Battle-scarred Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones has launched a legal offensive against Mayor Tomas Regalado and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, accusing them of plotting to destroy her political career when Rundle twice charged the commissioner with political corruption.
In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, Spence-Jones’ lawyers accuse Fernandez Rundle, lead prosecutor Richard Scruggs and a state attorney’s
investigator of fabricating evidence and misleading key witnesses — including developer Armando Codina and former County
Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler — to back up their ultimately unsuccessful criminal cases.
Spence-Jones was acquitted in one case. The charges were dropped in the second prosecution.
The suit claims that Fernandez Rundle’s goal amounted to a “shocking, nefarious scheme” to remove Spence-Jones from the city commission from 2009-11 as a favor for the state attorney’s ally, Regalado, so that Spence-Jones, his nemesis, could be replaced by another politician to represent Miami’s black community in District 5.
The lawsuit asserts that Fernandez Rundle and her office “manufactured false evidence, hid and withheld exculpatory evidence, intimidated and
manipulated witnesses, defamed Spence-Jones, and repeatedly attempted to manipulate the political process, in a corrupt attempt to remove,
arrest, imprison, and forever ruin a dedicated Miami public servant.”
And when Spence-Jones prevailed in both cases, “Fernandez Rundle and her team covered up their own wrongdoing, recklessly and falsely accusing [the city commissioner] and her well-respected defense counsel of yet more crimes, to the entire world,” the 105-page suit asserts.
Spence-Jones’ racketeering-styled suit claims the defendants violated her civil rights.She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Her suit was filed by Coral Gables lawyer Ray Taseff and the New York law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, which also represents the former North Carolina lacrosse players who are suing a now-disbarred district attorney in a notorious failed rape case.
Spence-Jones’ counterattack fuels the legal and political drama that has dominated her life almost since her election to the city
commission in 2005. She has endured at least six separate criminal investigations, ethics and campaign violations, a grand jury
indictment, a fight in civil court to retain her seat and the successful defense at her bribery trial.
Spence-Jones represents Overtown, Liberty City and Little Haiti. She was arrested for the first time in November 2009, charged with grand
theft stemming from her days as a city aide.
The investigation centered on $75,000 in grants from the Miami-Dade Action Plan Trust, or MMAP, a quasi-county agency that administers
grants to community groups. In September 2004, Barbara Carey-Shuler, then-chairwoman of the county commission, directed the agency to award
$25,000 grants to three groups.
One grant went to the Rev. Gaston Smith, Spence-Jones’ pastor, who later paid her a $8,000 “consulting” fee. Smith later was convicted of
stealing the money.
Carey-Shuler, in a letter, later asked MMAP to re-direct the other $50,000 to Spence-Jones’ family company. Carey-Shuler initially told
Miami Commissioner Spence-Jones sues state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Mayor Regalado
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Miami Commissioner Spence-Jones sues state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Mayor Regalado
