(This story has been updated with comments from Fox.)
Amira Fox will serve as state attorney for a third term after she won her race unopposed.
Fox was first elected the state attorney for the 20th Judicial Circuit — which covers Collier, Lee, Hendry, Charlotte and Glades counties — in 2018.
She started as an assistant state attorney with the 20th Judicial Circuit in 1990. She worked in the misdemeanor, juvenile and felony divisions of the State Attorney’s Office before leading the Hendry and Glades office in 1998.
Four years later, she switched lanes to private practice in 2002, and formed her own practice in 2004, where she specialized in criminal defense and family law, according to her page with the State Attorney’s Office.
After about a decade in private practice, she rejoined the State Attorney’s Office in 2012 as chief of the Homicide and Economic Crime units and in 2015 she became Chief Assistant State Attorney.
In that role, she oversaw the legal and administrative functions of the office, including the operation of grand juries throughout the five counties that make up the circuit.
When she won her first election in 2018, she became the first female state attorney in the 20th Judicial Circuit.
She has since been reelected unopposed both in 2022 and this year. Fox filed her reelection bid on Jan. 5 and ran unopposed by the filing deadline of April 20.
Fox said that while she has had a very well-rounded experience of practice in southwest Florida, her “true love” has been being a prosecutor. She added up that she ended up in a position “I never dreamed I would be in.
“It’s been an incredibly rewarding journey,” Fox said. “It was a great decision I made in my life to start my career in Southwest Florida as a prosecutor.”
Fox added that she cannot “imagine a more rewarding job.”
“Every day I get to go home and feel like I did good and made a difference, and you just really can’t ask for more than that in your working life,” Fox said.
From economics and international studies to top prosecutor
When she first entered law school, Fox said, she came in with degrees in economics and international studies.
“I very much thought I would focus on international law, and a few months into my second year of law school, I realized that I was really enjoying the criminal law, criminal procedure classes and constitutional law class better than anything else,” Fox said.
Fox said she was not enjoying the focus on international law as much, so she decided to start to look at taking some type of trial practice.
She tried out for the moot court board, which is where one practices oral advocacy at the appellate level, and she made the moot court board, she recalled.
“I thought, ‘I may really want to be a trial attorney, be in a courtroom, and the criminal side of it,'” Fox said. “The constitutional law side of it interested me so much that I completely changed paths by spring break of my second year, and decided to look for prosecutors’ offices and focused on several states, but Florida was one of them.”
Fox said she graduated law school after three years.
Making the move to Southwest Florida
When she graduated law school at George Washington University in 1990, Fox recalled, she packed her bags and moved to Southwest Florida, ready to begin her work just days later.
“I put my car on the auto train and came to Fort Myers and started work a few days later,” Fox said.
The overnight trip on the auto train between northern Virginia and central Florida took about 20 hours, Fox reflected.
“You put your car on board, and at that time I had my mother with me, and she came down here [and] helped me get set up,” Fox said.
One case that shaped Amira Fox as a prosecutor
While Fox said it is “very hard” to narrow down cases, she explained that early in her career, when she was a felony-line prosecutor, she was assigned the case of a serial rapist.
“He had gone on a rampage through Lee County and raped many women very brutally, and I was assigned to prosecute his cases,” Fox said. “There was only one victim who could identify him. Because he wore tube socks and a mask on his face, he was very difficult to identify, and that victim had to testify in every trial.”
Fox said the case required several trials, which led to several life sentences.
“Watching the bravery of that victim very early in my career, and handling a challenging case like that,” Fox said, helped her grow as a prosecutor. “An incredibly rewarding case, because we got justice for many of the victims, and it instilled in me that, if you look around, you can really see some people who can rise above fear and rise above any other things going on in their lives and trauma, and change the lives of many others. And that’s what that victim did.”
‘Best staff’
Fox said she oversees a staff of about 120 attorneys.
“I personally believe that they are the best staff that any state attorney or district’s attorney,” Fox said, later adding that they are top performers. “And many of them I helped to train through the years, so to sit in a courtroom and watch them now try the most difficult cases and do an absolutely excellent job while they’re trying those cases provides a feeling of tremendous pride.”
Even when she is not prosecuting a case but sits in as a jury’s verdict is read, Fox said, she still sits there “with that feeling in the pit of my stomach.”
“Even if I’m not the prosecutor doing the case, I feel so invested in the community and our victims and law enforcement and all the cases we do that I still get the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watch our lawyers standing there waiting for the jury’s verdict to be read,” Fox said. “It’s become such a part of my life to want to seek justice… and I just… I really feel such pride in our office.”
Focus on drug traffickers, child crimes
When she was first elected as state attorney in 2018, Fox said, she already knew in her head that she “had some things that I very much wanted to get accomplished after being in the criminal justice system for so long.”
“It was very evident to me where many of the problems were stemming in the criminal justice system, one of them being the illegal narcotics trade, drug trafficking, people who are making a lot of money off of drug trafficking, the advent of fentanyl into the system, and how many people were being killed by fentanyl, either in overdoses or poisoning deaths,” Fox said. “That became my number one focus.”
In 2019, Fox created NETFORCE, a task force dedicated to combatting drug trafficking across Southwest Florida.
She also started the Cold Case Homicide Unit, which has led to 20 arrests, she said.
“We’ve expanded that unit to two attorneys,” Fox said. “We also have two investigators and some support staff. I’d love to expand that team further. I’m always seeking ways to look for those opportunities, because it costs money to expand.”
Her third goal, Fox said, was human trafficking and child exploitation.
Tomas Rodriguez is a Breaking/Live News Reporter for the Naples Daily News and The News-Press. You can reach Tomas at TRodriguez@usatodayco.com or 772-333-5501. Connect with him on Threads @tomasfrobeltran, Instagram @tomasfrobeltran, Facebook @tomasrodrigueznews and Bluesky @tomasfrodriguez.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: SW Florida State Attorney Amira Fox to serve third term after running unopposed
Reporting by Tomas Rodriguez, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
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