The former state prosecutor who went after accused child murderer Casey Anthony is himself now the subject of a criminal investigation involving a child.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week issued an executive order appointing a special prosecutor to investigate accusations of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 16 and failure to report child abuse against Circuit Judge Jeffrey Ashton in Orlando.
DeSantis appointed State Attorney Brian Haas, who has jurisdiction over Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties, after State Attorney Andrew Bain in Orlando voluntarily disqualified himself to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
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DeSantis’s executive order also noted that Ashton’s wife, Rita, is included in the probe for failing to report child abuse, as is David Ashton, who faces allegations of lewd conduct on a child under 16.
WOFL reported that the Winter Park Police Department is investigating the case.
Other than that, few details are known. Local media in Orlando reported that Ashton presided over cases on Friday.
Before becoming a judge, Ashton was best known for failing to convict Anthony in the death of her daughter, 2-year-old Caylee Anthony.
Prosecutors alleged that Casey Anthony killed her daughter in 2008 because she no longer wanted to be a parent. During the trial that ended the three-year-long case, they offered evidence that Anthony’s home computer contained evidence of searching for the term “chloroform” and that the trunk of Anthony’s car contained signs of human decomposition.
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Yet the defense raised enough doubts about the quality of both the evidence and investigation that a jury acquitted her of murder charges.
After the trial it was revealed that the Anthony computer also contained a search for the term “foolproof suffocation” on the day Caylee disappeared.
The term appeared during a search that used a password-protected account set up by Casey Anthony.
Ashton, a Democrat who was elected state attorney in 2012, lost a re-election bid in 2016 to Aramis Ayala, a radical Democratic leftist backed by billionaire George Soros.
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