Colleen Dunne, major crimes prosecutor and assistant state attorney for the State’s Attorney’s Office, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
What does a major crimes prosecutor do?
Dunne said, “Basically, I handle any of the homicide cases up and down the Keys, as well as cases that involve child sexual batteries, or anything that may be more in depth or more involved. I have the ability to then focus a little bit more time, so it’d be anything major, or anything else Mr. Ward asked me to take care of.”
What crimes have been prosecuted recently?
Dunne said, “This past weekend, we had arrests made by Key West Police Department and MCSO, very serious and quite frankly, some horrific crimes. One of them involves a father who was discovered had many inappropriate photos of his three year old daughter that he had taken. But even more disturbing was a video that was also discovered on his phone that he had taken, which shows himself sexually battering his daughter while it appeared that she was sleeping. So that is obviously, a very serious crime. Thanks to the MCSO detectives, they were able to unearth all of this. So that was over the weekend. Then we had another one, I may not be handling this personally, but Key West Police Department had an arrest of a case involving an attempted homicide on one of their off duty officers. The officer was at his residence and was told that there was a domestic battery happening, a woman was being beaten by her boyfriend outside. So the officer grabs his radio and goes outside to check on everything, and while he’s there, talking to the woman, who’s clearly distraught, the boyfriend comes running out of their apartment with a knife and is swinging it in the direction of the officer, who’s in plain clothes, he’s not even dressed in his uniform, and the person is yelling at him, saying, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you. Luckily, that officer was able to run to safety. Eventually, Key West Police Department were able to get the defendant, out of the house, and they found the knife and very, very scary, and he’ll be charged with attempted homicide. So those are two recent cases just over the weekend that that occurred, which, quite frankly, were pretty horrific.”
What would be the timetable for a major crimes case?
Dunne said, “Well, a homicide case, you should be able to have it ready to go within eight months, but it’s not uncommon for it to be longer than that. It all depends on not just our job, putting the pieces together, getting the evidence together, and having the witnesses available, the defense has an absolute right to investigate themselves and speak to the witnesses, so it’s a matter of coordinating our schedules, making sure people are available and any motions. So typically, it could be a year. It just depends on how busy we are and how available all the witnesses are, as well as the court. We do have a lot of cases, and we only have so many judges and so many months in the year to have a jury selection for a trial.”
Have there been any trends?
Dunne said, “We like it when the major crimes are down, obviously. We still have a few cases that were left over from the COVID period, which, unfortunately, we weren’t able to control availability. In terms of major cases, off the top of my head, I don’t know when the last homicide case occurred down here, but we are noticing quite a few child pornography cases, which, it’s very unfortunate, and I don’t know if it’s because the detectives have been able to crack down on these offenses, but we’ve had quite a few cases involving the possession of child pornography, or actually the taking of child pornography within the Keys.”
Monroe County works hard to prosecute the major crimes cases – in other parts of the country and state sometimes cases don’t always move forward.
Dunne said, “It’s never a fun job when you have to report to a detective or an officer that you’re not able to go forward with the case. It’s not something that we take pride in doing. Sometimes it’s just a matter of, we don’t have enough evidence to move forward beyond a reasonable doubt. The officers have one standard and it’s very different than ours. Obviously you have to address it right then and there on the street, they make the arrest, but as a prosecutor, we have a duty to make sure that when we file formal charges, that we can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and that’s never an easy conversation with the officers as well as potential victims. But before that happens, we exhaust all of our resources to make sure that we can move forward on any of the cases that come to our office.”
Prosecution of these cases can also be expensive.
Dunne said, “That’s another unfortunate part of the job and especially because we’re in the Keys, so Monroe County, we do not have a criminal lab, whereas you’d find one in Miami Dade, Broward, where the police departments have their own CSI division, as you would call it. So all of our evidence, when we have evidence, whether it’s narcotics or weapons or DNA, they all have to be sent to the FDLE labs, and those labs are throughout the state of Florida. So as you can imagine, we send the evidence out, and then if we have to present it to court, we have to bring those analysts down, and that means that they’re flying down. Sometimes they’re traveling for six hours round trip, and they’re only testifying for 15, 20 minutes, and it’s very expensive. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a lab and we aren’t able to somehow do things differently, but that, in and of itself, is expensive, as well as if we have to hire an expert, fortunately, a lot of the experts will agree to a state rate, which the state will pay. But that all comes out of our individual budget. So Monroe County’s budget, we pay for our experts. It’s not that Tallahassee has this huge budget that says, okay, anyone testified for the State Attorney’s Office throughout Florida. So it’s a challenge and between our executive director and Mr. Ward, they’re always asking for more funds, not for our salaries, but so we can have the resources to prosecute these cases.”
Recruitment can also be an issue.
Dunne said, “We are actually going to a recruitment conference in Orlando next week, the executive director and I are going to be up there where we’re inviting all people in law school in their third year and trying to recruit them down to the Keys. Certainly it’s a beautiful place. That’s the easy part to pitch to potential prosecutors. But yes, the cost of living is definitely a hurdle that we have more than other areas. We do our best when we find someone to try and help them find residents or somewhere to live. That is a big challenge, because even though the salary may be great, when you look at how expensive it is to live down here, that salary doesn’t yield as much as it would if they were in Miami.”
