MIAMI — A Miami judge approved a motion to dismiss Friday in the case against Robert Lee Wood, 56, the first of the 17 people charged with election fraud in a statewide roundup in August by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new Election Crimes Unit.
The defense argued that the Office of the Statewide Prosecutor did not have jurisdiction over the case. The judge agreed, in an order that not only dismissed the charges against Wood, but concluded that the state’s prosecution of election crimes constitutes an overreach of power.
“‘His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings,’” the judge wrote in the order, quoting Shakespeare. “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.”
The governor’s office announced in August that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had arrested 20 Floridians for election crimes during the 2020 presidential election, out of the 11.1 million who voted. However, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Friday that, in addition to the 17 people already arrested for election crimes, only one suspect remains at large, making a total of 18 potential cases.
For the statewide prosecutor’s office to have jurisdiction, the crime must either have occurred in two or more judicial circuits or must be connected with an organized criminal conspiracy affecting two or more judicial circuits, according to Florida law.
Wood was convicted of second-degree murder in 1991, inmate records show. Under the 2018 Florida Constitutional Amendment Four, people with felony convictions for murder or a sexual offense are ineligible to vote unless the State Clemency Board restores their voting rights.
Wood was shopping at Walmart in the fall of 2020 when someone asked him if he wanted to register to vote, his defense attorney, Larry Davis, said.
When Wood told them he couldn’t register because he was a convicted felon, they informed him that Amendment Four allows him to vote, Davis said. So Wood filled out the application form, received a voter card in the mail, and voted in the November general election, according to court records. Nearly two years later, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested him.
The prosecutor’s office had charged Wood with two crimes: giving false information in filling out his voter application form, and voting in the general election while knowing he was not a qualified elector.
The office argued that both of these crimes involved multiple judicial circuits because Wood’s vote invoked “the participation of a government entity” in Tallahassee and “was tallied with other legal votes” and sent to another circuit by virtue of going to Tallahassee.
The judge disagreed.
“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,” Judge Milton Hirsch wrote in the order, adding, “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 compared Wood’s case to a previous case, State v. Tacher, in which four people conspired to transport illicit drugs from New Jersey to Miami. In that case, the judge ruled that the possession of the drugs in multiple judicial circuits, as part of a criminal enterprise, gave the state authority to prosecute the case.
But the judge ruled that Wood’s case is not the same, because the alleged crime occurred in Miami. The act of transporting Wood’s vote, he said, was not itself a crime.
“Here, all criminal misconduct, if there was any, was performed by one man in one county,” the judge wrote in the order. “It is an old truth that all politics is local. OSP seeks to stand that old truth on its head.”
The prosecutor’s office plans to appeal the ruling, which will then go to the Third District Court of Appeal.
”We believe this was an incorrect analysis of jurisdiction and OSP will appeal,” Nick Cox, the statewide prosecutor, said in an email.
The August arrests, which were carried out by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, were the first public action that stemmed from the new state Office of Election Crimes and Security that the state Legislature created this year at the DeSantis’ request.
The felon-voters arrested in August were from five counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough and Orange. They were charged with voter fraud, a third-degree felony punishable by up to a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
“They did not go through any process. They did not get their voting rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyway,” DeSantis said at the August news conference. “That is against the law and now they will pay the price.”
When the Miami case is appealed, the argument over the state’s power to prosecute election crimes will be considered by a new judge, not Hirsch.
With at least 17 other cases pending, the issue could eventually be brought before the Florida Supreme Court.
Davis said that he hopes that Friday’s ruling might set a precedent for the other cases, which involve similar arguments.
“Judge Hirsch is known as a very thoughtful judge ... so I think his ruling will carry a lot of weight,” Davis said.
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