Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suspended the top state prosecutor in Orlando on Wednesday, accusing her of incompetence and neglect of duty for what he characterized as lenience against violent criminals.
Mr. DeSantis suspended Monique H. Worrell, the elected state attorney of Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, which includes Orange and Osceola counties, and cited her handling of three cases. One involved a man who shot and injured two Orlando police officers over the weekend.
It is the second time in a year that Mr. DeSantis, a Republican running for president, has taken the drastic and exceedingly rare step of removing an elected state attorney. Both have been Democrats.
Mr. DeSantis was heavily criticized in August 2022 when he removed Andrew H. Warren, the top prosecutor in Tampa, who had signed a statement along with 90 other elected prosecutors across the country vowing not to prosecute people who seek or provide abortions. Critics, and even a federal judge, blasted Mr. DeSantis’s ouster of Mr. Warren as politically motivated. But Mr. Warren remains out of office — and Mr. DeSantis mentions his removal in just about every campaign stump speech.
On Wednesday in Tallahassee, Mr. DeSantis said that Ms. Worrell’s office had avoided seeking mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug trafficking crimes; allowed juveniles to avoid serious charges or incarceration; avoided seeking more serious sentences when they were available; limited charges for child pornography; and inappropriately allowed some offenders to avoid having a criminal conviction on their records.
“Prosecutors do have a certain amount of discretion about which cases to bring and which not,” he said. “But what this state attorney has done is abuse that discretion and has effectively nullified certain laws in the state of Florida.”
Ms. Worrell, who was elected in 2020, was known to be in Mr. DeSantis’s sights. He criticized her office earlier this year, and his general counsel sent her a letter seeking documents about previous arrests. Mr. DeSantis is a former federal and military prosecutor.
In March, anticipating that she might be suspended, Ms. Worrell released data showing that her prosecution rate was similar to that of her predecessors. In an interview at the time, she warned of the dangers of a governor pushing the boundaries of his executive power to remove law enforcement officials who belong to the opposing political party.
“This could flip any day — we could get a Democratic governor who then decides to go around suspending all Republican prosecutors because we are not in alignment in ideology,” she said. “It has to stop. This is a dictatorship. This is not a democracy.”
Ms. Worrell and Mr. Warren were among many prosecutors who have been backed by groups supported by the liberal billionaire investor George Soros. Mr. DeSantis uses derisive mentions of Mr. Soros’s name to draw cheers as he campaigns for president.
“We have stood for law and order in the state of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said last week in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “And when we had a Soros-funded left-wing prosecutor in Tampa saying that he wasn’t going to enforce laws that he didn’t like, I removed him from his post.”
In suspending Ms. Worrell on Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis did not discuss Mr. Soros. But as with the removal of Mr. Warren, right-wing commentators online emphasized the Soros connection to Ms. Worrell, and members of Mr. DeSantis’s campaign amplified that message.
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
