The Miami Herald (Motto "Please come back David Ovalle") got it wrong once again (SOS) regarding your favourite, award winning blog.
The Herald did an article on the dysfunctional Miami SAO. Not earth-shaking news.
However they referred to us as a, and we quote " On a Miami-Dade judicial blog frequented by defense attorneys, judges and prosecutors, hundreds of criticisms were lobbed, mostly anonymously."
Point in fact. We are most certainly NOT a "JUDICIAL BLOG". In fact, the less we post about the judiciary, the higher our engagement. Judges are just so....boring....so 1995 ish.
We are a polymath blog that posts about all sorts of subjects including law, sports, philosophy, cosmology, sociology, literature, cinema, politics, mathematics, to name a few subjects as well as the goings on at the Richard E Gerstein Justice Building.
In the future, we kindly request that the Miami Herald refer to us, if they need to use shorthand, as "the best and most widely read legal blog in Florida". If they want to add to the description, they can add "and one of the top blogs in the County."
That should about cover it.
Happy New Year and welcome to 2025.
If you are a long time and careful reader of the best legal blog in Florida, then you have followed our all-time number one trial rule and have not had any trials set for next week, and to be safe- the following week as well.
As you know, our rule about this is well founded. Judges and prosecutors spend all of their vacation time in December pondering about the year and ruminating on what they could have done better. And every single one of them decide that the way to make their life easier in the new year is to be especially hard on the first defendant to fall into their web in the new year. "Give a few of em a maximum sentence and the word will go out." That's their theory. Defendants will be scared to go to trial and they will have more times for candy-crush, death-scrolling IG, and mani/pedis-the Sixth Amendment right to trial be dammed. It's a small price to pay, in their view, in exchange for not wasting their valuable time on pesky trials.
Happy New Year - and drop those speedy demands come the end of January and show them that their fear tactics do not work.
“[t]he law is clear that any judicially imposed penalty which needlessly discourages assertion of the Fifth Amendment right not to plead guilty and deters the exercise of the Sixth Amendment right to demand a jury trial is patently unconstitutional. United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 20 L.Ed.2d 138 (1968).” City of Daytona Beach v. Del Percio, 476 So.2d 197, 205 (Fla.1985) (quoting Gillman v. State, 373 So.2d 935, 938 (Fla. 2d DCA 1979)). Therefore, although a guilty plea may justify leniency, see Smith, 490 U.S. at 802, 109 S.Ct. 2201, an “accused may not be subjected to more severe punishment for exercising ․ [the] constitutional right to stand trial.” Mitchell v. State, 521 So.2d 185, 187 (Fla. 4th DCA 1988).