Voters caught in Miami vice

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 16, 1998 | by James P. Lucier

Meanwhile, back in Florida, Martinez won the new election, and an appeals court, on a hung jury, overturned his extortion conviction in 1996. Despite the fact that the 1993 Juri/Martinez election had been overturned by the court because of fraud in the Martinez campaign, the Democratic establishment convicted no individual of fraud except for a lowly worker in the campaign of Juri, the Republican.

According to reports in the Miami Herald, Martinez and all of his relatives and friends investigated for fraud -- his wife Angela, Lula, his secretary Mabel Mizrahi, and Ivonne Soler, executive director of the advisory board of Radio and TV Marti -- were exonerated by the state attorney for Palm Beach, Moira Lasch, on grounds that it would be difficult to prove intent. Neither the Justice Department nor the estimable U.S. attorney, Mr. Coffey, saw fit to make a federal case out of it.