DEPOSITION DICTATORS

We have noted something disturbing. If you want to take a felony deposition, you need to schedule a room with the State Attorneys Office. The State Attorneys Office will then decide, based on the number of witnesses you want to depose, how long you will have to depose this witness.

Now lets take a guess here: When you send your request for a deposition, do you think Ms. Rundle gets together with Don Horn and they review the file, see how serious the case is, whether you are deposing a lead detective with a 50 page report, or a guy who strung up some crime scene tape, before deciding what’s a reasonable amount of time? Or is it a secretary sitting around with nothing better to do?

In either event, this is an outrage! Just where in the rules of criminal procedure does it give some nameless faceless bureaucrat who is stalking the halls of the SAO the right to decide how long you should have to depose a witness?

We would expect the FACDL to jump right in on this and do something, but they are too busy arranging the memorial to Sy Gaer, right guys? How’s that coming? Almost done?

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but we're not going to give some two bit SAO bureaucrat the right to decide how long we have to depose a witness.

(Memo to whoever gives a damn at the SAO: your little slide show about victim’s rights has several grammatical and spelling errors, including instructing victims about what to do if “your out in public and feel afraid.” Change that to “You’re”)

We have a new Circuit Court Judge, as reported by El Capitan:

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

Gov. Crist has named his replacement for the open seat of Judge Pereyra Shuminer.

Nushin Sayfie, of the Dade County Public Defender's Office has been chosen over Lisa Walsh, Judge George Sarduy, and previously eliminated Joe Davis, Miguel De La O and Judge Darrin Gayles.

As I previously wrote several weeks ago, contrary to the typical Bush move of appointing a County Court Judge and getting a 2 for 1, Gov. Crist has chosen a private attorney in all but one open seat throughout the State during his first year in office.

Next up is the open seat of Judge Jorge Perez, who recently resigned to go back into private practice.

CAPTAIN OUT ..........

And with a congratulations to our new Judge, we're out too.