Bain intervened to drop charges against former Rep. Amesty Facing immense public attention and an impatient judge, prosecutors hurried last fall to prepare their case against former state Rep. Carolina Amesty for trial. But their urgency came to an abrupt halt after Orange Osceola State Attorney Andrew Bain spoke with Amesty’s defense counsel, internal notes from the office show. Amesty, a first-term GOP lawmaker fresh from losing a re-election bid, had been accused in August of forging a man’s signature on a document she notarized in her former role as an administrator for her family’s small college. The area’s top prosecutor, who had just lost his own campaign to keep his job, agreed to drop the charges against Amesty in exchange for her agreement to complete a so-called diversion program, a puzzling turn of events that dispensed with the case before all of the evidence gathered against her could be aired publicly. While the prosecutor handling the case, the office’s second-in-command, said Bain often consulted on high-profile cases, some local defense attorneys say the circumstances of his involvement in this decision are unusual. The deal came late enough for Bain to dodge a potentially sticky campaign issue, but before the responsibilities of his job were to shift to Monique Worrell, his Democratic successor who might have taken a harder line on Republican shenanigans. Bain intervened to drop charges against former Rep. Amesty Amesty is the one with the fake college and was arrested for forging signatures. She barely lost reelection despite this. This is the same State Attorney that Desantis was sued for protecting. Now it looks like that same State Attorney did his best to stop an investigation and protect Amesty. No one is surprised though as today's GOP is doing what they do best.
in these types of cases there are always 2 sides to every story and the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
I know you want to protect her but there is no protecting in this case. She faked a signature of a professor to act like this professor worked at her fake college. Professor comes out and says that the signature that is supposed to be his is actually. Signature is evaluated by two signatures specialists that state that the signature does not belong to him. She then resigns as a notary. Sorry but there aren't two sides here
Pretrial Intervention (PTI), a diversion program, is not an unusual resolution for a first time offender charged with third degree felonies. With a high profile defendant, approval for the defendant's participation would generally have to come from someone "higher up the food chain" than the prosecutor handling the case at the division level, including at times up to the State Attorney himself. To be fair, I'm not seeing anything that unusual here. One could make the argument that for her not to be allowed to participate she was singled out because of who she was.
number 1- I am not trying to protect anyone. number 2- there are 2 sides to every story and the truth is usually somewhere in the middle If they offered pretrial diversion there must be enough for the prosecutor to not want to go to trial, but I am not an attorney and will gladly defer to JMDZ on this one
I just researched the case at the Orange County Clerk's Office website. All of the cases against her have been formally dismissed. For that to have occurred, she had to have successfully completed all of the conditions of her PTI agreement ahead of time. That is a very statistically unusual way for this to have happened, but not in a "sinister" way. In Hillsborough County, PTI starts when the State Attorney and defendant enter into a written agreement. The defendant agrees to go on voluntary supervision, not break any laws, and satisfy any other conditions such as restitution, community service hours, classes, drug treatment/testing and costs depending on what's relevant to the charge. The State Attorney agrees to stop prosecuting the case and then formally dismiss the charges when the defendant has successfully completed all of the conditions. The initial term is generally 18 months, but there is usually the ability to early term when all of the other conditions have been satisfied. I have never had a client complete all conditions prior to the agreement being signed before, but I have had a few get "pre-filing PTI" which allowed them to participate in the program prior to charges formally being filed after an arrest.
The decision to allow someone to participate in a diversion program is not generally based on the strength of the state's case. That might be a factor in some situations, but for most of my PTI cases there has been overwhelming evidence of guilt. Participation is discretionary with the State Attorney, but the general criteria are no serious prior record, third degree (least serious) felonies only and, generally, victim (if there is an identifiable one) consent. Here's Florida's PTI statute: Statutes & Constitution :View Statutes : Online Sunshine
