Florida’s killingest prosecutor

janklow
janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
a little Balko for today; i always forget that this is the same D.A. that oversaw the Alexander case...

Florida’s killingest prosecutor
Angela Corey is probably best known as the prosecutor who tried George Zimmerman, Michael Dunn and Marissa Alexander.

But here’s something you may not know: Corey has sent more people to death row than any prosecutor in Florida. And it isn’t even close.

Since taking office in 2009, Corey has had the chance to speak to a lot of people trying to get their loved ones’ killers sentenced to death. She has put more people on Death Row than any other prosecutor in Florida.

Corey’s office has sent 21 people to Death Row, and 18 of them are still there with the other three getting off Death Row on appeal. No other current prosecutor in the state has put more than seven people on Death Row since the start of 2009. . . .

The Public Defender’s Office said it has defended 82 cases that started out as first-degree murders since Corey took office. According to their statistics, Corey’s office filed a notice to seek the death penalty in 42 of those cases.

Chief Assistant Public Defender Refik Eler said Florida’s laws that allow a prosecutor to seek death are very broad, and that allows an aggressive prosecutor to pursue death cases in almost any first-degree murder.

“We have a very aggressive prosecutor; I have no problem saying that,” Eler said. “But the Legislature has also made it easy for her to seek death.”

Apparently, Corey’s office will seek murder charges in another 12 cases in the pipeline.

If you support capital punishment, perhaps this isn’t all that alarming. But there seems to be a strong correlation between jurisdictions that send a lot of people to death row and jurisdictions where we later discover a lot of prosecutor misconduct and troubling flaws in the criminal justice system. Here’s a passage I wrote last year about Duval County, one of the counties in Corey’s jurisdiction:

Corey’s indictment of Zimmerman was widely criticized by defense attorneys and legal scholars. One prominent critic was Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. According to Dershowitz, Corey responded to his criticism by threatening to sue him, to sue Harvard University, and attempting to have Dershowitz disbarred. (She has threatened to sue other public critics as well.) She has also been accused of withholding exculpatory evidence in the case, then firing the IT worker in her office who exposed that evidence.

But Corey has a controversial history beyond the Zimmerman-Martin case. She’s the prosecutor who won a 20-year prison sentence for Marissa Alexander. The 31-year-old Alexander was convicted of aggravated assault with a [deadly] weapon after she fired a warning shot from a gun at her abusive husband. A state appeals court granted Alexander a new trial in September. Corey won a similar conviction against Ronald Thompson, a 65-year-old man accused of firing warning shots into the ground as some teenagers attempted to force their way into a home belonging to his friend. She has also received criticism for charging a 12-year-old with murder for beating his 2-year-old brother to death, then attempting to try him as an adult.

Duval County was where 15-year-old Brenton Butler was wrongly charged, tried, and ultimately acquitted in the beating deaths of two tourists. His story is the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary “Murder on a Sunday Morning.” In 2007, Chad Heins was finally cleared of the 1994 murder of his sister-in-law after serving 13 years in prison. Billy Joe Holton may well also be innocent of the 1986 murder for which he was convicted. Last year a judge re-sentenced him to time served plus probation, allowing him to go free. His attorneys are still working to exonerate him completely, over objections from Corey’s office.

Florida also has an odd tradition of electing its public defenders. The current head public defender for the district that includes Duval County is Matt Shirk, a guy who ran on a platform of cutting funding to the office [and] billing indigent defendants who are acquitted for legal services, and was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police (an odd endorsement for a public defender). One of Shirk’s first acts was to fire a large portion of the office staff, including the attorneys who had worked to expose the innocence of Brenton Butler.

Corey also isn’t much of a fan of the First Amendment.

Corey’s misdeeds in the Zimmerman trial were mostly buried under all the racial and political fallout from that case. There were even criticisms that she wasn’t aggressive enough. That’s unfortunate, because there’s compelling evidence that her conduct in that case is consistent with her conduct in the day-to-day cases that don’t attract attention from the gun debate, the race debate or the national media. And the people on the receiving end of that conduct are more likely to look like Trayvon Martin or Jordan Davis than Michael Dunn.
more and better links in the actual article.

Comments

  • jono
    jono Members Posts: 30,280 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Is her position elected? Because these seem like things an elected official would do.

    When prosecutors are elected then they always feel the need to be "tough on crime" and go overboard whenever possible. More formal politicians do the same thing, it wreaks havoc in the criminal justice system.
  • jono
    jono Members Posts: 30,280 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Corey said the media shouldn't be allowed to report on high-profile cases because they often end up reporting things that are never heard by a jury.

