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.

Friday, November 14, 2014

THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM

Broward charges for accessing it's clerk's website, unless you use the terminals inside the courthouse. 

It's a money grab pure and simple despite the fact that the Florida Constitution guarantees unfettered access to public records.

Broward claimed they had the first drug court in the nation, until our Captain straightened them out on his blog post Thursday.  Miami-Dade Drug court was the first in the nation. The court was set up through the cooperation and foresight of Janet Reno, Bennett Brummer, and the late Judge Stanley Goldstein who was a gem of a man. 

Broward arrests people for feeding the homeless. 

Have an innocent client in Broward? Their State Attorney (unwritten) policy is to "let the jury decide". 

You couldn't pay us enough to live and work in that insane asylum. It's pure madness, with a nasty, evil bent. 

DOM is covering a big federal trial, with snitches, and drugs, and former cops and a defense attorney doing a "My Cousin Vinny" take off. We need more humor in Federal Court. 

DOM also had a post on the lack of transparency of Supreme Court Justices. They exempted themselves from the rules that cover the rest of the federal judiciary, and they don't have to explain why they recuse themselves from cases. The article seeks more transparency from the court and the justices. 

We say there should be less transparency
The justices should sit behind a screen and ask questions, ala "The Dating Game."
Their opinions, when issued, should be encoded and the lawyers should have to scramble to get the code key to find out who won. 

Court should be held in "undisclosed locations" ala Dick Cheney circa 2001. 

In sum: Bring a little Broweird to the Supreme Court. 

And finally, if you're planning on traveling to the City of Lights, which we do frequently, there is a tiger on the loose in Paris! And it's not the golfer, but the big cat. ABC reports here. 

We are imagining walking down the street in our favourite arrondissement,  a cup of coffee in one hand, a loaf of bread and Le Monde in the other, and trying to explain in our limited French that we just saw a Tiger stalking around.  Maybe we'll just stay at the Grosvenor  House in London until the big cat is caught. 

Enjoy the weekend. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good points Rump, the odd part about Broward is that demographically it is the most liberal county in our State. However, because Michael Satz has been on the throne for almost 40 years the SAO is a disgrace. That's one of the reasons I favor term limits.

Swords to ploughshares said...

"It's a money grab pure and simple despite the fact that the Florida Constitution guarantees unfettered access to public records."

Yes, its a money grab. No free court records. Florida courts have held that "charging a fee for copying judicial records does not interfere with [the requester's] constitutionally protected right to access." WFTV, Inc. v. Wilken, 675 So. 2d 674, 676 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1996) (citing Roesch v. State, supra).

Say it isn’t so. Access, maybe, but no free download. Fight it someone.