Florida Prosecutor, Public Defender Tied to Outlier Death Penalty Practices Suffer Landslide Election Loss

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion described as reshap­ing the polit­i­cal land­scape of Northeast Florida, the region vot­ed in a land­slide Tuesday to oust State Attorney Angela Corey (pic­tured) and Public Defender Matt Shirk. The pair’s con­tro­ver­sial poli­cies had made Duval County one of the most pro­lif­ic death sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the coun­try and had led to nation­al deri­sion of its crim­i­nal justice system. 

Some legal experts tout­ed Corey’s defeat by polit­i­cal new­com­er Melissa Nelson as evi­dence of vot­er back­lash against over­ag­gres­sive pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al poli­cies. Northeastern Law School pro­fes­sor Daniel Medwed said the elec­tion showed that ​“the era of tough-on-crime rhetoric is com­ing to a close” and Fordham University law pro­fes­sor John Pfaff said Corey’s defeat ​“con­tin­ues a small — but impor­tant — trend of pow­er­ful, incum­bent pros­e­cu­tors los­ing pri­ma­ry elec­tions for being too aggressive.” 

Local legal experts drew a link between the elec­tion results and Corey’s hard-line death penal­ty prac­tices. University of Florida law school pro­fes­sor Kenneth Nunn, said that “[f]or too long, Duval County has been an out­lier in its exces­sive use of the death penal­ty, its harsh pun­ish­ment of juve­niles, and its reliance on out­dat­ed sentencing practices.” 

Florida International University Law School Professor Stephen Harper found it ​“refresh­ing to see a pros­e­cu­tor who is so over­ly aggres­sive defeat­ed in a con­ser­v­a­tive south­ern juris­dic­tion. This goes to show, among oth­er things, that the death penal­ty is on its way out.” 

In the Public Defender elec­tion, incum­bent Matthew Shirk had drawn crit­i­cism by fir­ing the most expe­ri­enced death penal­ty and juve­nile court lawyers and installing as his chief of homi­cide a lawyer who had 16 clients on death row and whom courts had found to have pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion in sev­er­al death penal­ty cas­es. Shirk was defeat­ed by retired Judge Charlie Cofer, who had spent 18 years in the Public Defender’s Office and then 17 years as a county judge. 

Last fall, vot­ers in Caddo Parish (Shreveport), Louisiana vot­ed out a pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al regime known nation­al­ly for its aggres­sive pur­suit of the death penal­ty and elect­ed its first black District Attorney.