- April 24, 2024
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Former Flagler County Elections Supervisor Kimberle Weeks will spend 30 days in jail, followed by 18 months of probation, for recording other people without their consent and then disseminating one such recording.
Weeks had been convicted on eight third-degree felony counts in 2018 for the surreptitious recordings and was sentenced at the time to 30 days in jail and 18 months' probation for each count, with the sentences to run concurrently.
The sentence was stayed pending an appeal of seven of the eight counts, and Weeks was released on $25,000 bond. An appeals court upheld five of the seven counts Weeks had contested, and threw out two for double-jeopardy reasons.
Weeks appeared at a new sentencing hearing via Zoom on July 28 before Circuit Judge Margaret Hudson, who again sentenced Weeks to 30 days of jail time and 18 months of probation. Weeks must turn herself in to begin her sentence by noon on Aug. 4, and must also pay $2872 in investigative costs and will lose her Florida state pension.
The officials Weeks recorded were Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner; Florida Elections Division attorney Gary Holland; Florida Assistant Attorney General Gerry Hammond; Whitney Anderson, a Florida Attorney General's office employee who took consumer complaints; Virginia Smith, Palm Coast's city clerk; Ron Labasky, a private attorney who represented the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. Weeks also recorded a conversation with Shannon Brown, her neighbor.
Weeks' defense had asserted that the since the conversations Weeks recorded involved public officials and public employees speaking about government business, they should be considered "public meetings," which are legal to record. But the conversations took place outside of the context of regular noticed, public meetings, and the jury did not accept Weeks' reasoning.
