ORLANDO, Fla. — Fifth Circuit State Attorney Bill Gladson sounded exasperated as he talked about being “dragged” into Orlando politics.
“Every second I spend dealing with the Ninth Circuit’s issues takes away from the work that I’m trying to do for the victims in my circuit,” he said from a conference room in Tallahassee.
Gladson was talking about the back-and-forth between Orlando’s top prosecutor, Monique Worrell, the Florida Attorney General, James Uthmeier, and the Orange County Sheriff, John Mina, that has roiled the legal world since last Thursday.
It began when Worrell announced a change in her office’s policy: her prosecutors would no longer take on so-called “nonarrest” cases, or cases where an arrest hasn’t yet been made.
Some exceptions would apply to the worst crimes, but otherwise, she told police officers and deputies to develop probable cause first. She cited a backlog of 13,000 cases, which she said could take years to work through.
“It delays justice for our victims. It delays justice for the community,” she explained.
The announcement put Worrell back under the microscope. The liberal prosecutor is a lightning rod for Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies. DeSantis has already suspended her from office once for claims many believed were political. There are questions about whether this would spur him to do so again.
In response, Worrell’s team said they worked with Gladson’s team to develop the policy. Gladson’s office has had a nonarrest case policy since the days of the pandemic, although the Republican said there were many differences between the two.
“I think the most obvious difference between the two policies is our policy says that we will review any case that law enforcement wants us to review, and it encourages them to call our division chief in each county if they have if they have a question,” he explained.
That, he said, is the opposite of Worrell’s policy, which lists in detail the types of cases her team will and won’t accept.
The other big change was the list itself: Gladson takes violent crimes like gun crimes. Without an arrest, Worrell’s team won’t.
Gladson didn’t directly criticize his counterpart, but said he didn’t believe the policy put in place in Orlando was best for keeping people safe. He declined to a question about how he would handle the case backlog instead.
He also declined to answer a question about his ongoing investigation into Worrell’s first term, which resulted in a grand jury being convened. The target of the investigation and the specific nature of the accusations are still secret.
Worrell’s staff said she was not available to follow up Wednesday, though she has spent most of the week batting away attacks from Tallahassee and others. Her staff said they were working on opportunities for her to respond, to be scheduled for the following week.
She has asked the Attorney General for more funding so she can hire 13 additional prosecutors to keep up with the circuit’s growth.
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