ORLANDO, Fla. – UPDATE: On Dec. 1, 2023, Florida State Attorney Brian Haas announced that criminal charges would not be filed against Jeff Ashton, because the evidence did not support filing charges.
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An executive order by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put Orange-Osceola Judge Jeff Ashton back in the spotlight this week.
The executive order, posted publicly on the governor’s website on Oct. 11, said allegations have been made against Ashton for lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 16 and failure to report child abuse.
Ashton, who is currently a civil judge for the Florida Ninth Judicial Circuit, gained national recognition for being the lead prosecutor during the Casey Anthony murder trial from 2008 to 2011. It was the culmination of a 30-year career as a Central Florida prosecutor.
Ashton got his law degree from the University of Florida in 1980, and became an assistant state prosecutor for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, serving Orange and Osceola counties.
Among the cases Ashton helped to prosecute was the rape case of Tommie Lee Andrews in 1988. Investigators had said Andrews was responsible for as many as 23 attacks in the Orlando area. Andrews was the first person in the United States to be convicted of rape because of DNA evidence.
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In an interview he took part in on the Ninth Circuit website, Ashton said he had heard about early DNA evidence work happening in England, then learned about a company in New York that was doing DNA paternity testing. That company was contracted to find those DNA matches in the Andrews case.
“It’s a wonderful thing because it’s – if it is done right, it is ultimate truth,” Ashton said in the interview. “I mean, if you have a, you know, a blood sample on a piece of clothing that belongs to a particular defendant and that blood is genetically matched to the victim, you know that’s the victim’s blood.”
Ashton also started a special homicide unit within the state attorney’s office in 1990.
In 2008, Ashton took on the Casey Anthony murder trial because of his experience with DNA forensics. Anthony was accused of killing her daughter Caylee and burying her in a wooded area not far from the family’s home.
In the end, a jury found Anthony not guilty of murder. It was later questioned why prosecutors during the trial did not ask why searches on the Anthony family computer included “foolproof suffocation” the day Caylee was killed.
“The biggest thing I wish we had done was to have sent the Anthony computer out to an independent forensic evaluation because as we have since learned to our chagrin, the examination of the computer missed some things that would have been important,” Ashton said In that same interview on the Ninth Circuit website.
After the trial, Ashton retired from the state attorney’s office. He went on to write a best-seller on the case, called “Imperfect Justice.” He was also played by Rob Lowe in a Lifetime television movie about the case.
In 2012, he took on his boss, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar. He beat Lamar in the Democratic primary with nearly 55% of the vote and faced no one in the general election.
Among the cases Ashton’s office handled during his tenure was the 2012 Bessman Okafor trial, where Okafor was sentenced to death for the murder of Alex Zaldivar. That case is currently undergoing a resentencing after the Florida Supreme Court reversed an earlier ruling over whether a jury must be unanimous in a death sentence recommendation.
In his time as state attorney, Ashton touted a focus on domestic violence, increasing the diversity of the office, and also upgrading the office technologically.
Ashton’s term in office was also clouded by scandal in 2015 when his name appeared in data hacked from a cheating website called Ashley Madison.
Ashton admitted to signing up for the site using his personal computer but accessing a WiFi network at the Orange Court Courthouse that was available to anyone. Ashton said he committed no crime, did not use taxpayer-funded equipment, and refused to resign from office.
In 2016, Ashton faced a challenge from Aramis Ayala, also a Democrat. Had no one else run in the election, the Democratic primary between Ashton and Ayala would have been open to all voters regardless of party.
However, a former prosecutor who had been fired by Ashton, William Vose, entered the race as a write-in candidate. This closed the primary to only Democratic voters. Ayala, a more liberal candidate who championed criminal justice reform, beat Ashton by more than 11,000 votes.
In a 2017 interview with News 6′s Mike DeForest, Vose said he did it on purpose to get Ashton out of office.
“(Ashton) proceeded to destroy the 24 years of organizational development we had done to make us the most effective and efficient prosecutor’s office in the state,” said Vose. “That is why I participated in his loss.”
In 2018, Ashton was elected a judge for the Ninth Circuit. According to his court website, Ashton was assigned to domestic violence cases in Orange County from 2019-2020. Since 2021 he has been handling Orange County civil cases.
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