Jesse Scheckner
Federal prosecutor Michael Porter is heading to the 19th Judicial Circuit bench.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has selected Porter over five other candidates to succeed Judge Janet Croom, who stepped down in early March.
Croom originally planned to retire in June, but told DeSantis on Feb. 20 that she needed to move the date up to March 2 “due to unforeseen and unrelated circumstances.”
Croom’s letter expediting her resignation came a week after it was reported that her 19-year-old son had been arrested for the armed robbery of a Gainesville smoke shop.
The Governor’s Office announced the appointment of Porter, a Vero Beach resident who has worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Eastern and Western Districts of Tennessee, on Wednesday.
DeSantis did not include a personal statement in the announcement.
Porter was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2006 after earning his law degree earlier from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law four years earlier. Prior to his prosecutorial work, he was a senior associate with GrayRobinson in Orlando and interned with the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, according to Vero Beach 32963.
Porter, who listed federal Judge Aileen Cannon as a reference, said in his application for the judgeship that he was “blessed as a young attorney to serve for two judges who believed it was their duty to mentor young lawyers.”
“As stewards of our profession it is incumbent upon experienced lawyers to impart as much knowledge as we have to the generation of lawyers destined to succeed us,” he said.
“As a circuit judge I would have a unique opportunity to interact with and mentor the younger members of our profession. I welcome that opportunity and believe I have valuable insight to contribute.”
Others short-listed for the job included Jeffrey Battista, Kate Bradford, Katherine Mish, Robert Stone Jr. and Steven Wilson.
Croom was appointed to the bench in January 2015 by then-Gov. Rick Scott. She presided over civil, family, juvenile delinquency, guardianship and probate cases. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1997.
On Feb. 12, Gainesville police apprehended her son, Major Leo Carney Croom, on charges of robbing a smoke shop of $420 worth of cannabis. The young man, a child chess champion now enrolled at the University of Florida, claimed he used a fake gun he found near the store to commit the crime.
He faces two counts of armed robbery.
As a federal prosecutor, Porter has secured numerous victories. Recent ones include his successful prosecution of a payroll services company owner for tax evasion, the guilty plea of a company and its former employee for harboring illegal aliens, the conviction of a Vero Beach meth dealer to 12 years in prison and a more than seven-year prison sentence for a Palm Beach County man for illegal firearm possession.
Of those cases, three were before Cannon, who in April 2024 rejected a classified documents case against President Donald Trump, who appointed her in 2020, and in December threw out a lawsuit over Florida Power & Light’s alleged support of so-called “ghost candidates” in the state.
