Florida Black Caucus, Victim’s Parents Urge Governor to Rescind Order Removing Prosecutor For Not Seeking Death Penalty

The Florida Legislative Black Caucus has joined more than 100 lawyers and legal experts and the par­ents of mur­der vic­tim Sade Dixon in urg­ing Governor Rick Scott to rescind his order remov­ing Orange-Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pic­tured) from a high-pro­file dou­ble mur­der case in which she decid­ed to not seek the death penal­ty. The oth­er vic­tim in the case, Lt. Debra Clayton, was an Orlando police offi­cer. Governor Scott did not speak with Dixon’s fam­i­ly before issu­ing an order remov­ing Ayala and appoint­ing a Special Prosecutor to the case. 

At a press con­fer­ence on March 23, Sen. Perry Thurston (D‑Lauderhill), chair­man of the leg­isla­tive black cau­cus, said ​“Gov. Scott’s hasty response to State Attorney Ayala’s announce­ment set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent and is a slap in the face of the vot­ers who car­ried her into office.” He called the order ​“lit­tle more than an unfet­tered and unin­formed pow­er grab by the gov­er­nor’s office over a dif­fer­ence of opinion.” 

Rep. Sean Shaw (D‑Tampa) high­light­ed the racial his­to­ry impli­ca­tions of the Governor’s action, say­ing, ​“Clearly all the data and all the stud­ies show that the death penal­ty is applied with racial bias, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Florida. This is still the case and has always been the case, and by stand­ing against the death penal­ty, State Attorney Ayala is stand­ing with com­mu­ni­ties of color.” 

Ayala, Florida’s first African-American elect­ed state attor­ney, was removed by a white gov­er­nor and replaced with a white pros­e­cu­tor. The defen­dant, Markeith Loyd, is black. Both par­ents of Sade Dixon, Loyd’s ex-girl­friend who was preg­nant at the time of the mur­der, sup­port­ed State Attorney Ayala’s deci­sion not to sub­ject them to the ordeal of extend­ed death penal­ty pro­ceed­ings, and oppose Gov. Scott’s deci­sion to remove her from the case. ​“Life, no chance of parole, we get clo­sure,” said Ron Daniels, Dixon’s father, ​“but now if you give him the death penal­ty, he comes back. Every time he appeals this fam­i­ly or any fam­i­ly has to relive that case all over again.” 

Ayala also received sup­port from a group of 100 law pro­fes­sors, judges, and attor­neys, who said in a let­ter to Gov. Scott, ​“We believe that this effort to remove State Attorney Ayala infringes on the vital­ly impor­tant inde­pen­dence of pros­e­cu­tors, exceeds your author­i­ty, under­mines the right of res­i­dents in Orange and Osceola coun­ties to the ser­vices of their elect­ed lead­ers, and sets a dangerous precedent.” 

Following her deci­sion not to seek the death penal­ty, a white employ­ee of the Seminole County clerk of courts wrote on Facebook that Ayala ​“should be tarred and feath­ered if not hung from a tree.” Rep. Shaw respond­ed: ​“It’s 2017 and the new­ly elect­ed state attor­ney was threat­ened with a lynch­ing. That’s why we’re here today. The death penal­ty is a link to the sor­did past of Florida where lynch­ing was used to ter­ror­ize our com­mu­ni­ty.” The courts’ employ­ee subsequently resigned.

There is lit­tle prece­dent for Gov. Scott’s action. A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion arose in New York in 1996, when Governor George Pataki removed Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson after Johnson said he would not seek the death penal­ty in the killing of a Bronx police offi­cer. As in this case, Johnson was the state’s only African-American District Attorney at the time and had indi­cat­ed his oppo­si­tion to using the death penal­ty, the defen­dant was a per­son of col­or (Latino), and a white Governor appoint­ed a white pros­e­cu­tor to take over the case.