Worrell’s office drops more felony charges against minors than any other in Florida, report says

Prosecutors handling cases in Orange and Osceola counties drop more violent felony and gun charges against minors than their counterparts in other circuits in the state, according to a report released this week by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

The Office of the State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit — led by Monique Worrell, who’s faced criticism from other public officials for her office’s handling of cases involving repeat offenders and juveniles — dropped 42% of felony charges against minors between November 2021 and October 2022, the report says.

Statewide, an average of 22% of felony cases were dropped during the same time period. Prosecutors in other large metropolitan areas — Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville — dropped 33%, 29% and 16% of felony charges against juveniles, respectively.

Worrell’s office also leads in the dropping of cases involving violent felonies and gun charges, at 41% and 29%, well above the state average in both categories, the report found.

“Non-prosecution of serious offenses fails to deter future offending, and importantly, it also deprives youth of the opportunity to receive the research-supported delinquency interventions that have been successful in helping drive down Florida’s juvenile offending rate,” the report said.

Jason Gunn, a spokesperson for Worrell, in a statement Wednesday said, “The State Attorney is committed to public safety, advocating for victims and protecting our community. There’s no policy in our office regarding to [not] file or drop cases other than to follow the law.”

Gunn added: “As far as this report is concerned on juvenile cases, we are unsure how the raw data was compiled. No one from the Department of Juvenile Justice has reached out to us to corroborate these numbers, nor have they provided a copy prior to its release to verify.”

WFTV-Channel 9 reported that the data was sourced from the Juvenile Justice Information System, one of the largest state-operated juvenile justice databases in the United States, according to the agency.

The report could fuel further criticism of Worrell and her office, which has been under intense scrutiny for its decisions from Florida GOP officials, including U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis, as well as the heads of the largest law enforcement agencies in the Ninth Circuit.

She’s remained adamant that her prosecutors will not go forward with any cases they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt. She’s also gone on the offensive, calling out what her staff determined to be flawed cases presented by local police agencies that they decided against pursuing.

Accusations that Worrell’s office does not properly prosecute cases came to a head in February, when three people were killed and two were injured in a shooting spree in Pine Hills.

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The suspect in the case, Keith Moses, had been in and out of juvenile detention facilities for years leading up to the shootings, though all but one of his arrests predated Worrell’s time as State Attorney. The one that didn’t was a misdemeanor marijuana arrest in which the Orange County Sheriff’s Office failed to test for DNA on a gun that deputies suspected Moses had discarded.

The Moses case was cited by DeSantis in launching an official inquiry into her office and demanding records of cases involving repeat offenders.

Worrell in recent months has repeatedly defended the decisions of her prosecutors against criticisms from local law enforcement officials, including Orange County Sheriff John Mina and Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez. The state attorney has further said both Mina and Lopez are working with the governor’s office to justify her suspension.

Both sheriffs have denied this, though Mina — according to testimony in a civil trial over DeSantis’ suspension of Tampa-based State Attorney Andrew Warren — expressed complaints about Worrell to Larry Keefe, the governor’s public safety czar.

In April, Carl Metzger, the president of the Orange-Osceola Police Chiefs Association, sent a letter to the State Attorney’s Office with pages of questions and requests about cases taken up by the office from the start of Worrell’s tenure to the end of last year.

“…some of our members have individual concerns about case dispositions derived from your office,” wrote Metzger, the chief of the University of Central Florida Police Department. “While we intend to address those concerns with you, we would like to have all the information in front of us to make our discussion more meaningful.”

The same month, Worrell held a two-day training with local law enforcement to mend relations and work out how her office and the agencies can collaborate to bring forward more cases that can hold up in court.

But last week, Worrell had another back-and-forth with Orlando Police Department Chief Eric Smith after she said his officers were not helpful in locating the victim of a carjacking. Because the victim could not be found, Worrell said, prosecutors could not formally charge the suspect, who, after his release in the carjacking case, was arrested in an attempted rape case a week later.

Smith said the arresting officer provided the most up-to-date information available about the victim, who was homeless, and that Worrell’s office did not ask the officer for help to find the carjacking victim.

Worrell, a progressive who ran as a reformer, has been outspoken about her displeasure with the state’s juvenile justice system since she took office in January 2021.

She has proposed changes to the Florida Legislature like allowing juvenile courts to retain jurisdiction over defendants until they’re 21 and allowing the department to keep in custody minors who commit serious offenses for longer periods of time. Such reforms, Worrell says, would give the department more options to hold minors accountable and achieve rehabilitation.

“Currently, the juvenile justice system woefully fails to address serious offenses committed by youthful offenders,” said a legislative action request by Worrell sent to media outlets in early March. “The State Attorney is currently only able to resolve violent juvenile cases by charging them as adults, or relinquishing jurisdiction to the Department of Juvenile Justice, which typically requires a short-term treatment program that does not provide long-term solutions.”

Worrell’s request continued: “No current State programs remove juveniles from problematic environments long enough for the juvenile to experience changed behavior or attitudes. The State Attorney would like more options for addressing juveniles who commit serious offenses that would both rehabilitate the juvenile and protect the public.”

So far, none of her requests have resulted in changes to the laws governing the state’s juvenile justice system.

ccann@orlandosentinel.com