MONDAY IS OPENING DAY

UPDATED WITH COUNTY COURT INFORMATION 

Monday is opening day (for circuit court. See below for county court)! Field of Dreams it is not...but how long has it been since you have sat in what we used to call "Cozzolis/The Pickle Barrel/ Au Bon Pain/....El Gordo Cafe..." and had a cup of coffee and pastelito with your favourite judge? 

Monday is the day. June 28, 2021, a date which will live in REGJB history. 

Concerned? Wear a mask. You can. Avoid the elevators, which we always have anyway...ditto black robe wearers at side bar. 

There is a bunch of hoo-ha about each judge having two zoom calendars a week, and the possibility of showing up for an arraignment or doing it by zoom. 

Ignore it for now. Our advice is put on a suit, shine your shoes, and get into court. If you have a continuing and compelling health reason not to go to court, call the Judge's JA. It's been almost sixteen months since JAs have been able to put defense attorneys on interminable hold; they are back and raring for action. When you get though and explain your problem they should be able to help you set up a zoom hearing. And if the judge won't comply....there is always a snappy email to us which will will post and get things moving. 

Lets make this a soft opening. We do not expect a room full of potential jurors, prosecutors making outrageous offers which in turn cause Rumpole to sigh "OK, lets pick six." 

It is going to take some time until things return to normal-normal. But walking in the door. Seeing lawyers lugging files and prosecutors balancing boxes on the escalators will be a sight we have longed to see. 

Send in your pics of opening day to our email and we will post them and cover the festivities. 

REGIB 1 COVID 0. 

We won. We persevered and we out -thought and outlasted our common enemy (covid, not judges). 

We haven't said this in a long long time. But it is worthy of saying now. 

SEE YOU IN COURT!

County Court: In a prior post we speculated that the reason the courthouse was not opening was someone had lost the keys when the REGJB was closed last March. Apparently the keys were found in an old gym bag in the back of a 68 Ford Mustang so the courthouse is now accessible. County Court is NOT opening Monday for in person cases. Do not show up for your Disorderly Intox case; do not pass El Gordo Cafe; Do not collect 200 community service hours.

 Everyone knows county court is more technologically sophisticated than circuit court, with multiple overlapping computer systems using dial up modems where the password used to be "FastGerryKlein"  and the user ID was "FredNesbitt1351". 

The Clerk's office is working diligently to send out notices for county court cases which apparently have a lead time of 6-8 months, so they just cannot open the doors because people with undersize snook cases will not know where to go or what to do and the entire criminal justice system is balancing on the ability of Florida Fish and Game to prosecute those cases. 

Check this site often for county court updates and screeds of the county court chief judge who does not like our mocking of misdemeanor cases. He reacted the last time we did it, and clearly did not understand that when we wrote that a county court judge's time should not be spent on disorderly conduct cases, it was in conjunction with us writing that many felonies should be reduced to misdemeanors so those same judges could handle more serious cases which they are more than capable of doing. But we are often misunderstood, which is a cross we bear lightly.