governor and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, the State Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute him for a misdemeanor drug charge in the fall of 2021.
Worrell has said that the choice was out of her control because the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — as a consequence of legislation passed under DeSantis — does not test for whether suspected cannabis is illegal marijuana or legal hemp unless it’s over 20 grams.
Moses was arrested for having under five grams, and since it was his first offense as an adult, Worrell’s office dropped the charge. The maximum sentence would have been one year in jail.
The state attorney has said, however, if any agency should be receiving inquiries from the governor’s office in connection with the deadly shootings, it should be the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
A gun found at the November 2021 scene was not tested for DNA by an OCSO deputy, who indicated that it would be, according to court records. If it had been tied to Moses, he could have received a felony charge, Worrell has said.
All of Moses’ other arrests preceded Worrell’s election and occurred while he was a minor. In Florida, minors do not receive convictions unless they are tried as adults.
Unlike DeSantis and Scott, Mina has refrained from publicly criticizing Worrell’s handling of Moses’ past cases.
However, he has evidently followed through with keeping tabs on her office’s work on other cases. In November, the sheriff joined several members of his agency in attending a hearing to object to a plea deal Worrell’s office struck with a man accused of shooting his brother and attempting to shoot at deputies, according to a report by WFTV-Channel 9.
In her email to Mina last July, Worrell said she would not be pressured into changing her approach to pursuing justice.
“To subjugate the discretion of prosecutors to the will of law enforcement agencies on how cases are best resolved is not only erroneous, but also contrary to how the legal system is designed to operate,” she wrote. “The safety of this community and equitable justice are my top priorities. Both are equally important, and I am unwilling to sacrifice one for the sake of the other.”
ccann@orlandosentinel.com
