Adam Putnam said Monday he remains opposed to removing Confederate monuments, including the one situated in front of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee.
Two days after Hillsborough County Commissioners made national news by voting to keep a Confederate monument in front of its County Courthouse Annex, the Hillsborough Democratic Party says the commissioners who did so “should be ashamed of themselves.” Four commissioners, all Republicans, voted to maintain a statue built in 1911 of a Confederate soldier in front of the courthouse. They also approved Crist’s proposal to add a mural behind the monument, showcasing what Crist called “love and diversity” of the…
In recent years, criminal justice reform, especially in drug sentencing, has taken on more momentum, with governors in some of most conservative parts of the country embracing such efforts. In Florida, progressive State Attorney candidates like Andrew Warren in Tampa and Aramis Ayala in Orlando won their respective races last year by running on a similar platform. The two State Attorneys joined a group of current and former prosecutors last week in blasting Attorney General Jeff Sessions recent directive that the Justice Department return to…
On the same day Julianne Holt was elected to serve as the public defender in Hillsborough County in 1992, Harry Lee Coe was elected state attorney. After Coe committed suicide in 2000, he was succeeded in office by Mark Ober, who served for another 16 years, before Democrat Andrew Warren narrowly defeated him in a major upset in November. Although he’s only been on the job officially for a little more than four months, Holt says that in some ways, they’ve been the…
If elected to the Hillsborough County Commission next year, Elvis Pigott would become the first millennial — Americans under the age of 35, as recently defined — to serve on the board. The 29-year-old Riverview resident has filed to run for the countywide District 5, which becomes vacant next year after GOP incumbent Ken Hagan term-limits out. But Hagan hopes to stick around for another eight years, having filed to run for the North Tampa District 2 seat currently held by fellow Republican But…
Although Andrew Warren was considered a serious underdog in his race against Mark Ober for Hillsborough County’s State Attorney last year, he had plenty of ammunition to run in a changing social environment. Both the right and left has coalesced in recent years when it comes to believing in serious criminal justice reform, and independent groups had reported that Hillsborough was an outlier when it came to administering the death penalty and in arresting juveniles for possession of marijuana, vs.…
Elected on a platform of wanting to reform much of Hillsborough County’s current system of justice,State Attorney Andrew Warren is voicing his strong opposition to a measure pending in the Florida Legislature that would shift the burden of proof in ‘Stand Your Ground’ self-defense cases. The bill, sponsored by Fleming Island Republican Rob Bradley (SB 128), would shift the burden of proof to prosecutors during evidentiary hearings in self-defense cases. It stems from a Florida Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that…
