Posted: 1/6/2005 9:34:05 AM
Author: Wesley Fager
GREAT TITLE - CAN'T RECALL
Judge George W. Greer is challenging incumbent Chief Judge David A. Demers for top judge on Florida's Sixth Circuit. In 1992 St. Petersburg Times staff writer Jon East wrote an article about George Greer's first run for a circuit judgeship and titled it Electing judges is a farce. He noted that Greer's only credentials were his well-publicized name as a two-term county commissioner and his "healthy campaign bank account." George Greer had been a zoning lawyer before becoming a county commissioner and had raised his substantial war chest for that run from "developers, contractors, law firms and investment companies."
I do not believe Judge Greer is the best choice for chief judge. The election of the chief judge for the 6th Circuit is the most important selection of a chief judge in all the Florida circuits because of the plethora of bad national press that circuit has received of late. So before stating what's wrong with Judge Greer, I should first state what's wrong with the 6th Circuit.
The skinny on Florida's royal court. In 2002 the Columbia Law School released a study finding that the 6th Circuit leads the nation with an 89% error rate of death sentences. This means that Pinellas County Florida is more likely than any other county in the land to send an innocent man to death. Former 6th Circuit Chief Justice Susan Schaeffer was part of that court before she retired. She personally sentenced so many people to their death (8) that she is known as "Ms. Death." She even wrote a handbook on how to sentence people to death which is required reading for all circuit judges in the state.
In 2003 The Reader's Digest named Judge Charles W. Cope as one of the worst judges in the land after he tried to break into the motel room of a woman. Yet Chief Judge Schaeffer stood by him during his tribulations publicly declaring, "He has one of the best work ethics of all our circuit judges."
The 6th Circuit's current Chief Justice David A. Demers was another Cope enabler. In 2002 former Chief Judge David Patterson committed suicide. Two years ago attorney Leonard Englander convinced 6th Circuit Judge Walt Logan to issue a gag order to silence a man from sounding off about consumer issues with a major furniture company. USA Today did that story. Next year Englander got Judge Logan to sign a gag order to keep a man from sounding off about his client Ambassador Mel Sembler--parts of that story made it to the Washington Post. Later Logan, Englander, the CEO of the furniture company and the son of Mel Sembler served together on a social committee.
There's the misrepresentation by Circuit Judge John Renke III; the endorsement of the controversial Narconon™ program by some justices; and the partnership of the 6th Circuit and Operation PAR, PAR's ties to Betty Sembler, and Betty Sembler's and the 6th Circuit's ties to Straight and The Seed--two defunct juvenile drug rehab programs that closed under charges of child abuse.
Judge George Greer. With all the national attention on the 6th Circuit, the chief justice must be beyond reproach. And Judge Greer is not. By 1992 Pinellas County had 70,000 blacks but there had never been one black county commissioner. That year Sevell Brown of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference asked the U.S. Justice Department to challenge the county's system of at-large elections. One man who could help then was chief county commissioner George Greer who was also chairman of the county's Charter Commission.
In that capacity he could have worked to do away with the at-large system or even to increase the number of commissioners in order to make it easier for blacks to gain a seat. But he did absolutely nothing to help blacks gain a seat. In 2000 Chief Judge Susan Schaeffer lamented that her 6th Circuit had only two black judges. There is still a racial imbalance on the circuit. Thirty-nine percent of those on death row in Florida are black and George Greer is not the man to rectify these problems.
When he was a county commissioner George Greer met with the mayor and two commissioners from Largo, Florida to try to convince them to allow his clients to build more condominiums than codes allow on the golf course they owned. This was at a time when he was a county commissioner who acted on issues affecting Largo.
In 1990 Greer was publicly criticized for being one of four commissioners who took a boondoggle trip to the Cayman Islands ostensibly to look at the water desalinization plants there. The trip cost taxpayers over $4,000. And who can forget The Great Cooper's Point Land Scam when Michael Kenton, a Clearwater County employee, jointly purchased with the Sembler Company a swamp in Pinellas County for $ 1 million. Kenton became a consultant for Sembler and the team almost got away with selling the property overnight to Clearwater, with the help of Kenton's lobbying, for $2.65 million.
But the local press got whiff of the story. Sembler hired attorney Tim Johnson who was the campaign aid for and a good friend of county commissioner George Greer and a $1,000 donor to Greer's camapign. A majority of commissioners including Greer voted to help Clearwater buy the swamp for $ 1.95 million.
Wes Fager
Ed, www.theStraights.com
eMail: wes@wesfager.com
FLORIDUH VOTER SAYS: Mel Sembler is major GOP and that is why the Pinellas GOP Headquarters "hangs up" on republicans who just call to say that they support Governor Bush and Terri Schiavo's right to live and not be starved to death. SEMBLER WAS JUDGE GREER'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER FOR COUNTY COMMISSION. Semblers donates a large space to the GOP every major election cycle. I've been in Sembler's donated space - impressive. When I say republican judges are the ones trying to kill Terri, it is absolutely true. Check out the 89% ERROR RATE.
They're not Republican judges in any real sense of the word; They are RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). They are using the Republican Party for their own personal gain.
They know that the average voter prefers Republican judges, so they chose to run as Republicans to get elected.