Welcome back everybody. I'm I team Chief Mike Magnoli.
Today I've got the fifth interview in our series of
conversations with candidates running for state attorney in Palm Beach
County.
We are on the home stretch.
That is to say I've introduced you to everyone running
for that office.
After today we've got one more candidate to chat with.
Our current state attorney, Dave Ehrenberg is not seeking re
election.
Dave first won that role in 2012 and he was
re elected without opposition in 2016 and 2020.
Well in this race there's a primary that'll be on
August 20th and from there a Republican and a Democrat
will advance to the next round in the general election
in November. There's also a non party affiliated candidate.
So today we have Sam Stern.
He is a Republican and before we talk with him
live,
let's learn some more about his background.
Sam Stern is licensed to practice law in Florida,
New Jersey, New York and DC.
He comes from a family of prosecutors.
His dad and granddad were well known in the Northeast.
Stern was an Assistant US Attorney for a year,
then a prosecutor in the Palm Beach County State Attorney's
Office for a year as well.
He's now in private practice,
and he teaches trial advocacy at the University of Miami's
law school and the University of
Virginia's law school. One of his ideas is to create
a task force in the State Attorney's Office to deal
with felons caught committing gun crimes.
On the lighter side, Stern is a published author.
In parts of his book,
entitled The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Cross Examination,
Stern takes 2 Hollywood movies about fictional court cases where
key moments happen on the witness stand and he dissects
them.
What could really happen and what couldn't?
What was effective and what wasn't.
He uses a few good men.
You can't handle the truth.
And My Cousin Vinny Stern says he wants the job
of state attorney because his parents live in South Florida
and he's raising his family here and he wants to
make our community safer.
Yes, he's passionate about making the community safer.
Sam, let's hear it in your own words.
Why do you want this job?
Why are you running for office?
Well, First off, Mike, thank you very much for having
me.
I'm extremely excited. The opportunity to lead my former office
where I used to work.
I'm passionate about being a prosecutor,
about defending the rights of victims,
about keeping our community safer.
Community where my wife and our two boys and my
parents and my mother-in-law and lots of people live.
This is where we live.
And this is the place to do it,
to be the prosecutor and the chief law enforcement officer
of the Palm Beach County.
I want to talk about the high profile cases,
the high stakes cases. Sam,
the public doesn't like plea bargaining very much.
I know there are risks when you move something to
trial,
when you put something in the hands of a jury,
it's unpredictable. But in the cases where there's lots of
evidence and lots of
eyes on the case, do you think that prosecuting to
the full extent of the law
means going to trial? So when it comes to plea
bargaining,
my views on this are fairly simple.
We will make a deal when it's the right deal
based on the facts and the evidence.
We're not going to sell out cases.
We're not going to give cases away,
do the backlogs or anything of that nature.
It's going to be an independent fact by fact,
case by case decision. The right deal is the only
deal that we'll accept.
Want to pick your brain about the death penalty?
It's not sought often in Palm Beach County.
Under what circumstances would you seek it?
And I'd like to hear your thoughts on what happened
with Parkland school shooter Nick Cruz in the sentencing phase.
For him, one holdout on the jury resulted in his
life being spared.
What do you make of that?
Well, in terms of the last part,
first, in terms of what happened to Parkland,
there was one holdout. That was the process.
State Attorney's Office seeks the death penalty,
but we don't impose it.
That's up to the jury.
The law has since changed.
It's no longer requires unanimous jury.
Our job is the State Attorney's Office is to find
those meritorious cases that deserve consideration of the capital punishment
by a jury of the community.
We'll bring it. We'll make the argument for it where
appropriate,
comes to the first part of your question.
The answer is the cases will be determined
based upon the merit of the case,
whether conforms of the statute,
and whether seeking that kind of penalty is appropriate for
the consideration of the jury of the community.
How do you feel about the law being changed as
a result of what happened in his sentencing phase?
State Attorney? I don't make the laws.
I don't weigh in on the laws.
But we deal with the laws as they are.
We enforce them. That's the job.
And we'll deal with those laws as they are.
That and every other law that's on the books.
Sam, That kind of brings me to the next question,
and it's about what happened with the two prosecutors who
Governor De Santis sidelined because those two prosecutors said they
wouldn't enforce laws that were passed that they did not
agree with. If you found yourself in a situation where
you personally did not agree with the law that was
passed,
would you be willing to go head to head with
the governor and would you be willing to lose your
job over it?
If I didn't believe in enforcing the laws passed by
our legislature
and I shouldn't be the state attorney,
I'm not running to not enforce the law.
I'm running to enforce the law.
That's the job. And the people of Palm Beach County
can be assured that I'm not going to disregard the
laws and performance of my duty.
That's the oath we take.
That's why I'm going through this process.
What are some ideas that you have for changing how
the office works?
Well, we have a short amount of time here,
but I can assure the people of this county that
we're going to do a full review.
There'll be reorganization, probably. There's always change,
but change is good. Change is invigorating.
We're going to work on the skills,
the training. We're going to make the
prosecutor's office a more able body in terms of its
best Tory practices,
in terms of its training from young people to more
experienced people.
My background, as you did on our lead in demonstrates
that I'm passionate about teaching prosecutors how to be better
prosecutors
and I fully intend to spend a fair amount of
time doing that.
Leading from the front, is there any policy changes that
you would call for as an example,
if it's a gun crime and you have a perpetrator
under 18 years old?
Well, I'm not going to announce any policy changes at
this juncture.
What I can tell you,
let's take gun cases as an example,
OK? If you're a felon in possession of a firearm,
there's a three-year mandatory minimum statute.
You want to do a task force on this,
right? Well, we're going to,
we're going to do a task force in terms of
making sure that we're finding these people prosecute.
But in terms of the back end of this,
what I want to be clear about is if you're
a felon obsession firearm,
we are not going to plead down a solid case.
Going back to your earlier question for expediency,
if you're a felon obsession firearm,
you are one of the most dangerous people walking around
the county because your intent is to use that firearm
for no good purposes.
So we're going to be very vigorous about that and
there'll be other things that are
we intend to be highly vigorous about as well and
keeping this community safe.
All right,
how's the campaign trail going so far?
This is your first time running for office,
right? It is, it's a,
it's a wonderful experience. It's very exciting.
You get to meet people,
you get to hear their concerns.
It has really been a life changing experience for me
and my family and
just very excited as it continues.
Is there a question that keeps coming up when you're
out meeting folks,
is there something that you hear from them?
And I have limited time left,
but is there one question that you hear a lot
out there?
Gosh,
I don't know if there's one singular question other than
the fact that people want people want to feel safe.
Absolutely. They want to feel safe when they walk down
the streets.
They don't want to be looking over their shoulder.
And they know and understand that the State Attorney's Office
is instrumental in creating the conditions for a community to
be a safe community because they've seen what's happened in
other communities around the country.
And they understand that one person
can choose not to enforce the law
and can make a community very unpleasant to live in.
And they're very excited for somebody like me who's going
to enforce the law
and make this a wonderful place to live.
Sam Stern, Republican for state attorney,
thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me.
We'll be right back.