ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The state is fighting to keep its corruption case against former State Rep. Chris Dorworth alive.
Dorworth is charged with intentionally violating the state's public meeting law, involving the illegal takeover of the Expressway Authority.
Dorworth's attorneys spent most of the day Friday in an Orange County courtroom, trying to get the case thrown out.
Dorworth's attorney said even if Dorworth went back and forth to different Expressway Authority board members trying to convince them to hire a particular executive director, that's his right as a lobbyist and as a private citizen.
Attorneys for the state said Dorworth plotted to circumvent Florida's public meeting law.
Former Expressway Authority board member Marco Pena has already admitted he violated the public meetings law, and already paid a $500 fine.
Scott Batterson, also a former board member, has already been found guilty of bribery. He and Dorworth are also charged with violating the public meetings law with Pena.
On Friday, Dorworth's attorney told a judge that Dorworth cannot be charged with violating the public meetings law since he was not a public official at the time of the alleged crime.
"There's nothing that would suggest that a private citizen could even be prosecuted, or it was the legislature's intent I should say, to ever prosecute a private citizen for a Sunshine Law violation," attorney Richard Hornsby said.
But prosecutors said Dorworth was an aider and abettor to the public officials who are caught up in the corruption case.
They said Dorworth acted as a go-between., helping some Expressway authority board members to, in effect, meet in private, by telling one how the others were going to vote concerning the ouster of executive director Max Crumit and on the hiring of State Rep. Steve Precourt to replace Crumit.
"What he can't do is deliberately and intentionally act as a go-between between board member A and board member B, with everybody's knowledge of him doing that, in an effort to avoid application of the Sunshine Law," said prosecutor Ken Nunnelly.
The hearing continued late Friday afternoon. Dorworth's attorney made more legal arguments about free speech and other issues that he says should free Dorworth from prosecution.
The judge said she will take the argument that Dorworth shouldn't be prosecuted because he was a private citizen under advisement.
WFTV
