ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier held a news conference Friday morning on International Drive, once again appearing in Central Florida to criticize Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell.
Uthmeier called on Worrell to bring charges against a man he said was given “a free walk in the park” after allegedly being caught on Aug. 16 “masturbating while facing a bunch of kids playing in a public splash pad” at Kit Land Nelson Park in Apopka.
“The facts of this case are so egregious. It is an open-shut case. Why would you not bring charges? You’ve got video evidence, witness testimony; you’ve got this dad that saw this feet away, made sure all the other kids were going to be safe, handled it correctly. Justice needs to be served. We can’t let this happen or others think they can get away with doing the same things,” Uthmeier said.
The attorney general went on to claim that Worrell in another case dropped the charges against a suspect who ”possessed and shared tons of gruesome child-pornography videos” and was arrested in June.
“She dropped all charges, let this guy go free,” Uthmeier said. “He made it home, almost out of the country up at the Canadian border. Thankfully, our office got him again and we are prosecuting again and we’ll make sure that that he spends the rest of his life behind bars.”
Returning back to the splash-pad case, Uthmeier said that he would work with the governor’s office to reassign the case to another circuit if Worrell doesn’t bring charges against the accused.
“We’re not going to stand by and allow the state attorney to fail to do her job. This is systematic abuse. It is gross negligence. She took an oath, she’s not delivering on that oath and we’re going to step up and do what we can to hold her accountable and to protect our citizens,” he said.
In a news release, Uthmeier’s office named Kevin Chapman, 61, as the suspect in the splash-pad case and Thomas Dolgos, 47, as the suspect in the child-porn case.
Read the letter sent from Uthmeier’s office to Worrell’s in the media viewer below:
Worrell held a news conference later Friday morning that, while originally intended to discuss an increase in road-rage cases, ended up being almost entirely a response to what she called Uthmeier’s “factually-inaccurate,” ”politically-motivated,” and ”dangerous” statements.
Addressing the splash-pad case, Worrell said that while she had no personal knowledge of the situation at the time — stating Uthmeier would lead others to believe that she personally reviews and makes charging decisions on the ”thousands of cases” that come to her office each day — the attorney who handled it eventually determined that charges could not be brought after interviewing the victim’s father on Sept. 17.
“(The father) confirmed that the child did not see anything and wasn’t aware of what was happening. (The attorney) explained that based on the language of the statute, he could not charge the charge of exhibition — which would have been the felony in the case — and he also explained that because no other adult saw the defendant’s penis, that he could not charge any of the misdemeanor crimes of exposure. He explained that the victim’s father was upset, but he left the 45-minute conversation feeling that the victim’s father understood why he could not go further,” Worrell said. “Now, listen. We can’t uphold the law and not uphold the law. We can’t go forward on charges that the law prohibits us from pursuing and I would submit to you this morning that although they did a great dog-and-pony show of telling you that they’re going to do my job if I won’t do it, if they go forward on these charges, they are not upholding the law, because the law is very clear, and I didn’t write it."
Turning to the child-porn case, Worrell’s rebuke came with a timeline.
Following Dolgos’ June 4 arrest, it was determined his case was multi-jurisdictional, meaning his alleged crimes occurred in places other than her circuit, Worrell said. When that’s the case, prosecution is handled by the Office of the Statewide Prosecution, aka Uthmeier’s office, according to Worrell.
Worrell said that on June 10, Uthmeier’s office sent her a notice of prosecuting authority in the case. Uthmeier’s office then filed their charges in the case on July 8, Worrell said, prompting her office on July 10 to close out the case on their end, seeing as it had been taken over.
“It is dishonest and disingenuous for the attorney general to get up there and say that we dropped the charges in this case. The Office of Statewide Prosecution notified us that they were going to be taking the case over, and after they filed the information — which is their charging document — we closed out the case in our office. This is the normal course of business. It is the normal way that things are done," Worrell said. “The attorney general’s behavior would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious. His leadership is what happens when arrogance meets incompetence, a spectacle unfit for serious times. He struts and shouts as if volume can mask ignorance but all he’s proven is that he’s a punchline in a job that demands serious leadership.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Worrell from office in 2023, accusing her of “refusing to faithfully enforce the laws of Florida.“ DeSantis appointed Andrew Bain to replace Worrell, who then defeated Bain in the November election.
Worrell has been the subject of Uthmeier’s ire before, such as during a Sept. 8 news conference when he urged her to withdraw the prosecution against a woman charged with murder in a deadly road-rage incident.
Before that, Uthmeier and Worrell had dueling news conferences in April to address her office’s backlog of unprosecuted cases. Uthmeier criticized Worrell’s policy requiring law enforcement to make arrests in most cases before sending them to her office for possible prosecution, offering to lend several prosecutors from his own office to help.
During an update last month, Worrell said her office had made progress with the non-arrest backlog, seeing them down from 12,670 in April to 10,687 as of late August. Announcing a five-year plan to fix things further, Worrell said her office had nearly 5,800 open cases at the time and only 12 felony attorneys to tackle them.
“I know she’s made excuses not having resources to, you know, to address the cases, to address the backlog. We’ve provided several prosecutors to help that have cut down on hundreds of cases and, you know, we just want to get the job done,“ Uthmeier said Friday.
Worrell said Friday that Uthmeier has sought to undermine her office rather than support it, drawing parallels between what she called his and DeSantis’ repeated treatment of her as a target for their own political gains.
“If you remember back to the time when I was removed last time, it was surrounding the governor’s presidential campaign, and he needed to score points among his base by showing that he was, you know, ‘big bad Ron,’ and he was removing elected officials left and right,” Worrell said. “(...) Similarly, you have an attorney general who wants to actually be elected, so he keeps coming here, he keeps coming here, he keeps coming here; and he has these press conferences — that I haven’t seen one that was based on facts yet — but it gives him airtime. It gives him what’s called ‘earned media’ so he can stand in front of the public, but here is what my message is for the public: Don’t elect a guy who isn’t concerned with getting it right. Don’t elect a guy who’s not concerned with getting it right, because in law and justice, getting it right is all we have.”
Uthmeier was joined Friday at the Florida Highway Patrol Troop D training room by Rep. Laurel Lee, R-District 15; Statewide Prosecutor Brad McVay; and FHP Chief Matthew Williams.
Watch Uthmeier’s remarks again in the video player below or by clicking here.
Watch Worrell’s remarks in the video player below or by clicking here.