The five voter guide prosecutions were filed on July 6, 2026 in the circuit court, and four of the five defendants were charged with misdemeanors and nothing else. Section 34.01 of the Florida Statutes puts misdemeanor jurisdiction in the county court. Section 26.012(2)(d) gives a circuit court that jurisdiction only where the count is joined with a felony charged against the same defendant.

One of the five faced a felony count and the other four did not, which is the ground on which a judge dismissed those four sets of counts on Oct. 2. What follows concerns the cost of the court chosen on July 6, and the fact that nobody has yet said who chose it.

The margin the filing had

The conduct alleged in the charging documents runs from Aug. 1 to Aug. 15, 2024, and a first degree misdemeanor carries a two year limitation under section 775.15(2)(c). Subsection (3) of that section provides that time starts to run the day after the offense is committed. The earliest alleged date therefore put the deadline at Aug. 2, 2026, and the latest put it at Aug. 16.

The charges were filed on July 6, 2026, which is 27 days before the earlier of those deadlines and 41 days before the later one. The dismissal came on Oct. 2, by which point the deadline had been gone for between 47 and 61 days, depending only on which alleged date is used.

The arithmetic is set out here rather than asserted, because it is the whole of the matter for a reader. No second attempt was ever built into this filing, and once the counts sat in a court that could not hear them, the period for bringing them anywhere else had already run out.

What the state said when it tried to repair it

The state moved on Oct. 7 to vacate the dismissal and send the charges down to the county court, and it asked the judge to preserve the original July 6 filing date. The stated ground for preserving that date was that dismissing and refiling would raise questions about the time limit.

“Transfer would allow the existing prosecution to proceed in the proper court and avoid additional limitations issues that could arise from dismissal and refiling,” Assistant State Attorney Ralph Yazdiya wrote in that motion. That sentence is the prosecuting office’s own account of the position it had reached by October, and Circuit Judge William E. Davis denied the motion two days later, on Oct. 9.

The one route left open is section 775.15(4)(c), which extends the period three months from a dismissal. It reaches only a document that was filed inside the period and then set aside for a defect in its content or form. Three months from Oct. 2 is Jan. 2, 2027, and whether counts filed in a court without jurisdiction are a defect of that kind has not been settled by any order here that the public can read.

The only reason for the choice that appears in a document

The state placed all five defendants under a single circuit court case number, and Judge Davis addressed that arrangement directly when he refused the transfer. He wrote that the single number had been approved for administrative tracking and case management only, and that it was not a finding that the five defendants had been properly joined.

That is the only explanation for the selection of court this newsroom can point to in a record, and what it describes is an administrative convenience rather than a jurisdictional basis. The word approved also carries a plain implication, which is that somebody asked for the arrangement in the first place.

No document establishes whether the choice was a mistake or a decision. The question has a definite answer, and that answer sits inside one office, which has now been asked for it in writing.

Where the answer is not

This newsroom requested the case file from the Office of the State Attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit on Oct. 7. The office acknowledged the request that same day under tracking number 01PR-2026-16441-A. It answered sixteen days later, on Oct. 23, with 14 evidence items running to 165.6 MB.

The production is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigative file in case EI-32-0288, the Election Crimes Unit matter opened on Aug. 12, 2024 on a complaint from the county Republican Executive Committee. Serials 1 through 36 of that file are complete in it, and with the report came campaign finance schedules, bank and credit card subpoena returns, 30 pages of photographs and six recorded interviews.

What the production does not contain is an information, a charging document, or any record of the charging decision. This paper searched the investigative text for State Attorney, probable cause, charging decision, filed in circuit and filed in county, and not one of those phrases appears anywhere in it. The only court captions in the whole production belong to investigative subpoenas issued out of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit.

That is consistent with what the file is, because it is the investigating agency’s own work and it closes before any prosecutor selected a court. The document that would name the person who chose is the information itself, and an information is a court record rather than an agency record.

The clerk’s Benchmark court records system was asked for it on Friday at four separate entry points, one of them the search address that the clerk’s own website links to. All four answered with HTTP 403 and the words “The requested resource requires authentication.” The criminal docket of this county is not reachable without credentials, so the filing that started all of this is not a document a reader here can call up and check.

The question that is outstanding

On Oct. 22 this newsroom sent the Eighth Circuit five written questions and asked that they join the same tracking number. The second of them asks who decided to file the misdemeanor counts in circuit court in July 2026, and whether the office considers that filing to have been an error.

The stated deadline for a reply is 5 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 26, and nothing received from the office so far answers it. Four sets of counts against three sitting officeholders and a campaign consultant may now be unbringable. The reason is neither the evidence in the file nor any ruling on whether the allegations were true.

The reason is the name of the court at the top of a document filed on July 6. This paper will print the office’s answer in full when it arrives, and will report that there was none if none comes.

A criminal charge is an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The Tattler tracks the cases it reports and publishes the outcome, including when charges are dropped or reduced. If you are named in this story and the case has resolved, write to corrections@stjohnstattler.org and we will update it.
What we asked, and what came back.
  • Office of the State Attorney, Eighth Judicial Circuit (publicrecords@sao8.org, cc copelandh@sao8.org), asked 2026-10-22, deadline 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26. Five written questions, asked to be added to records request 01PR-2026-16441-A. Whether the State intends to refile any of these counts in county court. Who made the decision to file the misdemeanor counts in circuit court in July 2026, and whether the office considers that filing to have been an error. Whether the State takes the position that s. 775.15(4)(c) applies to these dismissals. Whether the dismissal of the felony with prejudice ends this office's involvement, and if the misdemeanors are refiled whether this office would prosecute them. The next scheduled court date in any of the five cases. No answer to any of the five as of publication. The office did answer this paper's separate chapter 119 request on Oct. 23, sixteen days after acknowledging it, with 14 evidence items described in this story. A transmittal of documents does not reach any of the five questions.