Gary Farmer ‘unfit to serve’ after lewd comments, misconduct from Broward bench, panel says

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 3/1/22-Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Fort Lauderdale, speaks against the bill to limit the terms of school board members during the Senate Rules Committee, Tuesday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. The bill passed the committee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

More than six months after they landed him a reassignment on the Broward Circuit, a series of vulgar comments Judge Gary Farmer made last August, combined with newly uncovered indiscretions and biased actions from the bench, may earn him a suspension.

The Florida Supreme Court has acknowledged that it received a notice of formal charges, recommendation of suspension and notice of confidential information about Farmer’s conduct.

“Through his extensive misconduct, occurring over a lengthy period of time,” the recommendation said, “Judge Farmer has damaged the public’s perception of the judiciary and the judicial branch in such a way that he has demonstrated a present unfitness to serve.”

It comes less than two weeks after the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission’s (JQC) Investigative Panel voted to recommend that Farmer be suspended after he no-showed a hearing on the matter, blaming an “unspecified ‘emergency situation.’”

Farmer, a former Senate Democratic Leader, made headlines in September after he was reassigned to the Broward court’s civic division for sharing a trifecta of lewd thoughts while ruling over several cases the month before.

The inappropriateness happened on Aug. 15, beginning with a grand theft auto case in which he told a defendant who was expecting children from three different mothers to wear a condom while on probation.

“You are shooting all over the place,” Farmer said, referring to ejaculation, before telling the man not to get his defense attorney pregnant too.

Later that day, he recited wordplay from an “In Living Color” sketch featuring a pair of flamboyantly gay men talking about football while riffing with a lawyer.

“He likes it when the Oilers play the Packers,” Farmer said. “He used to be a tight end and now he’s a wide receiver.”

Later still, Farmer grew impatient with how long it took to remove a hostile defendant from the courtroom, saying, “What the f—,” before stopping short of completing the word.

The Investigative Panel found “numerous other instances” from other dates in which Farmer talked and behaved similarly.

After being notified he was under JQC investigation for his comments, Farmer admitted he’d spoken inappropriately but characterized his comments as “dad jokes” intended to engender camaraderie and reduce stress. The Investigative Panel didn’t view them so benignly, JQC General Counsel Alex John Williams said in an April 10 recommendation to the Supreme Court.

“(Many) of the so-called jokes were actually demeaning and potentially humiliating comments aimed at individual attorneys, court staff, litigants, and others over whom Judge Farmer held significant authority,” Williams said. “Moreover, many of his comments … could be viewed as discriminatory, or evincing a bias for or against parties, or controversies already in front … or likely to come before him.”

The Investigative Panel also discovered several examples where Farmer “willfully ignored” statutes, rules of procedure “or was unaware of the most basic elements of the law which govern his actions as a judge in the felony division.”

In one instance, Farmer “improperly dismissed a pending criminal case after striking a prosecution witness” despite valid objections — and an attempt to explain to the judge — that he could not dismiss the case outright.

In another, he prejudged cases not yet before him by saying that in cases where a defendant uses a stand-your-ground defense, prosecutors “will never be able to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant wasn’t reasonably in fear of imminent harm. … This does not make sense to the Court, but it is the law of Florida and the Court is duty bound to apply it.”

In yet another case where he learned a defendant had a court-ordered competency evaluation pending in another matter before a different judge, Farmer conducted an impromptu evaluation of his own by asking the defendant “random questions.”

“Notwithstanding the fact that the defendant was already awaiting a competency evaluation in another matter, and had answered some of Judge Farmer’s trivia questions wrong, Judge Farmer declared her competent and accepted her guilty plea,” Williams said, adding that when asked about whether his handling of the matter comported with rules governing competency, Farmer said he didn’t know that any existed.

Williams described Farmer’s misconduct as “egregious and serious” and his compliance with the JQC’s inquiry “minimally responsive.” After Farmer “repeatedly claimed” he couldn’t remember many of his comments, he also admitted he hadn’t reviewed their audio recordings.

Farmer behaved as if he were putting on a show, not ruling over serious matters in a courtroom, Williams continued. He noted a court exchange in which Farmer said he couldn’t handle a first-degree murder case because his jokes wouldn’t be well received there.

“I like it here. This is the people’s court. … I’m thinking about doing some night court,” Farmer said, referring to the TV comedy “Night Court” about a frequently dysfunctional courtroom

“However much Judge Farmer believes he is like the fictional Harry Stone, it goes without saying that the circus-like atmosphere that made the television show a comedic parody of real life court proceedings is completely antithetical to the manner in which a real court proceeding should be conducted and violative of the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Williams said.

“(The) Investigative Panel (also) dismisses, out-of-hand, any suggestion that Judge Farmer’s conduct was not violative of the Code because some people laughed at his comments or did not complain about being offended. The simple fact of the matter is that Judge Farmer’s position as a judge provided him with a captive audience who would naturally and understandably be willing to laugh and reticent to complain.”

The Panel’s recommendation: suspending Farmer from performing his duties, without compensation, pending the final determination of its inquiry.

This isn’t the first time Farmer’s mouth got him hot water. He served as Senate Democratic Leader for just five months before party members booted him from the position in a vote of no confidence.

Two and a half years earlier, he drew criticism for “obnoxious” comments he made about Book, whom he said was ill-suited for the leader post because she had two young children.

Farmer later apologized, explaining that his comments were “in no way meant to be a broad statement on gender, or Senator Book.”

The Supreme Court case is ongoing.