It is a story to warm even the coldest heart of a Broward Judge. But this takes place in Liberty County, one of Florida's smallest.
It all started when Judge Kenneth Hosford (and we'd bet all we have in guessing that his friends at the Piggly Wiggly call the Judge "Hos" ) signed a warrant for the arrest of Reese Forehand (we couldn't make these names up if we tried) for the theft of laundry detergent and dryer sheets -value less than $40.00. They take their cleaning products seriously in Liberty County (Motto "Home of the cleanest clothes in all of Florida y'all").
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| Ol Hos |
The State did not file charges. (They called it a wash...hahahahahaha). That should have been the end of the spin cycle, but technology got Ol Hos right where it hurts. At the end of a Zoom calendar Hos dismissed the PD and said he and the prosecutor need to chat about some non-court things- presumably issues like can you add bleach to colors in the wash, and the fall run of crawdads down at the creek that runs through town.
On Zoom, and recorded, Ol Hos proceeded to take the prosecutor out to the woodshed about not filing charges on the dirty laundry case. Hos told the prosecutor "to back up your Sheriff and back up your judge" and suggested a search warrant that he would sign that would presumably catch ol Reese Forehand red handed with the missing laundry detergent. Then, Ol Hos proceeded to lament the war he was having with the PDs office who were seeking to have him recused on criminal cases - for what reasons we cannot imagine. Ol Hos seems like a right fine good-old boy judge.
The JQC got the case, and then in what can only be called a sweetheart deal, reached an agreement where ol Hos would apologize and promise not to do it anymore, pay a fine, take thirty days off to go catch them crawdads, and otherwise resume the duties of the only Judge in a small southern town.
Into the breach stepped FACDL and Daniel Tibbitt, superstar appellate lawyer of whom we have written about before. FACDL is seeking to file an Amicus Brief (Friend of the Court -yes, Friend of Hos- no) opposing the resolution of the case.
This is some of what Mr. Tibbitt wrote about ol Hos:
The judge said the state attorney has to support the sheriff and judge, and if he can’t, needs to say so in open court rather than simply decline to proceed on a case. The judge said that he realized that the search warrant had “thinness” but had suggested to the sheriff how to add to the search warrant to make it stronger and show that the “convicted felon” suspect was “lying”. The judge told the prosecutor they should “rework” the search warrant and “I need y’all to be stronger. You know, it puts me out on a limb when y’all are not stronger, and it puts me in a position to have to make inquiries to hold the law.” The judge criticized the performance of assistant state attorneys in his courtroom the previous session who had not offered harsh enough pleas and who had missed priors of defendants.
So we have a Judge in a one traffic light town asking the prosecutors to be tough and back up Ol Hos in court. A judge who admittedly did his own research on the laundry theft case and then sketched out a plan including signing a "thin" search warrant (so much for affidavits meaning anything) and nobody has a problem with that guy remaining on the bench. Talk about Southern Justice, or as Viki Lawrence sang in one of the greatest songs of the 1970s- That's The Night That The Lights Went Out In Georgia "Well don't trust your soul to no backwoods southern lawyer, cause the judge in the town's got blood stains laundry detergent on his hands..." (You know we could do a whole riff on laundry detergent ads that promise to remove blood stains, but by now you've had enough of Ol Hos and so have we).
Here is the JQC Findings and Recommendation and below that is the FACDL motion.
Bad Judge Petition - Report & Recommendation by Anonymous PbHV4H on Scribd
Motion - Amicus Curiae by Anonymous PbHV4H on Scribd