- April 19, 2024
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Former Flagler County Elections Supervisor Kimberle Weeks is guilty of recording people's conversations without their knowledge or consent, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled on March 27.
"The state's evidence established that, without the knowledge or consent of the other participants, Weeks recorded three separate phone conversations," the judges' opinion states. Weeks had also pleaded guilty to one count of disseminating one of the recordings.
She had been convicted of eight felonies — seven for illegally recording people, plus the one count to which she'd pleaded guilty for disseminating such a recording — in May 2018, but immediately appealed the seven counts for illegal recording.
The appeals court threw out four of those seven convictions, citing double jeopardy law: The seven counts illegally had come from three phone calls, including two conference calls in which Weeks had recorded multiple people. The state had entered charges for each person recorded. The Court of Appeal found that Weeks could be prosecuted only for each individual instance of recording.
The individuals 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; and Shannon Brown, Weeks' neighbor.
The trial court will have to re-enter judgement against Weeks on the four counts the Court of Appeal upheld. Her initial sentence for conviction on all eight counts had been 30 days in jail and 18 months of probation. She will lose her state pension as a result of her convictions.
