The state had charged Robert Wood and 19 other people with election fraud in August after a state roundup by the Election Crimes Unit, a new body that the governor put together in an effort to clean up voter rolls and charge those who have violated election laws.
Wood was convicted of second-degree murder in 1991, making him ineligible to vote under state law.
Larry Davis, who represented Wood, argued that the Office of the Statewide Prosecutor (OSP) did not have jurisdiction over the case and Judge Milton Hirsch agreed.
In his order, Hirsch dismissed the charges against Wood and decided the state’s prosecution of election crimes constituted an “overreach of power.”
However, the governor’s office disagreed with the court’s ruling and said it intended to appeal.
“Given that elections violations of this nature impact all Florida voters, elections officials, state government, and the integrity of our republic, we continue to view the Florida Office of Statewide Prosecution as the appropriate agency to prosecute these crimes,” Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“The state will continue to enforce the law and ensure that murderers and rapists who are not permitted to vote do not unlawfully do so,” he continued. “Florida will not be a state in which elections are left vulnerable or cheaters unaccountable.”
State Prosecutor Nick Cox said in an Oct. 21 statement that the judge had an “incorrect analysis” and the decision would be appealed.
In his order Hirsch of the 11th Judicial Circuit quoted Shakespeare, “His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings,” he wrote quoting from King Henry VI, Part I.
“How much wider even than that does OSP seek to extend its reach? In the case at bar, the answer is simple: wider than the enabling statute contemplates, and therefore too wide.”
In their motion, the prosecutor’s office charged Wood with giving false information on his voter application form and, knowing he was not qualified, voting in the general election.
However, the OSP said that both of these crimes did involve multiple judicial circuits because Wood’s vote invoked the “participation of a government entity” in Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital, and “was tallied with other legal votes” and then sent to another circuit by virtue of going to Tallahassee.
The judge did not agree.
“On OSP’s version of affairs, it is unnecessary for Mr. Wood to commit a crime in any but his home jurisdiction in order for him to be subject to prosecution by an entity intended to prosecute only multi-jurisdictional crimes,” Hirsch wrote in his order.
“It follows, on OSP’s version of affairs, that OSP has a general power to prosecute voter crimes in Florida. And OSP does not blink in asserting that power.”
The prosecution argued that Wood’s case mirrored a previous case State v. Tacher, where four people “conspired to transport illicit drugs from New Jersey to Miami.”
In that case, a judge had determined that the possession of the drugs in multiple judicial circuits, “as part of a criminal enterprise,” gave the state authority to prosecute the case.
Hirsch ruled that Wood’s case was not the same because the alleged crime occurred in Miami and the “act of transporting Wood’s vote was not itself a crime.”
“Here, all criminal misconduct, if there was any, was performed by one man in one county,” the judge’s order read. “It is an old truth that all politics is local. OSP seeks to stand that old truth on its head.”
The prosecutors will likely go to the Third District Court of Appeal. There are 19 other cases pending, many of which are in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties, and could eventually be brought before the Florida Supreme Court.
Davis said he hoped that the judge’s ruling might set a precedent for the other pending cases that involve similar arguments.
“Judge Hirsch is known as a very thoughtful judge,” Davis said in a statement. “So I think his ruling will carry a lot of weight.”
