Embarrassing dismissal of Miami commissioner’s corruption case raises questions | Opinion

The state has incredible power to deprive citizens of their civil rights, so that power should be used with caution.

In one way, we can read the decision by the Broward County State Attorney’s Office to drop corruption charges against former Miami Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla and lobbyist Bill Riley Jr. as proof the system works. Prosecutors should not waste the people’s time and money to pursue a criminal case without sufficient evidence.

But the political career of Díaz de la Portilla — who was removed from office after his arrest last September — has already been stained by the weight of the now-dropped bribery and money laundering accusations. And dropping the charges

doesn’t completely erase questions about the former commissioner’s alleged conduct, which, as prosecutors wrote in a memorandum explaining their decision to end the case, still “raised serious concerns.”

Regardless, the next time the government files a corruption case against a South Florida elected official, it will be that much easier for the accused to claim political persecution. Let’s not forget, however, that a recent corruption case that went to trial ended with former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez being found guilty.

For Díaz de la Portilla, who has claimed he would prevail all along, this no doubt feels like vindication.

For the the prosecution and investigators, it’s an embarrassment. Riley’s lawyer is asking a circuit judge to review the actions of lead investigator Karl Ross of the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission, who the defense accuses of misrepresenting the case.

It’s not uncommon for prosecutors to drop charges in a case as witnesses are deposed and new details emerge.

As the Broward State Attorney’s Office wrote in the close-out memo, “Witness testimony proved inconsistent and critical elements of the crimes charged cannot be supported by the evidence.”

But this wasn’t just any case. It involved a member of one of Miami’s most high-profile political families and received widespread public attention. Many people who had tired of his antics on the dais hailed Díaz de la Portilla’s arrest as a new beginning for the city.

The about-face by the Broward state attorney’s office last week notwithstanding, the investigation indicated that Díaz de la Portilla-affiliated political committees had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a wealthy couple pushing to build a sports complex on land owned by the city of Miami — donations that prosecutors now say were “lawful” and not “tied to [Díaz de la Portilla’s] support for their proposal.”

Broward prosecutors took the case after the Miami-Dade state attorney reported a conflict of interest. The Broward office shared the responsibility to vet evidence and witnesses before determining there was probable cause for arrest, Michael R. Band, a former chief assistant in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office told the Herald.

The criminal charges were based on the allegation that Riley funneled $245,000 from David and Leila Centner into Díaz de la Portilla’s PACs in exchange for the commissioner’s support for the sports complex. The site was initially coveted by Miami-Dade County Public Schools to expand iPrep Academy in downtown and Díaz de la Portilla was accused of sidelining the school district on behalf of the Centners.

Prosecutors wrote in their memo that the school district abandoned the proposal before the commissioner was elected so it was never in direct competition with the Centners’ plan and that deposition testimony from key witnesses “contradicted the State’s initial theory of the case.”

As the Herald reported, however, the school district made efforts to communicate with the city about the property until the Centner deal was approved in 2022. Shouldn’t prosecutors have known about these efforts? And yet that wasn’t mentioned in the close-out memo, leaving lingering questions about what exactly happened here.

The bigger question, however, is what went wrong in the investigation and whether ending the case will help restore public trust in Miami City Hall, or harm it.

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