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.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

JUDGE BAGELY LOWERS THE HAMMER

On Aventura and its pesky video ticket system. "Unconstitutional"! Says the Judge.


We just have one question after perusing the article?

"Ticket Cricket"?? What the hell is that?


BROWIERD

From the Broward blog comes all sorts of weird stuff about "The Juice Blog" being sued for these posts here and here.

From the JAA Blog:

Clouds in the coffee and lawyers in The Juice? - uh oh. Rumor has it The Juice blog may be sued over this post and this one. . We're told a request for retraction may be en route, after which a lawsuit may follow. Apparently, some pretty powerful feathers have been ruffled, over what people close to the parties swear are false accusations. All we can say is The Juice has it coming, since they really spit in the eye of decent, hardworking bloggers everywhere when they traced IP Addresses for a story. Ironic too, considering they work with the iconic Daily Pulp, whose Bob Norman, like JAABLOG, would go to jail before betraying a commentator's trust (not that we'd even know how to trace an IP Address - heck, we can't even figure outPhotoshop). In any event, we'll be watching this one closely, since it'll be interesting to see if litigation can determine exactly where those comments came from.


Rumpole says: Lets be clear about one thing. A journalist we are not. And outside of attorney/client privilege material, we ain't going to jail for nobody, especially for as something as stupid and insignificant as this blog. More power to the guys running the Broward Blog and Bob Norman, but don't expect us to do much more than buy you a cup of coffee if somehow you get into hot water with our humble blog.


JOES/JUDGE RONALD FRIEDMAN
Memo to Judge Ronald Friedman:

When you go to Joes on a busy Friday/Saturday night and you give your name, stick to Ronald Friedman. It's just so gauche to use "Judge" when trying to impress the Maitre'D and get seated quicker.
And it causes people waiting to frown. Appearance of impropriety and all that.

Just some friendly advice from your neighborhood blogger, who happens to have eyes and ears (and snitches) everywhere.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have all been wondering how a local government could regulate and punish for bad driving when the State controlls the subject.

The Rest of us Wait, Judge. said...

Canon 2 of the American
Bar Association Model Code of
Judicial Conduct provides that “a
judge shall avoid impropriety and
the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities,” defining an “appearance of impropriety” as conduct that would create in reasonable minds a perception that the judge’s ability to carry out judicial
responsibilities with integrity, impartiality and competence is impaired.”

If a judge tells a police officer who stopped him for a traffic offense that his arrest is unnecessary because “we need each other,” the judge clearly
violates the proscription on using
the prestige of judicial office to
advance the judge’s private interests.

But is it a violation if a judge
simply shows the officer a judicial
identification card instead of a driver’s license without expressly asking for or demanding favorable treatment?

Is getting a table at a restaurant "advancing a judge's private interests"?

Anonymous said...

JOE'S/JDG RONALD FRIEDMAN
YOU ARE SOMEONE DID NOT HEAR CORRECTLY, AS I WAS WITH HIM AND WHEN HE WALKED UP THE GREETED HIM WITH "JUDGE FRIEDMAN".

Anonymous said...

3:34 p.m. Your name should be: "The Rest of us Wait, Judge and my real name is Jealous." Using influence to avoid a ticket for violating the law is a violation of the code. Eddie knowing me and giving me a table is not advancing my private interests or even near an appearance of impropriety. Keep waiting. I will still get a table any time I want and I don't care if you like it or not. You would if you could.

Anonymous said...

who is that county asa who has won every single dui motion, including beating reiff, catalano, and richard h in back-2-back-2-back hearings?

Anonymous said...

924
it is obviously u so please tell us your name. when you go private i will flip u a dui. but you gotta pay the 25 point vig on the line.

CAPTAIN JUSTICE said...

The Captain Reports:

Rumpole, you may remember, way back when, during the Janet Reno days, when all ASA's carried their badges and it was pinned inside their wallets - so when they got pulled over, and needed to get to their driver's license, they would flip open that section in their wallet, and loe and behold, a badge appeared.

And we all know how that story turned out, for a very long time.

Care to comment?

Cap Out .....

Anonymous said...

beating hersch is easy that guy is a legend only in his own mind

Anonymous said...

Captain....I sure hope you're not a judge like some of the folks have suggested.

I was a Reno hire and prosecuted for more than a decade. Yes, some ASA's abused the badge. Most, did not. I, for one, got a ticket when I pulled out my DL before the trooper made it to my car. He had no idea I was a prosecutor and I didn't tell him. I don't think my actions were that unusual.

Regardless, you should know better than impugning the integrity of the thousands of lawyers who have gone through the SAO because a few were stupid. If you're really a judge, you should know better.

BTDT

Anonymous said...

Captain, some history here...

If I remeber correctly, in the old times, ASA's got badges with a wallet clip. They were full-sized badges of the same design as the ones used by SAO investigators and FDLE agents. ASA's clipped these badges inside their wallets and they were the first thing cops saw when the ASA's retrieved their driver licenses. When the ASA left the SAO, the badge would be encased in a block of lucite as a memento to display in their desks at their new job.

