JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG

WELCOME TO THE OFFICIAL RICHARD E GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG. THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO JUSTICE BUILDING RUMOR, HUMOR, AND A DISCUSSION ABOUT AND BETWEEN THE JUDGES, LAWYERS AND THE DEDICATED SUPPORT STAFF, CLERKS, COURT REPORTERS, AND CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS WHO LABOR IN THE WORLD OF MIAMI'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE. POST YOUR COMMENTS, OR SEND RUMPOLE A PRIVATE EMAIL AT HOWARDROARK21@GMAIL.COM. Winner of the prestigious Cushing Left Anterior Descending Artery Award.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

JERKS TO GATHER TOMORROW

In our copy of today's Herald, in the Local Dade Section, here is the Headline:


Jerk Festival set for Sunday in Sunrise

There is just so much we could do with that, we wouldn't know where to begin.


There's a probation warrant out for
Barret Robbins Eddie O'Donnell's client.
Robbins is in Texas, so the Miami Beach police department, in a startling display of detective work, have prepared and distributed wanted flyers in Miami Beach.


Sharpie got the former CITY ATTORNEY
of North Miami community control and probation, and a withhold, for having sex with a sixteen year old girl.


And our favourite Herald Scribe Oh Susannah Nesmith wrote that a man claiming to be the THE ALMIGHTY HIMSELF made an appearance yesterday before Judge Adrien, but the Judge remained "unimpressed" and sentenced the man to life in prison for murder.

While we commend the Judge for following the law, with all the flack he has been getting lately on the blog, one wonders whether he should tempt providence so willingly?

REPENTANCE
(for some) today, and Football for all tomorrow (well, maybe we are over stating things a bit. Perhaps it is a bit too much to expect the Dolphins to play football tomorrow. Let them just go on doing whatever it is they do on Sundays.)

Reminder to all those left in the Suicide Pool- get those picks in.

See ya Monday.




26 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Vanilla" Wade Phillps is 2-0, avg. 40.5 gm!

Last week I called 30-13 Dallas.

Follow the lead: This week-Dallas 27, Bears 17.

After 3-0, will you apologize for your ignorant remarks?

Rumpole said...

Rumpole replies: Sometimes wrong, never in doubt. Wade Phillips is not a big game coach, and these Cowboys will not win a super bowl with him. However, the competition in the NFC being just above pee wee league, there does not appear to be much standing in their way from a NFC championship game appearance. Being an AFC guy, it guarantees another AFC superbowl win this year. Trust me, the Colts, the Cheaters, the Steelers, the Chargers are chomping at the bit to get to the Super Bowl and a guaranteed win against the cowpokes.

Anonymous said...

"Sharpie got the former CITY ATTORNEY of North Miami community control and probation, and a withhold, for having sex with a sixteen year old girl."

Make you proud, rump?

CK

Rumpole said...

I am proud that a lawyer (Sharpstein) did his job. I am not proud that a man had sex with a 16 year old girl he procured from a prostitute. I think if I was the Judge I may not have accepted the plea- but I don't know all of the facts and I am assuming that having the girl testify or give a depo would have been traumatic to the extent the prosecution wanted the case closed. These are always tough cases for everyone involved.

Anonymous said...

real traumatic for a prostitute to give a deposition and/or testify at trial.

Rumpole said...

First and foremost the 16 year old is a child. Children make mistakes and this one, and we do not know how she got into prostitution- forced or tricked- you can be sure she did not grow up wanting to be a prostitute-made a big one. I cannot imagine anything more traumatic and causing long lasting psychic injury than to subject a child to a deposition and trial and have her recount her sexual liasons with a man several decades older than her. Your lack of compassion is astounding.

Anonymous said...

Good for him for getting off. I mean, KFR is the State Attorney and we all know she is corrupt.

Rumpole said...

I'm not so sure that isn't a snide comment/bad joke. Be that as it may, the case was North of the Border. A Miami Attorney represented by a Miami Attorney gets a withhold in Broward. Look up in the sky tonight, there is a blue moon for sure.

Anonymous said...

Gators. 1 game closer to a repeat.

Anonymous said...

16 oughta be the age of consent anyway. Why you giving the guy a bad time?

Anonymous said...

There are states where the age of consent is 16 or lower.

Anonymous said...

I am tired of all us so-called defense attorneys who turn into prosecutors on sex cases. Rumpole, Why is it only on a sex case that you turn into Judge Butchko/Scola and would refuse to take a plea about a case you know nothing about. Says a lot more about both your personal and our society's collective fucked up sexual repression than your moral high horse. You think that sex with a woman who holds herself out as an of-age prostitute requires sex offender status and jail time? Come on. Let he who has not visited some Barely Legal site throw the first stone.

Rumpole said...

Sex Lawyer: Why is that some defense attorneys have such a difficult time seperating their personal beliefs from their job?

Lets look at this another way. If you were in trouble, would you want a lawyer who would take your case no questions asked, or a lawyer who only takes cases where s/he either believes their client innocent or their client is charged with a crime they personally believe should not be a crime?

I would choose the professional. I do not want emotions clouding my attorneys decisions. Nor do I want them feeling the inevitable pressure a lawyer feels when they have a personal stake in the outcome.

Therefore, because I am a consummate professional I am able to defend a person charged with sex crimes ( and I have, quite well I may add) and I am also able to have a personal position. My personal position is that people who have sex with children should be punished. I am not talking about the 18 year old kid in the backseat with his 16 year old girlfriend. I am talking about the 65 year old man who pays to have sex with a 16 year old prostitute. He should know better. Does he have any idea how he traumatized that young girl? Do you? I do.

