A sitdown with State Attorney Amira Fox
(Continuing our series on local politicians and government administrators, we present an update with 20th Judicial District State Attorney Amira Fox)
Since we last sat down in the summer of 2018 with 20th Judicial District State Attorney Amira Fox, a lot has changed in her life. At that time she had not yet been elected to her current position, but had been immersed in the study of the law and practicing it for years. Since she won the election she has not only continued the trend of our circuit having the lowest crime rate of all circuits in Florida (this is our circuit’s ninth year of achieving that honor), she has worked to make it even lower.
“Every year we improve a little bit in the statistics, and a lot as far as violent crimes,” she said. “In 1990 when I became a prosecutor, our circuit’s population was half of what it is now, but the crime rate was double what it is now. That’s how much we’ve changed. Now we are recognizing what’s important in criminal justice – what requires a long sentence and what does not, and which offenders can be rehabilitated. If you’re a violent person, you have to be incarcerated. On the other hand, a large portion of offenders can be helped and rehabilitated, and hopefully it will bring about less recidivism. After I was elected I looked to what I could do to make sure we didn’t just rest at the top … I wanted the statistics to be even lower. I had to realize what our biggest challenges were as a circuit and at this time it is the opioid epidemic, and fentanyl coming into the picture.”
Fentanyl is a powerful drug with two uses – one is medical; it is commonly used and prescribed. The second use for fentanyl is more sinister, as drug dealers use it to “cut” other drugs and get more money for less product.
“The first thing that needed to be done was to try to prevent drug dealing,” Amira said. “On the other hand, you have to punish harshly those who sell drugs, knowing that the deadly fentanyl is inside the drug. Dealers sometimes cut or mix fentanyl in other drugs for a cheap and very powerful high. And now it’s not just being mixed with traditional drugs like heroin, but also in recreational drugs like marijuana and cocaine. These are drugs that many people’s children or grandchildren might ingest. Now it is a problem facing people from all walks of life. Fentanyl has put a new face on the drug wars.”
In fact, fentanyl is so dangerous it poses a problem as evidence in a court case, as no one wants to be near it. This is not medical-grade Fentanyl we’re talking about, by the way. This is a drug that people buy from places like Mexico and China … and it is much, much more powerful that prescription Fentanyl. Just a few grains of street Fentanyl can cause a severe reaction or even death.
A change that Amira has brought about regarding Fentanyl and how offenders are charged is that if someone dies of an overdose, and it can be proven that a certain defendant sold the drugs that killed the person, they will be charged with first-degree murder.
Drugs are, in fact, the basis of most crimes committed in the 20th judicial district. Robberies and burglaries are committed in the name of drugs as are violent crimes involving guns.
“At the root of it all, most of the time, is drugs,” Amira said. “Because of this I created a NETFORCE – a Narcotics Enforcement Task Force. All five sheriffs are involved. Drug dealers don’t just stay within their jurisdictional boundaries, but our law enforcement agencies do have boundaries. I have a five-county boundary, and I put together this task force that works under my five-county jurisdiction.”
Operatives can go outside their home counties and work together in large, long-term drug operations that deal with drug trafficking and conspiracy to traffic. Most operations take a year or longer to complete, with dozens and dozens of people arrested at the end of each operation. These operations include the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Homeland Security, as well as the 20th judicial circuit’s team. The name of the game is trying to find the bigger source of the drugs, which is what it is all about – dismantling the organization starting at the mid level and working all the way up to the top.
The 20th judicial district has numerous departments within it. There is a Special Victim’s Unit, and in Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties each circuit court judge has an SVU attorney assigned to them. That attorney handles all SVU cases on their judge’s docket. Amira said they are incredibly difficult cases, as you can imagine, and they take a lot of time. The circuit also has centralized attorneys that travel the whole circuit who handle crimes including homicides, economic crime and post-conviction cases.
They also have, in Lee County, they have firearms attorneys assigned to the judges, as there are more of those cases there, and Amira has also created another department – the cold case homicide unit.
“We modeled after the CCSO cold case homicide unit. Since the time we formed that, we have two investigators and a very experienced homicide attorney,” she said. “We have 16 defendants charged with cold case homicides since we formed that unit. I’m very proud of that, it’s very successful.”
Amira was born in Alexandra, Virginia to a father who worked for the International Monetary Fund and a homemaker mother. She loved the outdoors, and she went to the beach to sit and read every chance she got … a trait which eventually brought her to Florida.
Amira attended Fox Hunt High School in Alexandria, and then attended American University in Washington, D.C., where she received her bachelor’s degree in international studies and economics. However, things began to shift with a life-changing trip to the store.
“When I was in college, my first purchase was a very small black-and-white television,” she recalled. “It broke two weeks later, but I had purchased the extended warranty. I took it back to the store and they told me the fine print said the warranty didn’t apply to that problem. I was already very interested in the law, but after going through that I realized if I was an attorney I could help other people who had the same problems. That was a turning point for me, and I decided to go to law school. It was part of the driving force that got me here.”
By the end of her second year of law school, though, her focus had shifted from consumer law to international law and finally, to being completely immersed in criminal law.
Amira received her juris doctorate in 1990. Just days later, on June 1, she moved down to Florida, where she immediately started working as a prosecutor in the Lee County office of the 20th judicial circuit. It was her dream job, to be a prosecutor who lived on the coast.
“The first offer I got that fit the bill was in the state attorney’s office for the 20th judicial circuit, and my first assignment was in the misdemeanor division,” she said. “Eventually I went to the juvenile division, then to the felony division, and then I started to learn how to do murder cases, first-degree murder cases and death penalty case.”
In the late 1990s she was promoted to running the Hendry-Glades office of the State Attorney, and in 1999 she was promoted to running the Collier County office, where she was the first female to serve in that position. She was there for a couple of years but eventually went into private practice for a time. She returned six years later and was employed as the deputy chief assistant. When the chief assistant state attorney retired, she took on that role. She has since become the state attorney for the entire 20th judicial district.
Amira is married to Mike, and together they have a rather large family. Amira and her first husband, Lee County Judge Andy Swett, had two children – Drew and Alyssa. Almost 20 years ago she married Mark, who worked for the Collier County Sheriff’s Office for 30 years, and he had two children: Matthew and Kaitlyn.
Amira is on the ballot for the upcoming elections; the primary in August and the general election in November. At this time she is the only filed candidate for the seat.
