Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell once again faced harsh criticism from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Tuesday as he blamed her for lenient sentences that “endangered the innocent” — though judges, not Worrell’s prosecutors, imposed the punishments.
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In a scathing letter to Worrell’s office followed by a video posted to X, Uthmeier accused Worrell of having “surrendered multiple opportunities to prioritize justice and public safety” in four cases involving teenagers who received relatively light sentences for violent and sexual crimes.
Worrell, in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, denied wrongdoing and was bewildered by Uthmeier’s new round of attacks, though she has been a constant subject of public rebukes from Uthmeier since voters returned her to office last year.
The “youthful offender sentences” that Uthmeier criticized, she noted, were decided by judges. “For him to say we should never have allowed it to happen gives the community the impression that prosecutors have some sort of authority over the judiciary that we do not have,” she said.
In a statement, she noted that the state law allows for more lenient sentences for people younger than 21 convicted of certain felonies, at the discretion of a judge.
“The sentencing judge made that decision. Florida law gave the judge that authority. And the Attorney General, who has read the statute, knows exactly where that authority resides,” she wrote. “If the Attorney General takes issue with that, his remedy is at the legislature, not my inbox.”
Even when prosecutors negotiate plea deals that allow for such sentences, a judge still decides whether to accept or reject them. And the law also allows defense attorneys to circumvent the prosecution and request those sentences to judges directly. That was the scenario in some of the cases Uthmeier cited in his letter, Worrell said.
Uthmeier’s letter demanded Worrell’s office provide records of several cases in which teenagers in Orange and Osceola counties were sentenced as “youthful offenders” since her return to office last year. The tone of the letter smacked of the DeSantis administration’s previous move to suspend Worrell from office in 2023. At that time, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, accused Worrell, a Democrat, of not aggressively prosecuting criminals — charges she vigorously denied.
After her suspension, Worrell ran again in 2024 and was reelected, handily defeating Andrew Bain, who DeSantis appointed to replace her.
Since her return, Uthmeier has repeatedly gone after Worrell’s administration for a number of perceived issues, including new rules meant to reduce a backlog of nonarrest cases, her office’s handling of a 2021 case involving a defendant who went on to be charged with murdering three tourists in Kissimmee and for refusing to drop a murder charge against a woman claiming she killed a man in self-defense, among others.
In the last case, Uthmeier’s intervention, which the defendant’s attorney called “horrific,” resulted in the woman accepting an 18-month prison sentence despite preparing to claim she was protected under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. In another instance, he blasted Worrell’s supposed handling of a 2019 case involving child sexual abuse material, which took place in a neighboring judicial circuit a year before she was elected to office.
In his Tuesday letter, Uthmeier, appointed by DeSantis as Florida’s top lawyer, once again attacked Worrell’s fitness for office.
“Your misjudgments — far too numerous and tedious to delineate — have undermined justice and endangered the innocent,” Uthmeier wrote in the letter. “I remind you that your conduct is not beyond oversight.”
Worrell said she has “chosen not to worry” that she might be removed from office again.
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“I expect to come to work and do my job until I’m told differently,” she said.
Uthmeier’s letter comes more than two months after Marcus Anderson, who was 17 when he shot and killed Gabriel Rosario-Cortez in 2024 in a botched marijuana sale, was sentenced in Orange County to just four years in prison after pleading no contest to second-degree murder.
The case against Anderson, now 19, featured heavily in Uthmeier’s public remarks as well as in his letter to Worrell. On X, he wrote: “And she keeps handing out sweetheart plea deals to violent criminals. This neglect of duty must end!”
But Worrell said her office negotiated a plea deal after considering Anderson’s lack of a prior criminal history and the possibility of a self-defense claim. Ultimately, the decision to lighten his sentence was made by Circuit Judge Eric Nechter, who had the discretion to toss out the deal but chose not to.
Uthmeier cited two other cases in his letter. The first, a manslaughter case against Yaxiel Lebron-Flores for a deadly car crash in 2023 that took place weeks before he turned 16, resulted in a plea deal imposing a six-year prison sentence as a youthful offender, court records show. That is well below the 15-year maximum sentence typically handed to adults convicted of a similar crime.
Uthmeier called it a “lenient disposition” that “does litter to deter future criminal behavior,” but Worrell said the facts of the case showed the crash committed by Lebron-Flores — who ran a red light while driving a stolen car without a license — was an accident.
“It was a car accident that was based on his criminal driving, but it was an accident,” she said. “Saying this kid could have 15 years and should have, that’s subjective.”
The second case involves Julian Vicente, charged in 2024 with 25 counts of possessing child sexual abuse material when was 19. Court records show he avoided conviction after pleading no contest to the charges in January.
In exchange, he received a six-year sentence of probation as a sex offender, after his attorneys successfully petitioned the judge for youthful offender status.
“We could absolutely object, but when we did not make the plea offer, the court was clear that the state didn’t agree with it, and the court did what they think was best,” Worrell said. “I am certainly not going to sit here and criticize the court for using its discretion, because that is their role.”
In his video, Uthmeier also mentioned a 2022 case involving Savion Lambert, who was charged with carjacking with a deadly weapon when he was 18. Worrell’s office said, and court records show, that case was also resolved with a deal made with a judge sentencing Lambert to probation as a youthful offender.
Lambert was since accused of violating that probation several times, court records show. On April 23, he pleaded no contest to manslaughter for a shooting Worrell’s office described as accidental.
He now faces 20 years in prison as part of his plea agreement. He is slated to be sentenced Friday.
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