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COLLEEN JENKINSFrustrated but determined, Roger Owen feels he has paid his dues and should be able to vote and seek a seat in the Legislature.
Roger Owen, 50, already envisions the newspaper headline: "Ex-Con vs. Ex-Cop."
The Lecanto man wants badly to challenge state Rep. Charles Dean for his seat next year. Owen envisions himself in front TV cameras, sparring with Dean, a Republican from Inverness and a former Citrus County sheriff, over issues dear to the longtime Democrat's heart. He can taste victory.
Problem is, Owen can't run for office. He can't even vote.
Florida remains among the seven states in the nation where ex-felons are denied the right to vote even though their sentence is served. And in the 1980s, Owen spent seven months in a Florida prison for violating probation that stemmed from a burglary charge.
"This was a dirty little secret that I had absolutely no knowledge of until I went to prison," Owen said. Losing the right to vote "broke me up. I was devastated."
Floridians can get their voting rights restored by applying for special permission from the governor and Cabinet, but Owen's chances don't look promising. In a letter dated May 12, the Office of Executive Clemency informed him that he had received an "unfavorable recommendation" from the Florida Parole Commission.
The letter invited him to appear before the Clemency Board for no more than five minutes on June 20 to argue his case before a final decision is made.
Before spending time behind bars, Owen said, he was politically active in South Florida. He ran unsuccessfully for a state House seat in 1982 and a state Senate seat in 1984, he said.
His main platform was taking a jab at the Florida Bar Association, he said, because he believed there was little way for citizens to fight against lawyers' corruption. He proposed creating an elected commission to review charges of unethical practice.
Owen believes his unfavorable stance among the political elite worked against him when it came time for his sentencing. He is vague about details of his 1985 arrest, saying that the incident occurred at the home of a woman he loved and that he was, at worst, trespassing.
Prosecutors charged him with burglary, a felony for which adjudication was withheld. Later, Owen intentionally violated his probation, he said, preferring to finish his time quickly in prison rather than having probation officers breathing down his neck for longer. But Florida Department of Law Enforcement records show Owen was convicted twice for violating his probation in 1987, though they don't explain what he did.
He says now that he didn't know that going to prison would take his name off the voting roster.
FDLE records indicate a lengthier arrest history than Owen admits to. It lists at least four convictions dating back to 1971, including misdemeanor convictions on charges of contempt of court and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, as well as several other arrests in which adjudication was either withheld or the charge dismissed.
Friday evening, Owen said some of those arrests likely belonged to a troublesome relative who had used his name in the past. However, Owen said the records matched his personal information, including his birth date and Social Security number.
Whatever the case, Owen feels he has paid his dues. And he wants to make another run at a legislative seat.
Dean said Friday that he hadn't heard about Owen's intentions.
"I don't know the man," he said. "Whatever he wants to do, that's fine with me."
Only Florida, Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada and Virginia permanently take away the vote from all ex-felons, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy and research organization. Other states either automatically restore voting rights or do so after a waiting period.
"These laws confuse the legitimate action of punishment with your basic constitutional rights," said the project's assistant director, Marc Mauer. "Once you pay your debt to society, you should be free to rejoin your community. These laws . . . say you will always be a second-class citizen in the eyes of the state of Florida."
In the past, Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican officials have disputed this logic. They argue that Florida does reinstate some ex-prisoners' right to vote if they follow the proper process, though Bush has said they could have avoided the tedious procedure by not committing a felony in the first place.
Two years ago, Florida quietly restored the rights of felons who moved here from other states where they could vote once their prison sentence or parole was completed. The issue of ex-felons' being banned from voting in the state drew public scrutiny after the 2000 presidential election.
Owen doesn't have much hope for himself with the governor and Cabinet. He'll forgo traveling to Tallahassee, saying it's a lost cause.
"It's in their own political interest to keep someone out of the process," he said.
He wants to take his cause to a national forum now. If a broader fight doesn't change Florida's mind, the former pool contractor and his wife, Nancy, might have to move away again, as he did for about a decade so he could regain his voting rights.
He last voted in the 1998 election as a resident of Texas, he said.
"When people say I'm an ex-convict, for over 10 or 12 years that bothered me," he said during an interview last week. "Now, I say it's short for conviction. And I do have a burning conviction right now as an American.
"I will vote in 2004," he continued. "It may not be in Florida ... but I won't let Florida stop me."
- Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 860-7303 or cjenkins@sptimes.com