JUDICIAL TERM LIMITS ARE ON THE WAY .....?????

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE JUDGES ...............

On Monday, we introduced you to the Speaker of the House, Richard Corcoran (R-Land O' Lakes).  On Tuesday, Speaker Corcoran called the House into Session.  In his opening speech, keeping with his theme of going to war with the Governor, Corcoran continued to press the fact that he intends to go after and eliminate Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida.

Richard Corcoran is much out of the mold of Donald Trump.  He has his own ideas of how to "drain the swamp" that is Tallahassee politics.  From Corcoran's opening remarks to his House colleagues:

"For anyone waiting for us to slow down, to drop the big ideas, to stop trying to shake up the system, to cower in the face of attacks, or to cave to the demands of special interests, here's our message to you: We will not."

"Because right now, there are some who are suggesting that we pass the largest budget in history. We will not. We will not. Instead of spending more money, we will fight to eliminate waste from the budget."

"Right now, there are some who are suggesting that we pass a massive property tax increase. We will not."

He closed with:

"When we began this journey together, we promised to be better, to do things differently, and to reach for a higher standard, and we will ... Let's fight."

In addition to Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida, Corcoran has also set his sights on the Florida Lottery; he sued them for allegedly misspending their budget.  Also, Corcoran has demanded an audit of the Department of Environmental Protection for mismanagement of a legal contract where DEP has been billed nearly $98 million dollars in legal fees from four law firms.  They have already paid nearly $72 million of the total bill. The four firms have been handling a 16 year lawsuit against the State of Georgia over water right to the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint River Basin.  $54.4 million of the total was spent in just the past two years after Florida asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. (And you thought that the JAC paid well to our Private Court Appointed Counsel).

And now Corcoran is going after the Judges in our State.  In case I failed to mention it earlier, Corcoran is an attorney, with the law firm of Broad and Cassel.  And Corcoran is pushing for term limits for all Supreme Court and District Court judges.

The first bill filed in the House, titled HJR 1 - Judicial Term Limits has already cleared all Committees and made its way to the floor of the House.  Now, to be clear, the bill is a Resolution and even if passed, does not become law.  That's because it would require an amendment to the Florida Constitution for this to actually take place.  But that is what Corcoran intends to fight for.

The House bill can be found here.  The summary of the bill states:

TERM LIMITS FOR JUSTICES AND JUDGES.—Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to prohibit the name of a supreme court justice or district court of appeal judge from appearing on a ballot for retention if he or she has served more than 12 consecutive years in the same office and prohibit reappointment of a justice or judge for one year after leaving office. The term limit applies to justices and judges in office on January 9, 2019, and future appointees.

The Senate is nearly in lock-step with the House on this issue.  They have SJR 482 - Supreme Court Justices/District Courts of Appeal Judges.  The language of the Senate Resolution is slightly different.  The Senate bill can be found here.  The summary of that Resolution states:

ELIGIBILITY FOR APPOINTMENT AND RETENTION OF OFFICE OF JUSTICE OR JUDGE.—Amendment imposes a 2-term limit for supreme court justices, 3-term limit for district courts of appeal judges, and 50-year age minimum for both; requires 1-year service as judge to serve as justice. Currently, both serve unlimited terms, if retained, until age 70, or older if less than one-half term remains at 70; there is no age minimum or service requirement. The term limits do not include partial terms and apply to current justices and judges. (A term is six years in length).

No doubt some final version of these two Resolutions will appear on the 2018 ballot as a Constitutional Amendment.

Do you think that our appellate court judges should be term limited?  Will the quality of the appellate bench go down if term limits are passed?

CAPTAIN OUT .....
Captain4Justice@gmail.com

STAND YOUR GROUND - THE 2017 LEGISLATIVE SESSION IS OPEN .....

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

BANG, BANG, YOU'RE DEAD .......

Florida's Stand Your Ground law could dominate the front page of newspapers later this week with the start of the legislative session set for tomorrow.

