Former Eatonville mayor, campaign worker guilty in election fraud case

ORLANDO, Fla. — A jury returned guilty verdicts Friday in the election fraud trial of a former Eatonville mayor.

Defense attorneys for Anthony Grant and two of his campaign workers -- Mia Nowells and James Randolph -- spent the afternoon presenting closing arguments in the case.

Nowells and Grant were found guilty in the case, while Randolph was exonerated by the jury.

Prosecutors accused the trio of conspiring to force voters to cast fraudulent absentee ballots for Grant during the 2015 mayoral election.

Grant, Nowells and Randolph faced numerous charges, including voter fraud, attempting to vote with a fraudulent ballot, illegally marking ballots, corruptly influencing voting and violating the Voter Protection Act.

The sitting mayor at the time would have won re-election were it not for absentee ballots, prosecutors said. Instead, Grant won with an unexpected landslide.

Although there are slight variations in the charges, each defendant faces 40 years in prison if convicted.

The state said Grant, Nowells and Randolph coerced people into voting for someone they did not intend to support.

But their defense attorneys said the entire case hinges on an investigation that involved a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent coercing alleged victims to tell incriminating lies about the defendants.

“Alfonso Williams contacts Albert Gordon and says, ‘You know you weren't supposed to vote. I've got you. We can do this the easy way, we can do that the hard way, or you can go back to prison,’” attorney Matthew Leibert said in court Friday.

But Assistant State Attorney Rick Walsh said there were fingerprints on an envelope that was alleged to have contained a ballot.

“How would Anthony Grant's fingerprints have gotten on that particular envelope if it had been given to someone in the Bruce Mount campaign?” Walsh said in court Friday.

Both sides presented their argument on whether there were ballots inside the envelopes by using a Pop Tart as an example.

Prosecutors set a package of Pop Tarts down on a table and said anyone’s natural reaction would be to assume there’s a Pop Tart inside the wrapper.

They said, in the same way, the jury should assume the key evidence of election envelopes contained ballots, even though they never saw them.

The defense’s closing argument used Pop Tarts, as well, but their message was that it’s not safe to assume.

“The crime is the poison in the Pop Tarts. Not on the packaging. There’s no evidence in this case that any of the defendants touched any official ballots,” said defense attorney Gary Dorst.

Ballots aside, prosecutors argued people who testified that they were forced into casting a ballot for Grant should have been convincing enough.

Grant was found guilty of voting fraud, unlawful mark/designate ballot choice and absentee ballot voting violations.

Cox Media Group