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O<\/span>n August 4, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) suspended<\/span><\/a> Andrew Warren, the elected top prosecutor for Hillsborough County (Tampa). State Attorney Warren had pledged not to prosecute people who seek or provide abortions, despite Florida\u2019s new <\/span>15-week abortion ban<\/span><\/a>. He pledged the same on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, which DeSantis is also <\/span>seeking to ban<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTo take a position that you have veto powers over the laws of the state is untenable,\u201d <\/span>DeSantis said<\/span>, accusing Warren of \u201cneglect of duty.\u201d Warren replied that the governor was \u201ctrying to overthrow democracy here in Hillsborough County.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Warren,<\/span> a Democrat, was never a radical. When he <\/span>ran against<\/span><\/a> Mark Ober to become state attorney in 2016, he took issue with some of Ober\u2019s policies. Ober, a Republican, has a typical Southern conservative take on the death penalty, for example: Seek it as often as possible, constrained only<\/span> by finances and chances of winning cases.<\/span><\/p>\n Warren thought that was excessive. But he never promised categorically<\/span> not<\/span><\/i> to seek the death penalty. Unlike Aramis Ayala, his contemporary state attorney in Orlando, he simply <\/span>sought it more rarely<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n When Ayala said <\/span>no more death penalty ever<\/span><\/a>, at least not while she was state attorney, it was seen as a call to war by Florida Republicans. Her capital murder cases were <\/span>stripped<\/span><\/a>. There was even talk she would be straight-up fired, under an archaic provision in the state (but not federal) constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n This demonstrates the unique place abortion holds in right-wing politics.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But she wasn\u2019t, while Warren <\/span>has<\/span><\/i> been removed for announcing his policies after the recent repeal of <\/span>Roe v. Wade<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n This demonstrates the unique place abortion holds in right-wing politics. State Attorney Ayala\u2019s anti-death penalty announcement caused a tremendous storm, but a lot of it was bluster. She was permitted to finish out her term, despite fury from <\/span>many family members of murder victims<\/span><\/a> in her jurisdiction. She <\/span>decided<\/span><\/a> to not run again, seemingly because of the behavior of Republican leadership, but she was not <\/span>forced<\/span><\/i> to stay out.<\/span><\/p>\n Punishing people for ending a pregnancy <\/span>any time after 15 weeks<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is apparently more important to Republican leaders than the flawed notion of \u201cgetting justice\u201d for murder victims and their families through executions. That\u2019s despite most Americans <\/span>disapproving<\/span><\/a> of the <\/span>Roe <\/span><\/i>repeal, including over half of \u201cmoderate\u201d Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n DeSantis, of course, is currently <\/span>weighing<\/span><\/a> a 2024 presidential bid, and has obvious motives to make headline-grabbing appeals to the Republican base.<\/span><\/p>\n This also illuminates<\/span> the fault lines between pro-decarceration Republicans (they exist!) and other criminal justice reformers. When Derek Cohen led the prominent right-leaning criminal justice reform nonprofit Right on Crime, he described why<\/span> he and his ilk would not get involved in prosecutor elections.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cElecting a reform-minded prosecutor is good,\u201d he <\/span>said<\/span><\/a>. \u201cBut what is at risk of happening is getting a system where you have culture wars play out in the realm of prosecutorial discretion itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Compare that with what Governor Rick DeSantis <\/span>said<\/span><\/a>, in justification of his decision to fire Warren: \u201cOur government is a government of laws, not a government of men.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n These statements can be reconciled with each other. They both reflect an idea that the locally elected prosecutor\u2019s role is not to<\/span> use their discretion to maximize public safety, but to act as an unthinking tool of the legislative branch.<\/span><\/p>\n DeSantis, who ran for governor<\/span> as an <\/span>opponent<\/span><\/a> of any meaningful decarceration efforts, is harsher, however\u2014contextualizing the Warren decision as a \u201crule of law\u201d issue, with Warren himself failing in his duty. In their need to cooperate with leading Republicans, the likes of Cohen have to greenlight injustices that they nominally oppose.<\/span><\/p>\n Wanting to replicate DeSantis\u2019s \u201csuccess,\u201d Republican leaders in other states<\/span>\u00a0are now likely to create new statutes to allow easier removal of Democratic DAs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Ominously, DeSantis\u2019s exhibition in Republican power politics could spell the beginning of the end of many years of work to make the corps of elected Southern prosecutors slightly less barbaric.<\/span><\/p>\n Democratic DAs in conservative states are constantly performing a balancing act between their own convictions, local voters and their Republican overlords in state government. Warren had been doing that for years.<\/span><\/p>\n But Warren is an elected official and a Democrat, and registered Democrats basically require pro-choice promises from any Democratic candidate for office. In the US House of Representatives, for example, there is <\/span>one anti-abortion Democrat<\/span><\/a>. Here, behaving as almost any Democrat would is apparently a fireable offense.<\/span><\/p>\n In Florida, this happens thanks to a <\/span>state constitutional quirk<\/span><\/a> that allows the governor to remove locally elected law enforcement officials deemed to be neglecting their duties. But Republican leaders in other states they control have been <\/span>looking for a way to axe<\/span><\/a> all the pesky \u201cprogressive prosecutors.\u201d Wanting to replicate DeSantis\u2019s \u201csuccess\u201d in weaponizing abortion, they<\/span> are now likely to create new statutes to allow easier removal of Democratic DAs.<\/span><\/p>\n Before the <\/span>Dobbs <\/span><\/i>decision brought abortion criminalization back to the States, Southern progressive DAs had some real power to reduce incarceration in their local jurisdictions. Now, there is a real risk that their work will be reduced to \u201c<\/span>transforming courts into sites of symbolic resistance, and using law as a form of memory work<\/span><\/a>.\u201d That does little to minimize harm to real people in the short term.<\/span> The victims of DeSantis\u2019s decision will include people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care in Hillsborough County\u2014and also many others.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Photograph of DeSantis by Gage Skidmore via Flickr<\/a>\/Creative Commons 2.0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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