from staff
State Attorney Angela Corey is a Jacksonville native who has been a prosecutor in Northeast Florida for over 28 years. She attended Florida State University for her undergraduate degree and the University of Florida for law school.
She was the first prosecutor in the history of the Fourth Judicial Circuit to earn Board Certification from the Florida Bar in Criminal Trial Law. Over her career, Corey has earned dozens of recognitions, served as an adjunct professor at Florida Coastal School of Law and has belonged to several local community and civic organizations.
Thursday, Corey sat down with the editorial staff of the Daily Record and talked about her first year in office, her staff and even a few things most may not know.
You have been in office for 14 months. Assess that time.
I love it. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s such important work. We have an excellent staff of lawyers and support staff. They do a phenomenal job.
What grade would you give your office right now?
I’d give our office a solid B. I think we are driven by the correct motives. We have achieved some success that is measurable and some that is immeasurable. By measurable, I mean not just the sheer number of jury trials, but what’s behind those jury trials. It’s the quality behind the numbers.
Why not an A?
Because I think there’s always room for improvement and until those improvements are made, I will not give us an A.
After your first six months, you put out a list of all the changes that were made. What about the last six months? What’s changed, what’s different?
Our intern program has continued to thrive and they’re doing more new things and they’re getting the taxpayers a recouping of their money on worthless check cases, still. So, there are some brand new projects that are continuing and gaining in results. The other new things I think we’ve done are just doing more to go paperless, where we’ve succeeded. And just continue to stay on top of trials, and especially our gun and murder cases.
What is a typical day like?
Last week I was here every day at 7 a.m., but most days I am here between 8:30 and 8:45 and I am here well past dark. I don’t mind the long hours. There is a lot of laughing, a lot of debating. We attack problems together. We gather in this room (the conference room) so we can talk better. Sometimes, we have rabid disagreements on a case.
How much of your day is spent as an administrator as opposed to being a lawyer?
On a daily basis, it’s probably 50/50. Recently, I had a trial for seven days in a row and was in court until about 12:30. I’d come back here, eat lunch and spend the rest of the day having piecemeal meetings. The joke is: I type three lines of an e-mail and, boom, somebody’s in my office.
You mentioned gun crimes. The Major Crimes Unit (that she established and specializes in prosecution of gun-related violence) ... how is that coming along?
It’s coming along great. We added another lawyer and added a division chief in the felony division ranks. The Major Crimes Unit is phenomenal and my directors of that unit and our senior division chief work just as hard, if not harder, than all the lawyers. Take Dan Skinner, for example. He’s running the division, so he’s got four lawyers for whom he’s responsible. They tried more cases than they’ve ever tried before ... and he’s tried several big cases.
It’s been said we can’t arrest ourselves out of the crime problem. Do you think we can prosecute ourselves out of the problem?
I don’t think the Constitution was set up to allow us to use arrest and prosecution as a way to prevent crime. What we have to do is make good, solid arrests on good cases and prosecute those cases based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If we made it our goal to prosecute our way out of crime we would end up prosecuting cases we shouldn’t prosecute.
I think we have to shift our focus and look at each individual case. You have to take a seven-time convicted felon and look at his criminal career path. You focus more energy on that kind of person and continue to rehabilitate the ones you can.
If you always just go for the maximum penalty and say ‘see how tough we are’ — that doesn’t accomplish much in the long run.
We can only prosecute our way out of the problem if we are focused on habitual offenders and crimes that are so heinous or so violent. If someone does something — it may be the first time in their life — but if it is so egregious then we have to focus energy on prosecution.
Is your office suffering the same funding issues as the Public Defender?
No, because we are set up differently. Actually, I am very comfortable with what they (the State) did this year. They cut my salary and cut our entire budget. But, we are able to sustain around here.
What made you pursue a career as an attorney?
I was going to be an oceanographer. I went to FSU but I couldn’t deal with honors chemistry so I went to the business school. I loved marketing and I was going to run a big corporation but I knew a couple of law professors who said I should go to law school. I said ‘yeah right’ but I went. Then after I got out of law school, I didn’t think I wanted to be a lawyer so I tried to go into fashion merchandising and marketing. They laughed at me at May-Cohens and told me I had my law degree and I should go do something at the courthouse.
Why did you become a prosecutor?
A lot of my friends were prosecutors. I was working at a firm in Jacksonville Beach doing insurance defense work so I got to watch a lot of trials. I liked doing that work but I’d see my friends who I went to law school with trying criminal cases in the courtroom and I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I left private practice and was hired by (former State Attorney) Ed Austin and I have never looked back.
Is there a judgeship in your future?
No, I’ve never really had an interest. The joke is, it’s because I don’t want to be fair and impartial. I’m as passionate an advocate as you’ll find.
If you could change one thing in the community that would make criminal prosecution obsolete what would it be?
Accountability on the part of parents. They have to know where their children are and what they’re doing and who they’re hanging out with.
We have a lot of good parents who don’t realize their child is on the brink of becoming a dangerous criminal. When it happens it just stuns them. The mother of one of the University Christian students did everything a mother should do. She did everything in the investigation that you would want a responsible parent to do. She has got to just be devastated. We’re not sure why parents are missing the warning signs.
Children need to be accountable to their parents and parents need to be accountable for their children. If that were to happen I think we could cut out a lot of what we deal with. What has happened has taken a couple of generations.
What really concerns me is kids’ alter egos that you see on social media sights. You can see what appears to be an otherwise normal kid put things on those sites that make you wonder what they were thinking. They don’t think they’re accountable for anything they say, do or post on-line. They think it’s just one big continuous party.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum recently released some statistics based on an assessment that showed 1,100 gangs and 49,000 gang members in Florida in 2009. Your office has worked with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on Gun Gang Violent Crimes Task Forces last year. What’s your take on the gang issue in Northeast Florida?
We feel like JSO is very much on the top of local gangs. They have come over and given us several briefings on it. I’ve gone over to the Gang Unit and met with them before. It was one of our accomplishments of the last six months of last year, was the gang roundup. A little irony, I was on a radio show where people were allowed to call in and this uncle called in and said, “Ya’ll arrested my nephew based on a tattoo he has.” It told him to get a hold of me and we’ll look into it. People are stunned by how our gang laws are so tough. They weren’t prepared for them and it’s almost like our “10-20-Life” laws. “You mean I can get arrested for a tattoo?” If you’re part of a gang you can. When we did that joint effort with JSO and everybody, it sent a few little shock waves to other gangs, knowing that we would be willing to take on that racketeering aspect. It’ll be something we do moving on.
How do you get away from the job?
I go “junktique-ing” as they call it, antiqueing. Estate sales, thrift stores, you know, looking for that one little special find. The fall is taken up with Jaguars games and that’s a whole activity in itself. Sports, I love football. I follow it from beginning to end, but really, truly it all goes back to my family and church activities.
Anything you’re especially proud of in your first year?
I think some of the statistical milestones are worthy. I think the fact we’ve achieved 320 jury trials last year is amazing. We did that with the cooperation of the criminal circuit bench ... they were in trial literally every week, all week and we appreciate that. I think our two new units have worked out extremely well, focusing on DUIs and misdemeanor domestic violence. Outside of that, we’re just going to keep working because it’s what we love to do.
Tell us something about you that most don’t know.
I’m an AC/DC fan (her cell ring tone is the band’s “Back in Black”). I recently went to the AC/DC concert and loved every minute of it. I am still an ‘80s rock music fan.
I want to learn to ballroom dance. And, I have landed on and taken off from an aircraft carrier.