The top prosecutor in Orlando, Florida, took to a podium outside the Orange County courthouse last week to outline a new policy: Her office would no longer seek the death penalty in any capital case. The prosecutor, State Attorney Aramis Ayala, told assembled reporters that seeking the death penalty is “not in the best interests of this community or in the interest of justice.” After considerable research, she said, she had concluded that capital punishment offers no empirical benefits to society: It is not a deterrent, it neither enhances public safety nor protects law enforcement officers from violence, and it costs millions more — in litigation and housing — to kill a defendant than it does to confine them behind bars for life. And in Florida in particular, she said, the death penalty system has been the “cause of considerable legal chaos, uncertainty, and turmoil.” Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court last year found the state’s capital sentencing scheme unconstitutional. Florida’s highest court subsequently concluded that more than 200 of the 381 inmates on death row in the state could be eligible for new sentencing hearings as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. Even with the system in such disarray, Ayala’s decision to stop seeking the death penalty was bound to be controversial. But the announcement has kicked off a firestorm — especially due to its impact on a high-profile murder case, in which a man named Markeith Loyd is accused of killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and, perhaps more politically potent, an Orlando police officer. The controversy sets Ayala, the first black elected state attorney in Florida, who campaigned last year on a promise to reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system, against Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, and the knee-jerk “tough-on-crime” politics still prominent in the state.

Photo: Red Huber/The Orlando Sentinel/AP

Loyd opened fire on his ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon, and her brother last December, killing Dixon and critically injuring her brother before fleeing the scene. Several weeks later, he shot and killed police Lt. Debra Clayton when she approached him in a parking lot. He was finally arrested after a nine-day manhunt. At a press conference with Ayala standing behind him, Orlando Police Chief John Mina expressed relief that Loyd had finally been apprehended. “I was extremely happy that this dangerous person was off the street,” he said. Last week, Mina told the Orlando Sentinel that he is now “furious” with Ayala’s decision not to seek death for Loyd. “If there was [ever] a case for the death penalty, this is the case.” The Loyd case prompted Gov. Scott to intervene. On the same day that Ayala announced her new policy, Scott asked her to recuse herself from prosecuting the case, and then, when she declined to do so, issued an executive order to forcibly remove and replace her by bringing in a prosecutor from another jurisdiction. “She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case,” he said in a press statement. Scott’s decision has prompted its own backlash, with more than 130 legal scholars — including two former chief justices of the Florida Supreme Court — signing on to a letter to the governor challenging the legality of his interference. Notably, Dixon’s mother has said she supports Ayala’s decision not to seek the death penalty for her daughter’s murderer. Lt. Clayton’s family has not commented publicly on the matter.

Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP