By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

Jeff Ashton may be famously known as the prosecutor on the child murder trial of Orlando mother Casey Anthony, but that case was not the driving force behind his decision to challenge his former boss, Lawson Lamar, for Orange-Osceola State Attorney.

Rather, after nearly three decades as a state attorney prosecutor, Ashton disagreed with Lamar’s running of the office and began thinking of tossing his hat into the ring in 2007, three years before his retirement.

“Of all the things I could think of – private practice, teaching, business – being state attorney was the one that really excited me,” he said. “Back then, I didn’t have the name recognition that Lawson did and I really wasn’t in a position to challenge him. Then, (the) Casey Anthony (case) fell into my lap.”

When Ashton retired last July, after Anthony was acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Marie, area attorneys and community leaders approached him about things they felt are wrong with the current State Attorney’s Office.

“I found that I agreed with them, that they were the same things that I had problems with,” he said. “They convinced me that ‘you are now in the position to get that message out’ and challenge Lawson, who everyone sort of perceives as unchallengeable.”

Ashton described his relationship with Lamar as “really good” while he was working at the office. Separating his personal feelings about Lamar as a person compared with the way he runs the office became paramount to Ashton’s campaign.

“In the last 10 or 15 years, I had seen the office become increasing bureaucratic, increasing not focused on what I consider to be the core focus of the office, which is what goes on in the courtroom,” he said. “I just saw this philosophy coming to the forefront, which is, ‘let’s be tough. If we say we try anything, it doesn’t matter if we win or lose as long as we look tough.’

“I just don’t believe that’s our job, is simply to try cases without an intelligent analysis of them.”

Instead, if elected, Ashton wants to bring the decision-making back to the attorneys in the office and spend time with each of them helping them to hone their skills as prosecutors while moving forward with cases with sufficient evidence.

Ashton plans to change the middle management system and introduce philosophies and guidelines allowing attorneys to make their own decisions about their cases without having to confer with higher management at every change.

“In order to have justice done, you need the person closest to the case to have the ability to make a decision,” he said. “We as lawyers should not be trying cases we know will not succeed.”

Ashton referenced Osceola Clerk of Court Malcom Thompson’s assault case, which he was acquitted of in April, as an example of a case where the evidence pointed at more of a “mean boss” than a criminal act.

“No matter how offensive the conduct may be or how the victim may seem to need some retribution, it it’s not a crime, it’s not a crime. Our job as state attorneys is to make sure the victim deserves his day in court under the law, not emotionally,” he said, adding that trying cases like Thompson’s uses valuable funding. “You’re wasting resources. They had four lawyers on a misdemeanor case? We didn’t have four lawyers for Casey Anthony.”

Additionally, Ashton would expand the Osceola County branch of the office, appointing a chief assistant state attorney and a group of prosecutors to the county rather than manage the office from Orlando and rotate attorneys, a situation he said prosecutors dislike.

“He (Lamar)  has turned Osceola County into a commuter office where people are basically rotated through,” Ashton said. “It doesn’t give the prosecutors a sense of community. Osceola County deserves to be recognized as a unique community, not just an afterthought of Orange County.”

As for Ashton’s most famous case, campaign polling shows a majority of voters blame the jury the most for the acquittal of Casey Anthony, then Lamar and lastly Ashton.

If the trial didn’t give him name recognition needed for the campaign, his book, “Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony”, and the TV movie being made based on the book, with veteran Hollywood actor Rob Lowe as Ashton, certainly has.

Ashton considers Lowe’s portrayal of himself an “upgrade” to reality and looks forward to watching the film, which includes scenes based on Ashton’s home life with his wife, Rita, and their six children.

“How can you not watch something that was such a big part of your life?” Ashton said. “I’m looking forward to it.”