"You should be fired:" Schofield prosecutors and judge blasted by two more fellow "conservative" prosecutors

"The Prosecutors" say Jerry Hill should have fired John Aguero for his "unethical" immunity meeting with Jeremy Scott, which "corrupted the whole thing" and was enabled by Judge Keith Spoto.

At best, astronomically stupid. Just mind-bogglingly idiotic that you would do this. I mean, you should be fired for doing this, at least. Best case, you’re fired. How could you meet alone with this person who has been potentially implicated in a murder? …

… Why is this happening in John Aguero’s office? If he offered him immunity, the DA [Jerry Hill] should be able to testify to it. Remember Aguero is just an assistant district attorney. He’s not the main guy. So he offered immunity to a convicted murderer for another murder and never asked his boss about it? …

…If [Aguero] is telling the truth, he should have been fired immediately because this is so insane. And he has corrupted the whole thing through this action he took.”

— Former Trump judicial appointee and current federal prosecutor Brett Talley addressing the behavior of John Aguero in the Leo Schofield case.

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Current/former Alabama state and federal prosecutors Alice Lacour and Brett Talley co-host a podcast aptly named “The Prosecutors.” They’re speaking in the clip I’ve posted above.

On their podcast, Lacour and Talley review and assesses high-profile cases through a prosecutor’s lens. Right now, they’re in the midst of an 8-episode deep dive into the Leo Schofield case. They released episode 7 earlier this week. The final episode comes out Monday.

Unloading on the toxic Schofield triangle of Aguero, Hill, and Spoto

Lacour and Talley both have clear right wing political and legal credentials; but I find the podcast itself admirably apolitical and quite measured in its review of evidence and guilt. And that makes the nine-minute clip from Episode 7 I posted above extraordinary.

Lacour and Talley are not measured in assessing how Schofield prosecutor John Aguero, former 10th Circuit State Attorney Jerry Hill, and Circuit Judge Keith Spoto behaved and performed in the years following 2004, when they learned that previously unidentified fingerprints found on Michelle Schofield’s car in 1987 belonged to convicted murderer Jeremy Scott.

In the clip, Talley and Lacour absolutely savage lead Schofield prosecutor John Aguero by name. And by role, rather than name, they savage Hill and Spoto with only slightly less vehemence.

Aguero is dead; but Hill and Spoto still collect large checks from Florida taxpayers and take part in the administration of justice in Polk County. Until my Florida Bar complaint against him last year, Jerry Hill was still actively getting paid by the state to try to keep Leo Schofield in prison. He still makes $5,833 per month off taxpayers to handle parole requests for current 10th Circuit State Attorney (and Hill protege) Brian Haas. Think about all that when you listen to this clip.

Again, lest you think you’re listening to a couple of Billys here, consider that Lacour belongs to is featured as a Federalist Society contributor, the people who brought you Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, etc. And Talley was a Trump-appointee for a federal judgeship that fell through for various reasons, which seem to include conservative political blogging and saying some historically ignorant things about Nathan Bedford Forrest.

The strange Schofield justice and prosecutorial accountability coalition

So these two ain’t libs — just like former right wing prosecutors Scott Cupp and Florida Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers (chair of state senate’s criminal justice committee), who have publicly rejected Leo Schofield’s gross conviction, ain’t libs.

As Sen. Martin told Florida Parole commissioner about Schofield’s case last year:

Everything that I’ve seen about this case turns my stomach. I don’t know why Leo Schofield wasn’t released years ago when he went before this board.

You have the opportunity to release him immediately. He wasn’t released last time because he wasn’t remorseful. You cannot be remorseful for something you did not do. It’s not your job to consider guilt or innocence, but if you are going to consider whether someone is remorseful and whether they should be released today or should have been released years ago, you have to at least crack the transcript, wonder why the fingerprints of a serial killer were inside Michelle’s car and were never tested and never presented to the jury in Polk County over 30 years ago. I was 5-years-old of when Leo Schofield started doing time for this murder.