Janet Reno prohibited her ASA's from displaying the badge in wallets to avoid tickets and made the badge smaller and of a diferent design than the state investigator badge. These new badges came in their own stand-alone identification leather case with a cut-out in one side for the badge and a plastic window on the other side for the ASA's ID card. The idea was to have badge and ID separate and apart from the ASA's wallet so that they could not "accidentally" display he badge while pulling out the driver license in a taffic stop.

ASA's responded by using the new badge-ID cases as their wallets, sometimes to the point that they were bursting at the seams when all the papers and bills previously carried in their wallets was stuff in the badge cases. The ASA's driver license was placed in the plastic window with the ASA's work ID, often right on top of it.

Janet Reno was not happy with that and prohibited the practice, but ASA's kept doing it until the tensions between police and SAO made the display of an ASA's badge counterproductive and caused ASA's to get ticketed instead of receiving professional courtesy.

Reno ASA said...

Not quite, Captain. As of '88 at the latest, we were admonished not to have the badge in with the DL for exactly that reason. That's when some of the more creative ASA's began carrying firearms (legal as an ASA) providing a "legitimate" reason to say "Officer, there is a gun in the glovebox. Here is my badge."

Most of us...young, idealistic and in the accountability business...followed the lead that the Tall Lady gave and paid our tickets. Some who used the badge just postponed the inevitable. Names are withheld to protect the rehabilitated.

the trialmaster said...

Tell Judge Friedman that you take care of "bones" on the way out. not on the way in. I miss Roy,the former maitre d.. he was the best and knew how much each customer gave him despite never looking at the bill. The TRIALMAQSTER likes the fried chicken @ Joes.

CAPTAIN JUSTICE said...

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

OUCH ... 3rd DCA watch - Judge Schwartz ...

For those of you that missed it, your favorite 3rd DCA Judge, Alan Schwartz, like wine, just continues to get better with age.

Last week, he wrote this:

SCHWARTZ, Senior Judge.

The petitioner’s position in this case is directly contrary to Florida Hospital Waterman, Inc. v. Buster, 984 So. 2d 478 (Fla. 2008), and each of the other
District Courts of Appeal. See West Fla. Reg’l Med. Ctr., Inc. v. See, 18 So. 3d 676) (Fla. 1st DCA 2009); Lakeland Reg’l Med. Ctr. v. Neely, 8 So. 3d 1268 (Fla.
2d DCA 2009); Columbia Hosp. Corp. of S. Broward v. Fain, 16 So. 3d 236 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009); Fla. Eye Clinic, P.A. v. Gmach, 14 So. 3d 1044 (Fla. 5th DCA 2009).

Even if we were inclined, which we are not, we do not have the authority to rule otherwise. Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So. 2d 431 (Fla. 1973).

THE PETITIONER'S SUGGESTION THAT WE MIGHT DO SO IS INSULTING AND FRIVOLOUS.

Certiorari denied.

Cap Out .....

Rumpole said...

RE: badges- I have no idea what you're babbling about. Is there something I missed?

Anonymous said...

Schwartz's continual over the top bashing of lawyers is highly inappropriate. If he has a problem with an attorney and wants the attorney disciplined (ie. publicly reprimanded), he should refer the lawyer to the Bar. It's grossly unfair for him to bash lawyers the way he does when they often aren't represented.

BTDT

Anonymous said...

Lou's gun shop sold badge wallets that fit ASA badges nice and fine...fortunately, I was a good driver and never got pulled over back then...oh well.

But seriously, carrying the badge wallet and a regular wallet was a pain in the ass and I was always worried about loosing the badge, so I bought the badge wallet.

Anonymous said...

You missed nothing.

We all made sure that when stopped somehow, our gold SAO badge was next to our DL.

I can't remember any ASA ever getting a ticket after the cop saw the badge.

Well, there was this black guy who worked in SAO legal (probably about 1990) who offered an undercover cop posing as a hooker to trade cocaine for a blow job. He got arrested and fired.

To make things worse, he actually had the drugs and never got the blow job.

Anonymous said...

I can understand that when someone makes allegations about people and does not name the person directly, that no rule is violated about raising unsubstantiated allegations.

Or when a name is mentioned but the unsubstantiated conduct itself is not explicitly alleged or described leaving more to the imagination, that again no rule is violated.

But please tell me, moderation wise, how we are served by a comment that "a black guy" from Legal from the 90's offered coke to a hooker in exchange for oral sex.

Was there any real enlightening purpose to referring to this guy as black? If it was just said "a guy working in SAO Legal" in 1990, would we have been any less educated about the point the writer was trying to make?

Anonymous said...

Badges...we don't need no stinking badges

Rumpole said...

7:08- you are correct. Unfortunately certain racial prejudices remained deeply ingrained within our culture. I rarely if ever see a white man referred to as a "white man" or "caucasian male" but we often see a black man referred to by his race.

Anonymous said...

BTDT at 4:18 p.m., wouldn't you rather take the whipping from Alan Schwartz than from the Florida Bar?