THE CAPTAIN REPORTS
AND YOUR TWO NEWEST JUDGES ARE .....
JUDGE LAURA GONZALEZ-MARQUES
Judge Gonzalez-Marques moves from the County Court bench to Circuit Court. She became a member of The Florida Bar in 2009. She worked with the law firm of Kobre & Kim until her appointment by Gov DeSantis to the County Court in September of 2021. In less than two years she takes over for Judge Michael Hanzman who resigned earlier this year.
JUDGE RITA CUERVO (aka Ritamaria Gonzalez Cuervo)
Judge Cuervo has been a member of The Florida Bar since 2005. She has been an associate with the law firm of Andrews Biernacki Davis since 2018. There she primarily handles PIP and insurance defense cases. She began her career as an APD in Miami-Dade County. She now moves to the County Court bench taking the seat previously occupied by Judge Fred Seraphin who retired earlier this year.
Happy (and surprised) to see the appointment of Ms. Cuervo. To date, Gov DeSantis has been in office for four years and seven months. In that time, he has made 230 judicial appointments. Of those 230, a staggering 147 were at one time an ASA, AUSA, or AAG (64%). Compare that to a total of 13 of 230 that were either an APD or AFPD (5%). Even more shocking, of the 230 appointments, 78 moved directly from the office of ASA, AUSA, or AAG to the bench (34%) compared to a whopping two (2) who came directly from the public defense side; one was an APD and the other was an AFPD (.008%).
IN OTHER NEWS .......
Gov. DeSantis appoints three to the Florida Museum of Black History Task Force.
The three appointments include Brian Butler, Berny Jacques, and Antony Lee. Butler, President and CEO of JCB Construction was quoted as saying as to his successful career in the construction industry: “I owe it all to my great granddaddy who learned the construction trade as a slave working on a plantation in Georgia. But for him, I may have never gotten into the construction industry”.***
Captain4Justice@gmail.com
***The quoted section is what we call a joke.