Liberal Prosecutors Tussle With State Officials Over Abortion, Drug Crimes

Governors and legislatures have said these decisions are lawless and have moved to give statewide officials more power to remove local prosecutors or take over certain prosecutions. 

Prosecutors have long been able to exercise discretion to focus their offices’ resources on pursuing the worst crimes and to ignore arcane laws. And state officials have longstanding authority to step in if a prosecutor isn’t fulfilling their role or is bungling a key case. 

Law professors say these conflicts have grown more acute with a recent wave of elected prosecutors who have been vocal on hot-button issues including abortion and policing. 

“As criminal justice politics have gotten more conflicted there are incentives for prosecutors to be more overt about not enforcing laws,” said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended state attorney Andrew Warren over his pledge to not prosecute cases related to abortion. Photo Composite: Emily Siu

One catalyst for some of the recent clashes was a statement organized by Fair and Just Prosecution, a nonprofit network of liberal prosecutors. The statement, released shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, was signed by more than 80 prosecutors who said they wouldn’t focus their offices’ resources on enforcing abortion bans. 

“We stand together in our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions,” the prosecutors said. 

Andrew Warren, the Democratic Florida state attorney for Hillsborough County, was one of the signatories. 

In August, Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, announced Mr. Warren’s suspension at a press conference. The night before, his then-press secretary tweeted, “Prepare for the liberal media meltdown of the year.” Mr. Warren was escorted from his office by an armed law enforcement officer. 

Mr. DeSantis tapped a state judge, Susan Lopez, to step in as a replacement. 

Mr. Warren sued Mr. DeSantis in federal court, calling the dismissal an illegal attempt by the governor “to silence his critics, promote his loyalists, and subvert the will of the voters.” 

In court filings, Mr. DeSantis said Mr. Warren’s public statements on abortion and other issues would “invite lawlessness” and reflected Mr. Warren’s “fundamental misunderstanding of his role as a Florida prosecutor.” 

The governor’s view received support from some 15 Republican attorneys general who wrote in an amicus brief, “Governors can protect their States from the constitutional dangers—not to mention the physical dangers—posed by prosecutors who refuse to enforce legislatively enacted criminal prohibitions.” 

A U.S. district judge ruled the firing violated the First Amendment because Mr. Warren was removed for his political views. He also said the dismissal was improper under the Florida Constitution because Mr. DeSantis failed to show Mr. Warren had neglected his duties. But Judge Robert Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, said he didn’t have the power as a federal judge to order Mr. Warren reinstated. Mr. Warren appealed to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hearing arguments Tuesday afternoon. 

Similar conflicts are playing out in other states. Lawmakers in Georgia recently passed a bill creating a state-appointed oversight board that has the power to discipline and remove elected prosecutors. Supporters say it is intended to hold district attorneys accountable for decisions not to prosecute categories of crimes, or for unprofessional conduct. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis,

“This bill is dangerous. It is dangerous to undo the voters because you don’t like someone and you don’t like their policies and you don’t like what they do,” she told the Georgia State Senate Judiciary Committee at a tense hearing in February. 

She went on to note that the bill was only filed after the number of nonwhite district attorneys in the state nearly tripled since elections in 2020. Ms. Willis and several senators debated whether the impetus for the bill was racist, and whether mentioning that she believed it to be so was in itself offensive. 

Legislators in states including Indiana and Texas have considered similar bills this session.

In Missouri, lawmakers are advancing a bill that would allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor in any jurisdiction where the homicide rate exceeds 35 cases per every 100,000 people. That is currently the situation in St. Louis, where the state’s Republican attorney general earlier this year initiated court proceedings to remove the elected circuit attorney, a Democrat, from office on allegations she and her office have repeatedly neglected their duties.  

Write to Laura Kusisto at [email protected] and Mariah Timms at [email protected]