Being against the death penalty is a stand that normally won’t draw overwhelming criticism these days. The system is manifestly fallible, circumstances matter mightily and there’s even a terse commandment that forbids killing without any contextual loophole.
But when you’re a U.S. State Attorney and you make the pronouncement that you will not seek the death penalty in ANY first-degree murder case, you are courting critics across the board. That’s what has happened to Aramis Ayala, the recently-elected Democratic Orange-Osceola state attorney.
Ayala, the first African-American state attorney elected in Florida history, said flat-out that she would not make an exception in the case of an accused cop-killer. Her blanket stand against the death penalty prompted Gov. Rick Scott to remove her from the case and assign it to another state attorney.
The elected legal establishment, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Prosecuting Attorneys Association, initially piled on in rebuke. But a number of prominent lawyers, including former Florida Supreme Court justices, have challenged Scott’s move as a dangerous precedent. And Ayala herself is legally contesting it.
The rebukes would be grossly unfair if they merely criticized her discretion in this case. A cop-killing suspect guarantees maximum profile and emotion–and even political partisanship. But this is not solely about discretion and judgment in a given case. This is about misleading voters.
When Ayala ran for office last fall, she did not run on an anti-death penalty platform. This uproar is not just about her call in a specific case; this is about her unequivocal position on the issue. She should have made that clear to the voters, especially those who weren’t aware that she accepted $1 million in campaign donations from liberal activist and billionaire George Soros, who opposes the death penalty.
Ayala is not wrong for her position that pursuing death sentences is “not in the best interests of this community or in the best interest of justice.” In fact, I would have voted for her. She is wrong for not making this position public when she ran for office.