I stand by the criminal justice system here in the state of Florida. We’re one of the best on the planet. But there’s a whole lot of doubt right now about how good we are. You guys have the chance today to restore credibility to a system that thousands of people know an injustice happened and is continuing every single second that Leo Schofield is behind bars.

The Schofield justice and prosecutorial accountability coalition does not conform to partisan or ideological contours.

If Judge Keith Spoto had done his job

“And so this is an example of a judge getting something horribly wrong.”

That quote above from Alice Lacour is addressed directly to Polk Circuit Judge Keith Spoto.

Full disclosure: I know Keith Spoto a little. I coached his two outstanding sons, who are roughly my own son’s age, in youth sports at least once. They were a joy. Spoto and I chatted pleasantly at events over the years or as we watched our kids play in the same leagues. During COVID times, when I was an elected School Board member, Spoto sent me an angry email, as a parent, about in-person school reopening that either misunderstood or misrepresented my position. It was certainly his right to do so; but I perceived the email as rather self-indulgent, thoughtless, and lacking in judicial temperament. It was part of a mass email blast, and I didn’t answer it directly. I don’t think we’ve seen each other since.

I tell you all of that as context to this:

Keith Spoto, former 10-year prosecutor and Jerry Hill employee, is the main reason that Leo Schofield and the county that convicted him with uninformed jurors are in this seemingly inescapable feedback loop of judicial absurdity.

Why? Well, listen to the clip. And then consider this …

[Late clarification: It’s a bit murky to me which specific judge first denied Schofield an evidentiary hearing. Spoto did not become a circuit judge until 2008. He definitely presided over the actual evidentiary hearing that denied Schofield a new trial. So all that might be different about what comes next is the dates/timing. I will lock down with precision when I fully figure it out. I’ve struck-through timing-related issues that might be different.]

If Spoto had done his very important job, prosecutors in 2004 would have released and retried Leo Schofield, who was convicted of killing Michelle in 1989, based on the discovery of bombshell new fingerprint identification evidence in the case. Instead, Spoto wrongly denied Schofield even an evidentiary hearing and then ruled against a new trial when forced to hold an evidentiary hearing by an appeals court after years of wasted time.

If Keith Spoto had done his job, a fully-informed jury of Polk County citizens would have gotten a second chance in 2005 or so to deliver actual, fully-informed justice for Michelle Schofield in her 1987 killing. Instead, we were robbed of that chance by Aguero, Hill, and Spoto.

If Spoto had done his job, the fully-informed jurors would have considered how and why convicted murderer Jeremy Scott’s fingerprints were left on Michelle Schofield’s car the night she was stabbed to death in 1987.

If Spoto had done his job, Leo Schofield would have entered this new trial with competent representation, which would have pointed out the Scott fingerprints are the only physical evidence tying anyone to Michelle’s murder. They also would have investigated and pointed out the endless holes in the prosecution’s nonsensical theory of how Leo Schofield supposedly killed his wife.

If Spoto had done his job, he would have censured his former colleague (and maybe boss) John Aguero for unethical behavior in meeting alone and claiming to offer an undocumented immunity offer to Jeremy Scott after the fingerprints were discovered.

If former Hill-employed Spoto had done his job, he would have ordered Hill, Spoto’s old boss and Aguero’s boss, to testify about Aguero’s private meeting and supposed offer of immunity to Scott.

However, Judge Keith Spoto did not do his job. So we are where we are.

And make sure you listen to the clip all the way to the end to get full the force of the sarcasm of this statement from Trump-judicial appointee Talley about Spoto:

It’s not surprising to me that the same court that said “identifying the fingerprints in the car that are tied to someone who’s been convicted of one murder and tried and acquitted for another one is not new evidence and we shouldn’t have an evidentiary hearing” — it’s not surprising to me that once they had the hearing [Spoto] was like ‘meh, no biggie, I’m sure Aguero is telling the truth. Denied.”

[Late clarification: I’m not sure if Talley is using the word “court” to be synonymous with the word “judge.” As a non-lawyer, I have always understand court and judge to be interchangeable as words. But I may have interpreted incorrectly.]

