Gov. Ron DeSantis’ request for a statewide grand jury to investigate imaginary “crimes and wrongs” in relation to the COVID-19 vaccines is a gross abuse of a process meant to serve justice rather than the schemes of an insanely ambitious and irresponsible politician.
The Florida Supreme Court would disgrace itself and debase the judiciary by granting his petition. It has already given him two statewide grand juries for his political purposes, but the latest one is beyond wrong because it’s so potentially deadly.
Anything that discourages COVID-19 vaccinations, as this surely would, adds to the national COVID death toll, which is still relatively high at nearly 3,000 people a week and rising again. In Florida, the disease has claimed at least 83,200 lives, a figure almost equal to the total population of Deerfield Beach.
Vaccination rates are already in serious decline. Only 13.5% of Americans over age 5 are fully vaccinated and boosted, according to the CDC. That has been brought about not simply by COVID fatigue, but also by the negativism of DeSantis and other opportunistic politicians.
National publicity is plainly the governor’s goal, as he demonstrated by appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News propaganda platform hours after announcing the grand jury.
Presidential ploy
This should erase any lingering doubts that DeSantis intends to run for president. Two probable targets of his probe are his principal potential rivals — former President Donald Trump, whose finest achievement was development and distribution of the coronavirus vaccines in record time, and President Joe Biden, who vigorously promotes vaccination.
DeSantis’ grand jury request is larded with speculation more appropriate to QAnon conspiracy theories than a court filing and resembles Trump’s own unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The governor’s pretext to investigate the development, marketing and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines is propaganda cloaked in hypothesis, innuendo and supposition, all meant to appeal to the vaccine resistance among right-wing science deniers and to reinforce DeSantis’ mantra that his administration stands for “freedom.”
The COVID-19 vaccines constitute one of recent history’s greatest scientific success stories. Before they became available, the streets of our largest cities echoed 24/7 with ambulance sirens and corpses were overflowing from morgues and stacked into refrigerated trucks. Since the pandemic began, there have been 99.2 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and 1,080,472 deaths.
How quickly DeSantis expects the public to forget.
Contrary to his insinuations, neither the manufacturers nor the government have ever maintained that there are not serious side effects in a small fraction of cases. That is true of any drug, even aspirin. The risks must be weighed against the good they do. With the COVID vaccines, the benefit-to-risk ratios are overwhelmingly positive.
His petition, which you can read online at flgov.com (under the media category and news release archive for Dec. 13), exaggerates the disadvantages and even blames the vaccines for coincidences such as shingles and appendicitis, which are not recognized as side effects.
Just say no, justices
Florida’s statewide grand jury statute is permissive, not mandatory. It says the Supreme Court “may” order one to be impaneled. But it also implies that the governor requesting one should have some evidence of actual “crimes or wrongs … of a multi-circuit nature,” not just hypothetical ones.
Although four of the seven justices owe their appointments to DeSantis, the entire court’s responsibility is to the people of Florida. That means protecting the judiciary from becoming a bully pulpit for a governor’s naked ambitions.
Nineteen statewide grand juries were convened before DeSantis arrived. All were focused on real crimes. Nearly all were initiated by Florida’s attorneys general, who actually employ and nominally supervise the statewide prosecutors who serve as counsel to those juries. But like almost everyone else in Tallahassee, Attorney General Ashley Moody has become DeSantis’ collaborator rather than the independent counterweight she’s supposed to be.
DeSantis and Moody have already weaponized the statewide grand jury to an extent never attempted by any predecessors.
A history of misuse
The first one, impaneled to investigate the 2018 Parkland mass shooting, singled out four Broward School Board members for him to suspend, but none was accused of a specific crime. Statewide grand juries are restricted to multi-jurisdictional “crimes or wrongs.” There was no such suggestion in the Parkland tragedy, which took place entirely in Broward and could have been probed by a grand jury from within the 17th Circuit.
His second statewide grand jury, appointed to dramatize illegal immigration — another DeSantis hot-button issue — issued an interim report Dec. 6 spelling out the text of a proposed law that would make it a third-degree felony to transport, harbor or shield anyone who is illegally in the United States. It contains a “willful blindness” provision allowing the conviction of people for simply not asking the right questions, and they would be held without bail until a first court appearance. On its face, the draft is as unconstitutional as the DeSantis anti-riot law that a federal judge has blocked.
Immigration enforcement is presently only a federal issue — and it should stay that way.
In the case of COVID-19, the governor’s political motivation extends to influencing the selection of prospective grand jurors. He wants the Supreme Court to designate five circuits in Tampa Bay and west-central Florida as the “base operating area” for the convenience of witnesses and prospective jurors. That region is notably less skeptical of the governor and his politics than South Florida or Greater Orlando.
Grand juries, supposedly the “conscience of the community,” have acquired a bad reputation, as expressed in the cliché that any competent prosecutor can get one to indict a ham sandwich. They should not be used for political witch hunts.
If DeSantis wanted to devote a statewide grand jury to a real scandal with a legitimate purpose, it would be to investigate how dark money groups linked to Florida Power & Light financed three spoiler candidacies in recent state Senate elections. But he has had nothing to say about that.
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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