    This is a good point though. The media does have more information than a jury has and the media can report information that is inadmissable in court.

    Of course this doesn't mean she shouldn't read newspapers....that's just stupid, but this is a good point.

  • LUClEN
    LUClEN Members Posts: 20,559 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I bet she's popular
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I'm no fan of Corey but I've always been a big fan of the death penalty, no controversy here. Anyone who kills someone close to me better pray I don't get him or her first
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    yeah, i'm pretty sure she's elected.
    jono wrote: »
    This is a good point though. The media does have more information than a jury has and the media can report information that is inadmissable in court.
    on the other hand, this is a woman who lets herself be swayed by the media (see also: Zimmerman case), so i'm not convinced she gets that much sympathy from me.

  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    janklow wrote: »
    yeah, i'm pretty sure she's elected.
    jono wrote: »
    This is a good point though. The media does have more information than a jury has and the media can report information that is inadmissable in court.
    on the other hand, this is a woman who lets herself be swayed by the media (see also: Zimmerman case), so i'm not convinced she gets that much sympathy from me.

    What do you mean swayed by the media? She seemed more swayed by the public outrage Zimmerman wasn't charged yet
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    What do you mean swayed by the media? She seemed more swayed by the public outrage Zimmerman wasn't charged yet
    yeah, there was public outrage, but you had this drumbeat of media reporting on how outrageous it was he hadn't been charged and so on. but you could call it both, i suppose.

  • onthafly
    onthafly Members Posts: 1,143 ✭✭✭✭
    This is why I don't buy a gun. I could use that ? to legally defend myself and they'll still throw my black ass in jail. I live in florida too where those stand your ground laws only server to allow white people to ? us and gives us a false sense of security that we're actually allowed to defend ourselves. I'm just not takin my black ass outside.
  • WYRM
    WYRM Members Posts: 993 ✭✭✭✭
    Just wiki'd and researched dat ? , she born, raised and lives in Jacksonville/Duval. I got to move up to Alexandria Va A.S.A.P., or Norfolk. <<<SCUST!!! for dis ? .>>>. I am ashamed to live here anymore.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2014
    housemouse wrote: »
    This is why I don't buy a gun. I could use that ? to legally defend myself and they'll still throw my black ass in jail. I live in florida too where those stand your ground laws only server to allow white people to ? us and gives us a false sense of security that we're actually allowed to defend ourselves. I'm just not takin my black ass outside.

    I hear you but considering you are a Black man in Florida, if anything, you may wana buy a gun as soon as possible considering the freaks that are everywhere there. Don't let White people scared you into going out, you pay taxes and contribute to society. They ain't native to this land so they can't make you feel like you don't belong. Just make sure that if you do get one it's licensed
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    housemouse wrote: »
    This is why I don't buy a gun. I could use that ? to legally defend myself and they'll still throw my black ass in jail. I live in florida too where those stand your ground laws only server to allow white people to ? us and gives us a false sense of security that we're actually allowed to defend ourselves. I'm just not takin my black ass outside.
    stand your ground laws or not, if the D.A. wants to charge you, they're going to charge. nothing is ever as simple as "Stand Your Ground laws let X or Y get away with crimes"

    i mean, hell, by definition, SYG doesn't allow to do whatever the ? you want and claim self-defense. so we're really talking about cases where it doesn't apply but people keep attaching it anyway, or where the government's on some ? in how they apply the law. see also: Angela Corey

  • onthafly
    onthafly Members Posts: 1,143 ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2014
    housemouse wrote: »
    This is why I don't buy a gun. I could use that ? to legally defend myself and they'll still throw my black ass in jail. I live in florida too where those stand your ground laws only server to allow white people to ? us and gives us a false sense of security that we're actually allowed to defend ourselves. I'm just not takin my black ass outside.

    I hear you but considering you are a Black man in Florida, if anything, you may wana buy a gun as soon as possible considering the freaks that are everywhere there. Don't let White people scared you into going out, you pay taxes and contribute to society. They ain't native to this land so they can't make you feel like you don't belong. Just make sure that if you do get one it's licensed

    Consider me scared. I got a wife and kid to take care of and I'm not tryna go to jail so I'm keepin my black ass in the house. They've locked black men up for legally defendin themselves against a crazy ass white person plenty of times.

    http://newsone.com/2212460/john-mcneil-freed/

    Check out that story about John Mcneil. He shot a man on his own property in self defense because the man was charging at him like a maniac. He also threatened to cut McNeil's son with a box cutter earlier which was why he got his gun in the first place. The police saw it as self defense initially because that's what it obviously was but for some reason the DA decided to pursue it as a homicide months after the fact and put him in prison. He recently got released after 6 years behind bars but he shouldn't have had to spend any time behind bars. He also only managed to get out after his wife died of cancer.