There are plenty of 30 year old prostitutes around if that's what he needed.

Anonymous said...

the 30 year old prostitute probably started out at age 15 and probably involuntarily, either by drugs, force, or financial desperation. the question being ignored is why is the internet in the u.s. allowed to have rampant pornography to fuel sex offenders and why is the porn industry allowed to proliferate. the porn business is booming on miami beach, the bang brothers have an office on lincoln road, porn is filmed on ocean drive on labor, july 4 and memorial day weekends. what we should do is decriminalize sex between consenting adults, after all the ultimate punishment is the vd or hiv you catch or getting cleaned out in the divorce.

Anonymous said...

Point taken as to separating personal beliefs from professional practice. True dat. But how often have we taken over a sex case from a lawyer who somehow did not fight as zealousy as other cases because repping a sex-Def. made him squeamish and worried about his own reputation. Too often for sure. 2ndly, as to the damage to the 16 year old: we are all recovering; we are all damaged; how we recover and find ourselves, that's another story. Permanent injury? Long history of abuse does not equal permanent injury. Think of the famous Nietsche quote: "that what doesn't...."

Batman said...

Why is it some lawyers out there think that defense attorneys are not allowed to have a moral compass for their own lives and a moral judgment as to the actions of others. Remembering that your job is to represent your client to the best of your ability and make the state prove their case is a separate issue.

Rumpole speaks volumes of this dichotomy. You are entitled to your position of what is right and wrong without abandoning your obligations to your clients. This is neither inappropriate or hypocritical.

Rumpole said...

No self respecting defense attorney should ever handle a case that makes him or her "squeemish". If you can't do your very best, you shouldn't be representing the defendant.

Sex case, robbery, drugs. It really doesn't matter from the defense point of view. But we are also human beings, and if I was a Judge, I would treat the 65 year old man who had sex with a 16 year old prostitute harsher than the 17 year old kid grabbing a purse. One should know better. And you better believe I would slam the woman pimping out the 16 year old. No excuses for that.

Anonymous said...

Rumpy, you must've been a prosecutor early in your career to say these things.

Anonymous said...

See you in court on Monday. I'm the one with the conscience.

CK

Anonymous said...

jesus hung out with prostitutes and the poor, if you have ever visited latin america,south america, dominican republic, cuba before castro , brazil and plenty of other areas of the world it is how many women make a living. when you pay them for sex you help feed them and their family. if this is how they choose to make a living why is any different than the women who uses her hands to type, or to cook. that is the way an amsterdam prostitute put it on 60 minutes some years ago. bottom line-if you legalize it i bet there would be a lot less jimmy ryce cases and pedophilia. the current frigid attitudes towards sex in the u.s. is not working as evidenced by the number of arrests of adults with students, teens etc.so i say lets try sex for hire in the u.s. in red light districts, assumption of risk and its your money.

Anonymous said...

This discussion leaves me more-than-ever convinced that we need to take the Canadian approach to health care and transpose it to our criminal justice system. Yes, I think single-payer is the way to go for criminal defense. Outlaw recourse to a private criminal defense attorney and two things will happen: 1) 65 year old white, wealthy, well-connected defendants will stop getting two withholds (one of them in Broward, no less!) on two separate sex cases, and 2) suddenly, the state legislature will start spending a whole lot more money on public defenders when middle class voters realize that the PDs are now their attorneys as well.

To make a different policy analogy, it's just like Charlie Rangel argues about the draft: bring it back and the war will end because middle class voters won't be able to stomach the thought of their sons dying in Iraq. Force all citizens to rely on the PD, and middle class voters will guarantee that criminal defense is fully funded. Self interest in the service of socialism.

Anonymous said...

7:51:00 p.m. said:

"if you have ever visited latin america,south america, dominican republic, cuba before castro , brazil and plenty of other areas of the world it is how many women make a living. when you pay them for sex you help feed them and their family."

For your information, what you are saying there refers to the Cuba AFTER Castro where lots of women (including doctors, lawyers and engineers) become "jineteras" (prostitutes) to earn dollars and food from foreigners to feed their familes who suffer under Castro's communist economic policies.

In the Cuba before Castro there were prostitues like anywhere else, usually around the port of Havana, but prostitution was never generalized as it is and women had no need to prostitute themselves to survive.

Before posting things, please do some research about what you'll be talking about and learn to separate the facts from the propaganda.

Anonymous said...

to 12:54am. the cuba i was referring to was the precastro cuba of the mafia, casinos, and the top party destination of that area of the world in the 50s, i know there is prostitution in cuba but americans are not allowed to visit cuba so i guess since you know about it you have family there, visit there, are a prostitute yourself, or have used them. an american citizen is not allowed to visit cuba. You cubans seem to forget that the Elian fiasco was a reminder that in this country of 300 million you have no power other rather in Dade County government, 4 congressional seats,and about 1% of the u.s. population so don't pick fights with an american citizen. remember the line from the movie the good shepherd, this is out country and you are just visitors, know go back to your whore in havana.

Anonymous said...

Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax-collectors not to legitimize what they did bit to redeem them. Stupid argument on your part.

CK

Anonymous said...

to CK, I WOULD not expect you to understand based upon your proclivities.

Anonymous said...

You have obviously never looked at a Bible either as a religious or historical text. If you meant that Jesus was okay with prostitution, then you are flat wrong. He loves the sinner and hates the sin. He came to heal those who needed healing and that is why he hung out with them. Nice try and,I'm glad you finally had a chance to use the word "proclivities".

CK