On Tuesday, March 7, the Florida Legislature opens its 2017 Spring session.  The session is scheduled to last for 60 days and should end on May 5, 2017.  On Tuesday morning, Governor Scott will give his State of the State speech to a joint session of the Florida House and Senate.

If you have not been following the show that has been taking place in Tallahassee over the past two months, then you have been really missing the fun.  You may have thought that with the Republicans having a Governor, all four cabinets members, and an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate in place, they had planned on running roughshod over their Democratic rivals.  If you thought that, you would be wrong.

Instead, it appears much more likely that they will make every effort to run each other over during the next two months.  Driving the lead cars will be Governor Scott, House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R-Land O' Lakes) and Senate President Joe Negron (R-Stuart).  According to most insiders, this is setting up to be the most mean-spirited, marathon battle of an uncivil war, as ugly as anything the state has seen in a long time.

Corcoran fired the first shots by pushing to end two of Governor Scott's biggest priorities: Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida. Scott is pushing for $85 million for Enterprise Florida and $76 million for Visit Florida for the budget year that begins July 1.  Enterprise Florida's objective is to promote Florida as a premier business destination to a targeted audience of corporate decision makers and site selectors, and encourage them to select the state for their next location, relocation or expansion project. Of course, in order to do that, the State uses that $85m to lure the businesses to Florida.  Corcoran calls it corporate welfare.  Visit Florida is the tourism arm that funds programs to attract more tourists to Florida.  They were in the news recently when it was revealed that they paid pop superstar Pitbull $1 million to promote tourism in Florida.  As a result of Corcoran and a lawsuit he filed against Visit Florida, demanding that they reveal the previously sealed contract with Pitbull, the CEO of Visit Florida was forced to resign.

Scott has been traveling the State holding town hall style meetings in an effort to boost support to the two programs.  Where did he choose to hold the meetings.  In every city where a house member that voted against his two programs resided.  Corcoran has been issuing nasty tweets, slash-and-burn videos, and all other forms of medium to trash the Governor and his two programs.  Scott has funded a robo-call campaign blasting the House Speaker. The two men are not speaking to each other.  The Orlando Sentinel wrote about the feud here.  The Tampa Bay Times said of the feud, "it involves philosophical differences, personal animosity and political ambition, all of which have had the state capital teetering on the edge of dysfunction for weeks." 

Corcoran has also picked fights with lobbyists and with President Negron of the Senate as they have butted heads on several new rules that Corcoran instituted under his leadership.  The lobbying changes include no longer allowing House members to text with them during official meetings; not allowing members to enter formal business deals with registered lobbyists; no longer allowing members to fly on a lobbyist-owned plane; and, the creation of a six-year lobby ban when members leave office.  The Sun Sentinel wrote an excellent editorial on Corcoran that can be found here.

Both Scott and Corcoran will be seeking higher office in 2018.  Scott is likely to challenge Senator Bill Nelson, while Corcoran is looking at a wide open Governor's race.

STAND YOUR GROUND ..............

In what may become the first bill up for a vote in both chambers this week, there could be a dramatic change to the STAND YOUR GROUND law in Florida.

House Bill 245 (and it's companion SB 128) aim to place the full burden of proof on the State Attorney.  ASA's and criminal defense lawyers know all too well that the current system places the initial burden on the Defense to establish that SYG should result in the dismissal of charges against your client. 

To read HB 245, you can find that by going here.  Florida Politics covers the story here and the Miami Herald covered it here.

What are your thoughts, not only as an ASA or criminal defense lawyer, but how do you feel as a citizen, that the law might change. As you are pondering your answers to those questions, think about this fact:

According to a recent study published in JAMA, homicides in Florida increased 21 percent — from an average of 82 homicides per month from 1999 to October 2005 to 99 homicides per month from October 2005 to 2014. What happened in 2005 - Florida's first SYG law was passed.  ABC news covered the story here while NBC news covered it here.

With the burden of proof shifting entirely to the State if these bills pass and are signed into law by the Governor, don't you think those numbers will rise even further?

CAPTAIN OUT .....
Captain4Justice@gmail.com