Morality imprisoned by “law”

Very briefly, I want to add that I’ve recently become less critical of Schofield SAO appellate lawyer Victoria Avalon and Judge Kevin Abdoney, who denied a new trial after Scott began to confess — somewhat erratically, at first — to Michelle Schofield’s killing in the last 2010s.

Avalon and Abdoney could still, today, do a brave thing to bring about justice and accountability in this case. But I think they actually did their jobs, unlike Aguero, Hill, and Spoto, as best they understood them. I was developing that point-of-view myself already; and “The Prosecutors” have helped solidify it.

Avalon and Abdoney were drinking from the poisoned chalice of the Hill/Aguero/Spoto triangle’s behavior, which constrained their options and professional obligations.

That does not excuse either of them from listening to their consciences and acting to uphold the purpose of law when law has been “corrupted” by behavior like Aguero’s. But their conduct and decision-making is in a different ethical and professional universe than the “Schofield 3” of Aguero, Hill, and Spoto.

Still, if your professional, legal options and obligations are shaped downstream from blatantly corrupt and unethical behavior, I think you have obligation — as judge, prosecutor, public servant, and citizen — to reconsider your professional actions through a moral lens.

Justice and morality should not be prisoner to law — even though they often are precisely that in ways much harder to identify and fix than the corrupt atrocity perpetrated against Leo Schofield and Michelle Schofield.

The Florida Bar should make Jerry Hill testify about John Aguero’s closed door, no-lawyer “immunity” offer to Jeremy Scott

You would need to pay very, very close attention to remember this; but my still active Florida Bar complaint against Jerry Hill addresses the specific issue Talley and Lacour cite in unloading on “the Schofield 3.”

In addition to the specific counts I alleged against Hill, I called on the Florida Bar to appoint a special master or counsel to investigate Hill’s oversight of the Schofield case in its totality, Aguero’s immunity meeting included. This passage came near the end of my complaint; and I stand by it 110 percent today.

The Florida Bar should investigate what Jerry Hill knew about Aguero’s 2005 meeting. It should compel discovery of any records that have not been released concerning the supposed “immunity” offer and Scott’s claimed 2005 confession to Aguero. It should find the supposed notes in Aguero case folder. It should attempt to determine if Jeremy Scott is telling the truth.

If Jeremy Scott is telling the truth, Aguero perjured himself in 2010. And the public should know if Jerry Hill knew about it.

John Aguero died a few years ago. But Jerry Hill supervised him. And Hill should be questioned about Aguero’s potential perjury. What did Aguero tell Jerry Hill about what happened in the Aguero-Scott meeting? Is the meeting itself an example of misconduct, as defined below?

The prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in the ongoing wrongful conviction of Leo Schofield is so vast that it merits some sort of special counsel or review.

I am not sure how to request that in the context of a Bar complaint – but I am noting that request here for the record.

Moreover, I will be trying to get a comment from current State Attorney Brian Haas or his spokesman/to deputy Jacob Orr. I want to see if they will trash Brett Talley and Alice Lacour with same ferocity with which they trash Gilbert King and Leo Schofield, who is still living with what Aguero, Hill, and Spoto did to him and to justice circa 2004.

And let me just say this: I don’t relish speaking like this in public to people I know — and in Spoto’s case — like personally. But Hill and Spoto are the only living members of the Schofield 3. Their failure and misconduct didn’t just happen in the mid-2000s — and then end.

It is ongoing; and they are unapologetic. Jerry Hill literally tells the public “Fuck you,” while working for the public, when the public asks about his Schofield behavior.

Leo Schofield remains wrongfully imprisoned, suffering every day for Aguero’s corrupt acts for which Hill and Spoto provided impunity. Hill and Spoto are actively consigning an obviously innocent man to the eternity of history as the murderer of his wife. And they are collecting public checks to do it.

Someone has to hold them to account — even in it’s just in the grocery store line or baseball field.