Central Florida state attorney won’t seek 2020 re-election

ORLANDO, Fla. – A Florida prosecutor who got into a legal fight with the governor for her blanket refusal to seek the death penalty says she won’t seek re-election in 2020.

In a video posted on Facebook Tuesday, Aramis Ayala said her decision stems from her opposition to the death penalty and a state Supreme Court decision that upheld the reassignment of dozens of cases to another state attorney because of her position on capital punishment.

Ayala said she’s proud to have helped “raise the standard of prosecutorial responsibility.”

She defeated incumbent state attorney Jeff Ashton in 2016. The next year, she announced that she wouldn’t seek the death penalty in cases handled by her office, saying it had been unevenly applied and wasn’t a deterrent for serious crime.

That sparked a legal fight with then-Gov. Rick Scott, which went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.