Kick Ass (25 page)

Judge Davis wants the jury to think he’s different, special, worthy of forgivenessas if fixing court cases isn’t as bad as stealing car stereos or knocking over ATMs.

The strategy might backfire. Some people, especially those with family members who’ve struggled with drugs, would say Davis is worse than your average junkie. He wasted chances that most people never get, and he did it for greed.

He had risen to the most honored and powerful position in the justice system. Then, between cases, he’d retreat to his chambers, pack his nose and arrange shakedowns.

A student of drama, Davis poured out his heart on the witness stand: I could have been somebody!

Finish the scene, Phil. You know the rest …

You coulda had class. You coulda been a contender. You coulda been somebody.

Instead of a bum, which is what you are.

Court Broom’s final score warrants Lysol

April 29, 1993

Fumigate the courthouse. It’s finally over.

The Operation Court Broom corruption trial ended messily this week, and the stench lingers. Even by local standards, it was one maggot-gagging parade of sleaze, and one expensive botch job. Too much time, too many charges and a jury that was (putting it kindly) too easily confusedit added up to bad news for the government.

Start with the key prosecution witnesses: Ray Takiff, a phenomenally crooked lawyer who went undercover to pass out FBI bribes, and Circuit Judge Roy Gelber, a phenomenally crooked judge who brokered corrupt schemes with other judges. Leaving a double-wide trail of slime in court, these guys were so odious that the defendants looked almost harmless by comparison.

Almost, but not quite. The defendants: three judges and a former judge, all accused of taking bribes to fix cases. The FBI had a helluva case, toovideotapes, phone taps, marked money. It looked like a cinch.

Final score: 53 charges, 37 acquittals, three convictions and numerous deadlocks. What happened? Lewis Carroll couldn’t have hallucinated it.

The weird, warped verdict pleased Judge Phillip Davis and nobody else. The only defendant to be acquitted of all charges, Davis was also the only one to admit his crookedness. After he told jurors how he packed his nose with cocaine and packed his pockets with bribe money, they let him go.

Afterward, one juror said that Davis was clearly guilty of all charges. But, he added, jurors didn’t believe they could convict Davis because the judge claimed to have been impaired by drugs. Really? Blowing coke is a legal excuse for committing crimes? Well, by golly, throw open those prison doors! Every inmate with a drug habit, shoo on outta here!

One juror said the judges deserved leniency because they were “first offenders.” Like they’d been spraying graffiti instead of selling their oath.

The panel did manage to convict Judge Harvey Shenberg and ex-judge David Goodhart, while painfully acquitting Judge Al Sepe of most charges and deadlocking on others. Any verdict was a miracle, considering the tension in the jury room. Most jurors felt all the defendants were guilty of something, but one holdoutGloria Varasdidn’t want to convict any of them.

Varas says the other jurors badgered her and made her cry. The others say Varas stubbornly refused to consider the overwhelming evidence of guilt. Video of payoffs and bribery plotting failed to impress her. For instance, Varas discounted a surveillance tape of Shenberg taken moments after he stuffed cash in his trousers because, she said, she couldn’t tell if the money was really green.

How did this person get on the jury? Before the trial, Varas revealed her belief that her ex-husband had once wiretapped her laundry room. That statement suggests, among other things, that Varas might think unfavorably of electronic evidence. For some strange reason, prosecutors kept her on the panel.

Varas remained adamant during deliberations, and the partial verdict was a lame compromise. Most of the jurors weren’t satisfied with the outcome, and some flatly said the system failed.

While Davis rejoices, Sepe is considering a return to his old job. Why not? Voters blithely put him back on the bench after a previous scandal in which he allegedly solicited sex from a defendant’s wife. This time, the snag is a mere $5,000 in marked FBI bills that turned up in the judge’s nightstand. Voters will eagerly await his explanation.

Meanwhile, the feds intend to retry Sepe, Shenberg and Goodhart on the unresolved Court Broom charges. Let’s hope more attention will be paid to jury selection. Next time, no space cadets.

A floating jail: Flotsam of the Schreiber mind

December 10, 1986

Maybe Barry Schreiber’s right. Maybe the thing that has been missing from Biscayne Bay all these years is a really nice floating jail.

Sure, we’ve got porpoises and tarpon, manatees and pelicansbig deal. You can find the same critters at Sebastian Inlet or Marco Island or Key Largo.

But where else except Miami in the modern 20th century would you be able to sail past a shipload of actual hard-core jailbirds? The thought is enough to make you wish Herman Melville or Victor Hugo were alive to write about it. If this had happened years ago, prison lore wouldn’t be the sameSteve McQueen would’ve made his great escape on a jet ski instead of a motorcycle.

Ostensibly the purpose of a Seagoing Slammer would be to temporarily alleviate the well-documented overcrowding in Dade County’s landlocked penal institutions. A clever smokescreen, Admiral Schreiber, but we all know the truth: This will be the tourist attraction to end all tourist attractions.

Imagine combining the romance of the Love Boat with the charm of Alcatraz. Even the warden could wear Ocean Pacific.

Think of the headlines, the national publicity, the renewed interest in South Florida’s notorious crime rate. And it couldn’t come at a better timethe start of the winter season!

