Jesse SchecknerApril 25, 2024
3min0
DeSantis first appointed Helm to a bench in 2021.
Tag: 5th Judicial Circuit
Jesse SchecknerApril 25, 2024
Scott PowersFebruary 4, 2019
4min455
He transferred from the 9th Circuit to the 5th to follow the murder cases Scott reassigned.
Jim RosicaMarch 11, 2018
4min794
In a surprise announcement Sunday from the dais of the Florida House, Gov. Rick Scott said he had appointed Republican Rep. Larry Metz as a circuit judge. Metz, a Yalaha Republican and 62-year-old lawyer in private practice, applied for a judgeship in the 5th Judicial Circuit, covering Lake, Marion, and Sumter counties. He’s term-limited in the House […]
Scott PowersAugust 31, 2017
16min552
Gov. Rick Scott has the authority to transfer murder cases away from the office of Orlando’s State Attorney Aramis Ayala because she refuses to pursue capital punishments, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Ayala greeted the ruling by declaring she was changing her policy, and would set up a special panel to review the death penalty […]
Scott PowersAugust 31, 2017
2min283
Two more Orange County murder cases, including one dating to the early 1990s and one from this spring, are being stripped from Orlando’s State Attorney Aramis Ayala, with Gov. Rick Scott reassigning the prosecutions to State Attorney Brad King of Ocala. Scott signed two executive orders late Wednesday, reassigning the murder cases of Jermaine A. Foster, […]
Scott PowersMay 3, 2017
6min592
“Unlike every other amici in this litigation, the Family Members’ right to be heard is not hypothetical, it is not philosophical, it is not past – it is real and present.” Thus opens a friend of the court brief filed Wednesday by the families of victims of seven homicides in the balance of the Florida […]
Scott PowersApril 21, 20176min275
Friends of the court are beginning to crowd into the Florida Supreme Court case pitting Orlando’s State Attorney Aramis Ayala and Gov. Rick Scott, with families of homicide victims siding with Scott, and the ACLU and House Minority Leader Janet Cruz siding with Ayala on Friday. Several filings Friday are loading the case with friends. Also Friday, a group […]
Scott PowersApril 12, 2017
3min546
Former lobbyist and Apopka official Richard Anderson was given three years probation and a suspended driver’s license in a plea deal filed Tuesday that ended prosecution of the hit-and-run case against him in Lake County. Anderson, 62, agreed to a deal Circuit Court in Lake County in which prosecutors dropped three counts against him and he […]
Scott PowersApril 11, 20178min468
Arguing Gov. Rick Scott had no legal basis to strip murder cases from her jurisdiction, Orlando’s State Attorney Aramis Ayala filed challenges Tuesday morning in both the Florida Supreme Court and federal court. In complaints filed by her attorney, Roy Austin Jr. of Washington D.C., Ayala contends that she legally exercised prosecutorial discretion in deciding not […]
Scott PowersOctober 24, 20162min160
The felony hit-and-run case against former lobbyist Richard D. Anderson is scheduled for a plea negotiation settlement Wednesday but the state prosecutor’s office indicated they expect the case to head to trial at a date to be determined. Anderson, 62, of Apopka, faces five criminal charges including leaving the scene of a crash involving injury […]