    The system doesn't work for us. We're supposed to have rights and ? but at the end of the day, if you're a black man in the south, these white people will put you in your place real quick. Maybe I'll get rich enough to leave the country or some ? one day but I'm not gonna let these white people take years away from me and my family.




    janklow wrote: »
    housemouse wrote: »
    This is why I don't buy a gun. I could use that ? to legally defend myself and they'll still throw my black ass in jail. I live in florida too where those stand your ground laws only server to allow white people to ? us and gives us a false sense of security that we're actually allowed to defend ourselves. I'm just not takin my black ass outside.
    stand your ground laws or not, if the D.A. wants to charge you, they're going to charge. nothing is ever as simple as "Stand Your Ground laws let X or Y get away with crimes"

    i mean, hell, by definition, SYG doesn't allow to do whatever the ? you want and claim self-defense. so we're really talking about cases where it doesn't apply but people keep attaching it anyway, or where the government's on some ? in how they apply the law. see also: Angela Corey

    Technically it doesn't allow you to do whatever the ? you want but I swear that's what some of these white people in the south think or something. Michael Dunn shot Jordan Davis over loud music and that old guy out in Wesley Chapel FL shot another white guy in a movie theater after he threw a bag of popcorn at him. People are goin crazy with these lax gun laws and some of them are gettin away with it. Tryna defend yourself against a white person these days is as dangerous as tryna defend yourself against the cops.

    And don't even get me started on the whole Trayvon Martin case. If you don't live to tell the other side of the story then you'll have conservative media tryna justify your death by portraying you as a thug. I'm only 23 years old so I could very easily be the next Trayvon Martin if I get gunned down by a white gun owner. All the white people that I know continually ? me off about that ? too. If they aren't buyin into the whole Trayvon Martin was a thug propaganda then they're tryna down play it by sayin that plenty of black people ? each-other every day.
  • janklow
    janklow Members, Moderators Posts: 8,613 Regulator
    housemouse wrote: »
    Michael Dunn shot Jordan Davis over loud music and that old guy out in Wesley Chapel FL shot another white guy in a movie theater after he threw a bag of popcorn at him.
    01. did these guys claim Stand Your Ground in their defense?
    02. does SYG legitimately apply to them?
    03. are we aware that Dunn was CONVICTED of the charges against him? hell, he probably would have been convicted of more if they hadn't gone for first degree murder. so what did all these lax laws do for him?
    housemouse wrote: »
    If they aren't buyin into the whole Trayvon Martin was a thug propaganda then they're tryna down play it by sayin that plenty of black people ? each-other every day.
    which is why the case should have been decided based on the merits and NOT on every pro- and anti-Trayvon person's random opinions on the case. not sure SYG was claimed here either.

  • onthafly
    onthafly Members Posts: 1,143 ✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2014
    01. I haven't really kept up with the Michael Dunn Trial but I believe he just claimed that his life was in danger because of the music that he heard playing. I don't think the guy in Wesely Chapel has been put on trial yet.

    02. Honestly who knows. It's a relatively new law that says you have to reasonably believe that you're in danger of ? harm. It's up to the jury to decide if any one of these people's beliefs are reasonable but they're all gonna claim that they were in fear for their life which is going to escalate anybodies stand your ground defense to a regular self defense claim. I believe that's why the stand your ground defense wasn't actually used in a lot of these more popular cases because the story changes once the perpetrator has time to talk to his lawyer and build his story up.

    03. He was convicted on three counts of attempted murder and firing a gun into a vehicle but wasn't convicted of the actual murder of Jordan Davis so justice wasn't served there.

    The biggest issue with the stand your ground laws is that you don't have a duty to retreat. Deadly force is no longer a last resort and nothing in the law says that stand your ground can't apply to someone who started an altercation. It allows people to get trigger happy and not think about the consequences before shooting somebody.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2014
    House I hear you, I know things are different down south compared to where I'm at in NYC (although NYC is not really paradise either). Can't judge what you do, I completely feel you....I'm single without kids so I have less to lose. Being down south where crazy rednecks are, I would just feel better off with a gun then without one. But again I feel u
  • onthafly
    onthafly Members Posts: 1,143 ✭✭✭✭
    Yeah I know ya'll go those stop n frisk laws up there. For the most part it's not like every white person I meet is hostile towards me. A lot of the time, people find other non violent ways to carry out racist agendas and throwing you in jail is one of them. I just tend to stay away from real country areas out in the middle of nowhere. The areas that look like they've hung people from trees before.