14286-19 Beach Blvd., #120
Jacksonville, Florida 32250
904-373-8817
https://WeCanBeHeroesFoundation.org
July 31, 2023
The Honorable Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
400 S. Monroe St., Tallahassee, FL 32399
The Honorable Florida Lt Governor Jeannette Nunez
400 South Monroe St., Tallahassee, FL 32399
The Honorable Florida State Attorney General Ashley Moody
PL-01 The Capitol, Tallahassee, FL 32399
The Honorable Florida House Speaker Paul Renner
402 South Monroe St., Tallahassee, FL 32399
Honorable Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo
404 S. Monroe Street, Tallahassee, FL 32399
Thank you for your service to support and defend the Constitution.
We Can Be Heroes Foundation honors heroes and provides educational forums on America’s founding values and the Constitution. Extensive research by various experts on the Sixth Amendment abuses led the undersigned Florida volunteers to request an Emergency Legislative Pause on government unconstitutional prosecutorial overreach. The Legislative Pause should allow you time to enact fair and reasonable Sixth Amendment Constitution-compliant measures through your bureaucracy without causing future harm to the Floridians you serve.
Background. Florida residents have more laws than can be read in a lifetime, yet we are responsible to obey each one. When we had the rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, we did not worry about being imprisoned unjustly. We were pleased to have the options of jury trials or plea-bargaining with prosecutor oversight and transparency. A fair plea-bargaining process gave Americans the option to settle charges speedily and get on with their law-abiding lives. However, this changed when unconstitutional federal and state prosecutorial overreach against Floridians without oversight and transparency was accepted or tolerated by the State of Florida. Details of the problem, cause, and solution are shown in the Executive Summary referenced below.
You are requested by the undersigned to: Please take emergency action to protect the Constitution Sixth Amendment rights of my family and community to defend ourselves against state and federal prosecutorial overreach without oversight and transparency. This is a respectful demand for the protection of my family as well as yours that you place an Emergency Legislative Pause on: 1) state and federal prosecutors’ unfairly engaging in plea-bargaining in the State of Florida without oversight, transparency, and right to appeal; and 2) the power to sentence to transfer from judges to prosecutors. This abusive government overreach created the over-criminalization of Americans, and specifically Floridians, as shown in the enclosed Executive Summary Excerpt on The Problem and the below-referenced reports. This overcriminalization in our community is widely known as “The Trial Penalty”.
The power to sentence must be restored to judges. The unilateral DOJ Sentencing Commission Mandatory Minimum Sentence Guidelines and Florida Guidelines should not dictate mandatory sentences in plea-bargaining. An unbiased judge should be permitted to consider a person’s history, culpability, and responsibilities to sentence as justice dictates. It appears DOJ and possibly the State Sentencing Guidelines are designed to imprison our population with ever-increasing mandatory imprisonment time. These “Guidelines” with prosecutor sentencing authority have not reduced crime in my community.
Please review the online reports referenced below for your necessary due diligence to restore our Sixth Amendment rights to defend ourselves. This request is simple. My family, as well as others, are simply requesting you and each Florida House and Senate Member place an emergency pause on the above two horrific government overreach powers affecting the freedom of Floridians and violating the letter and the spirit of our Constitution.
All plea-bargaining lacking proof and admissible or legally obtained evidence in any Florida or Federal grand jury and other criminal cases must be stopped and de-funded immediately. This abusive government prosecutorial misconduct makes a mockery of our liberty and the Constitutional intent of grand juries. Please note the Executive Summary referenced below suggests you re-think and redefine the necessity, use, and validity of abusive grand jury indictments issued to a legal resident of Florida when lacking prosecutors’ oversight, admissible evidence, or withheld evidence.
To be clear, we fully support prosecutorial plea-bargaining power by any state or federal prosecutor operating in Florida when transparency and oversight outside the prosecutor’s agency chain of command exists and when an unbiased judge has the authority to waive the Sentencing Guidelines. Plea-bargaining compliant with the spirit of the Sixth Amendment serves our community in the speedy resolution of cases.
Please reply with your plan of action. We trust you will stop funding and permitting unconstitutional work of prosecutors and the DOJ within the State of Florida. May God grant you the speed and courage to act responsibly with haste and make Florida a model free state.
References:
The We Can Be Heroes Foundation Constitution Reports:
https://wecanbeheroesfoundation.org/executive-summary-your-probable-imprisonment-reaches-alarming-rate;
https://wecanbeheroesfoundation.org/your-probable-imprisonment-reaches-alarming-rate/ and
The prestigious National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers complete report for download at https://www.nacdl.org/Document/TrialPenaltySixthAmendmentRighttoTrialNearExtinct
Very respectfully,
Beth Heath
and the parties named below choosing to consolidate their request to you with this one mailing to alleviate the burden on your office to handle each request individually. (The parties named in this letter are on file, and the list is updated regularly.)
Enclosure:
Executive Summary – The Florida Problem:
https://wecanbeheroesfoundation.org/executive-summary-
your-probable-imprisonment-reaches-alarming-rate
- You have a 1 in 3 probability of getting a criminal record.
- America has more U.S. Codes, statutes, and laws than can be read in a lifetime.
- You are required to follow codes and laws even though you were never notified of the law.
- America has the largest prison and jail population in the world.
- America has 20% of the world’s prison population, yet only 5% of the world’s population.
- The United States incarcerates its people five times that of NATO countries:
- Holding hands, Americans with arrest records could circle the earth three times.
- America, “the former land of free,” significantly leads all Communists, Dictatorship, Islamic, and other countries in incarcerating its people.
- More Americans have a criminal record than a college degree.
- Prosecutors are the most powerful officials in the American criminal justice system.
- Rights to defend yourself enumerated by the Sixth Amendment are near extinction.
- In 97% of cases, citizens lost their Sixth Amendment rights.
- African Americans convicted of murder are 50% more likely to be innocent than other races who were convicted murderers.
- Over 5 million Americans were forbidden from voting in 2020 due to a felony conviction.
- Numerous scholars have examined plea-bargaining and estimate up to 27% of Americans who plead guilty may factually be innocent.
- The average bail bond is $10,000.
- Most crimes reported to the police go unsolved.
The Florida Problem
- Florida Department of Corrections (FDC or Department) is the third largest state corrections system in the United States and the largest state agency in Florida.
- *Florida’s 2021 incarceration rate is higher with 367 per 100,000 compared to the national average of 300 per 100,000.
- *Florida is higher than national average for Black to white imprisonment ratio: 4.1
- Duval County population is 4.5% of the State, whereas Duval’s inmate population is nearly double with 8% of the State Prison population.
- * Florida is shown to have the lowest number of 2021 crimes committed in the U.S. but studies show the State reported only 0.3 percent of their crime data to the FBI.
- Failure to understate crime data could create mistrust in Florida reports.
*https://stacker.com
Enclosure
Enclosure Page 2