Should a 1970s Florida law aimed at breaking up organized crime apply to a disgraced sheriff’s deputy who planted drugs on innocent people? That’s the issue before the Florida Supreme Court. Justices heard arguments in the case Wednesday.
Zachary Wester of Jackson County was working as a sheriff's deputy when he planted drugs on people during traffic stops. The scheme was discovered in 2018 by the Jackson County Sheriff's Department and Wester was arrested. In 2021, he was convicted on several charges, including the most serious ones: racketeering, also known as RICO.
His lawyers appealed the conviction, and a court tossed the racketeering charge on the grounds that it required at least two people participating in the scheme.
In arguments before the Florida Supreme Court Wednesday, the state pushed to keep the RICO charges in place, saying in Wester's case, the “other” party is the Sheriff’s Department, despite it not being a willing participant in Wester's crimes.
It’s an issue Chief Justice Carlos Muniz pressed the state’s Jason Muehloff on saying “I do think it implies a joint endeavor of some kind, and it could be that a previously licit thing has been tainted, which I do think is part of the broader context of the RICO thing, is kind of taking over legitimate things and turning them into illicit operations."
Muehloff responded, "I still think the concerns you have were met here—multiple people, whether it be the person who puts them in jail or when the prosecution comes, those were all involved in coordinating with Wester, again, not knowing that they’d done it.”
Wester's defense, Assistant Public defender Barbara Busharis, believes the racketeering charge should be tossed because, much like the lower appellate court ruled, Wester acted alone.
“It doesn’t logically follow that just because you are employed by a government entity or a company, that any predicate act you commit is going to give rise to a RICO violation," she told Justices.
Wester is currently serving a 12.5-year sentence and the Racketeering charges carried a minimum of more than 13 years. The lower appeals court has said if the racketeering charges are dropped, Wester should be resented. Following his arrest, local prosecutors dropped some 120 cases.