Michael Stapleford of KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM pointed out, “I’m certainly indebted and in awe of people like you who dedicate yourselves to protecting us and also trying to put the bad people behind bars.”
The public can also help by answering the call for jury duty.
Dunne said, “I know people see that card that comes in the mail, and I’m sure the majority are like, oh geez, I don’t want to go to jury duty, it’s such a waste of time. But we’re not able to do our job and when I say we, those in the criminal justice system or in the court system in general, we need jurors, because without the jurors, we can’t move forward. I always encourage people, please come and you may be surprised that you find it to be very interesting. The difficulty we have in the Keys is that a lot of these cases are talked about in the press, or it may have happened in an area where people know about it. So to have a potential juror, we have to have that juror not have any preconceived notions. So we’re looking for people that may not have heard anything about the case, not only for the state, but for the defendant. So I tell my friends, please come. It’s one day. You may or may not be chosen, but you’ll be fascinated to hear some of the comments from your fellow potential jurors and their views and you may meet some very interesting people. I’m always amazed at the professions of people that come in. Everyone thinks they’re just down here retired, but that’s not the case.”
How does a grand jury work?
Dunne said, “The grand jury is a different tool. Again, if you see the request for you to come down for potential Grand Jury Duty, that’s different, because it’s not that you’re going to be sitting down for one particular case. It’s a six month term. No, that doesn’t mean you’re coming to court every day. What it means is that if we have a case that we need to present to the grand jury for various reasons, we would call everyone down, or coordinate on a day that everyone’s available, and you would sit and listen to a set of facts. It’s more of like an investigative tool, or investigative powers. So for example, any offense that’s a capital offense, offense that we could potentially seek the death penalty, we have to present to the grand jury so that they come down with that indictment. So a first degree murder or a capital sexual battery case. What that means is the prosecutor has to present the facts to the grand jury, and they have to decide whether there’s probable cause for us to file that particular charge. That’s different than if you’re presenting a case to the grand jury to decide whether or not there’s an offense that we should charge criminally. The most recent one was the grand jury that sat and listen to the evidence regarding Trauma Star and the individuals that were involved in the theft of narcotics, as well as some in official positions that were indicted for official misconduct. What that is, is we present the facts and the Grand Jurors themselves, they get to ask questions. They can question the witnesses. They could say to the prosecutor, we’d like to hear from this person. We’d like to have some evidence about this. Then once the presentation is over, they decide, is there evidence for of a crime? If there’s not, they so say. But then the other tool that they have is they can provide a grand jury report, which, again, was released a few months ago regarding what they did hear about the Trauma Star incident and various players. That report can be very powerful. That’s when the grand jurors can sit down and say, this is what we heard. This is what we concluded. We’ve had a few of them in the Keys. I urge people, if you ever want to read one, go to the clerk’s website and they have them all on file. That is another opportunity to not only serve, give back to the community, but it can be extremely rewarding to sit as a grand juror.”
The State’s Attorney’s Office works with numerous law enforcement agencies.
Dunne said, “In Monroe County, we work with many law enforcement agencies. So it’s not just US Police Department, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, FWC, FDLE. We work with federal agencies as well, FBI, Customs Border Patrol, ATF and a lot of people just think it’s just, oh, our city or county officers, but we do have a lot of federal agencies that we work with, and other state agencies, and we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs if we didn’t have their cooperation. So we’re very fortunate that we have them here, even as spread out as we are. Also, Mr. Ward has always said, please, if you see something, say something, report it. Our phones are always open. We have our own investigative department where we have our own investigators that look into crimes that may not have been looked into by local law enforcement officers. So if you need to report something, you can always call our office, whether it be fraud, whether it could be dealing with unlicensed contractors, we take those calls serious and look into them as well.”
A lot of people are incredibly grateful that the consolidation of judicial districts didn’t occur.
Dunne said, “That would have been a very difficult hurdle if we were all in one circuit and I don’t know how we would have been able to handle that, but thankfully that did not go through, and we can take care of Monroe County and just keep it here. Taking care of victims, we have a whole department of victim advocates, so if you’re a victim of a crime, you’ll have someone that will be with you throughout the course of the case, helping you manage the system, whether it be just informing you of what’s going on, or helping you with potential services that may be available to you. So they are vital to the success of all of our prosecutions, because, we’re busy, but they are just as busy as us.”
Victim advocates are a lifeline for a lot of people.
Dunne said, “They sure are. Not only to the victims, but to the prosecutors, because they help us focus on what we have to focus on, and keep the victims apprised of what’s going on, so that when we meet with the victims, we can focus on what we need to with them, and they’re in a better position to go through whatever the it is that they may have to. I’m very passionate about my job and what I do and so are all the other prosecutors in our office. It’s an honor and a privilege to work in this position, and we like to say we are the real public defenders, because we are defending the public against crime.”
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