If I had the tour boat franchise, I’d already be jacking up the fares and installing extra seats (“On your left, ladies and gentlemen, the home of international singing sensation Julio Iglesias. And on your right, a sweaty boatload of convicted burglars, purse snatchers and sex maniacs

“)

To be fair, Commissioner Schreiber can’t take all the credit for the idea of a prison barge. New York City is already converting an old Staten Island Ferry into a floating lockup. It will be anchored off Riker’s Island in the scenic East River, an angler’s paradise that seasonally yields its share of three-headed mutant carp and trophy-sized dead mobsters.

For all its riches, the East River is no Biscayne Bay. As you might expect, a few of South Florida’s know-it-all environmentalists are raising a ruckus about Schreiber’s plan. A floating jail, they say, would be nothing but a floating toilet. They say it would degrade, pollute and poison the crystal waters. Last week, the Biscayne Bay Management Committee even passed a resolution condemning Admiral Schreiber’s scheme.

Nobody seems willing to acknowledge some obvious advantages, such as mobility. In the past, Metro commissioners have been unable to select a few acres on which to build a new conventional jail. Every time they come up with a site, dozens of nearby and not-so-nearby residents storm the commission to complain.

With a floating jail, the location is no problem. You simply tow it around late at night, when everybody’s sleeping. One week you might tie up off Turnberry, the next maybe Star Island, and the week after that, the Cricket Club. When the neighbors start to gripe, you quietly weigh anchor and sail on.

And can you think of a more festive and fitting entry in the annual winter boat parade?

Admittedly, there might be a few problems with the S.S. Minimum Mandatory. The cost, for onea projected $4.5 million. For that kind of money you could probably lease the Norway for a year.

The next item is deciding who gets to be incarcerated on the jail barge. Certainly not just any old convictsnot with all those tourists gawking. Image-wise, it makes sense to pick only the inmates with the deepest tans and best disciplinary records. It also makes sense to pick those who can’t swim very fast.

Security on the floating pokey could pose a challenge, but it’s nothing that a trained school of ravenous lemon sharks couldn’t solve.

As for the aesthetics, there’s no denying that many jails are bleak, fetid, dispiriting hellholes.

Our Hoosegow-on-the-Bay doesn’t have to look that way. We’ll just get Christo to wrap it in pink.

Mathematician needed to sort prison guidelines

January 23, 1994

Florida’s new prison-sentencing guidelines are supposed to tell prosecutors which bad guys are the worst, and how long to lock them up.

A prosecutor with many years of trial experience sent me the new rules, along with a gloomy note: “Other than the fact that categories 1-6 do not go to prison, and (categories) 7-9 go for a short time, I have no idea what’s going on.”

Neither do I. The new method of computing a criminal’s sentence is so insanely confusing that Einstein himself would be pulling out his hair.

Crimes are ranked according to seriousness. For instance, passing a bad check or carrying marijuana is Level One. Kidnapping with bodily harm or violent sexual battery on a child is Level 10. Prison time is calculated using points.

Under the rules, 40 points or less means the judge can’t send you to state prison. Between 50 and 52 points, the judge may send you to prison. Anything above 52 points is automatic state time. Sound simple? Just wait.

Here’s an example from an actual “score sheet” used to train prosecutors. I wish I was making this up:

A bad guy is arrested for aggravated batterya Level Seven crime worth 42 points. Add another 40 because the victim was severely injured. Plus 2.4 points because the defendant has a prior conviction for auto theft. (Why 2.4 points? Don’t ask.) Bottom line: The guy’s up to 84.4 points.

Now add four more from a previous prison escape. Add another six because he violated parole. Total points: 94.4. Converted to months, that’s almost eight years in the slammerbut hold on.

To finish calculating, take the guy’s 94.4 and subtract 28 months off the top. (This innovation replaces “basic gain time,” assuring early release.) New answer: 66.4 months.That’s 5 1/2 years, right? Guess again.

On a Level Seven felony, a judge may increase or decrease prison time by up to 15 percent. So, our bad guy faces a minimum term of 4.15 years and a maximum of 6.9 years.

Normally he’d get out much sooner, thanks to “incentive” time off for good behavior (for each month served, up to 25 days are cut from a sentence). However, our bad guy is bad enough to earn a mandatory three years, under a separate law.

There. Wasn’t that easy? And that’s a simple case. It’s no wonder that prosecutors are going batty.

Worse, the convoluted new sentencing guidelines don’t accomplish what tough-talking lawmakers promised. “Nobody is doing more time,” says Assistant State Attorney Michael Band. “It’s basically a shell game. Passing the buck.”

It’s true. Some violent crimes that once earned a trip upstate no longer do: aggravated assault, strong-arm robbery, even battery on a police officer while possessing a gun. Instead of riding a prison bus to Starke, some offenders will serve no more than 364 days in a county jail.

That’s because the Legislature is too gutless to raise taxes to build enough new prisons. Under pressure to appear alarmed about crime, lawmakers jiggle a few numbers and call it sentencing reform.

Unfortunately, there are still not enough cells for the most dangerous criminals. “The reality of it is,” says Band, “there’s no space out there.”

Meanwhile, a prosecutor with 100-odd felony cases will spend untold extra hours struggling through the math maze of the new law. When Assistant State Attorney Monica Hofheinz briefed her colleagues on the sentencing changes, she instructed them to bring a calculator and a pencil “with a LARGE eraser.”

Wisely, she also recommended Extra-Strength Tylenol.

Miami: No. I destination for crooks

September I, 1994

Now the rest of us know what thieves, robbers and rapists have known for a long time.

Miami is the best place in America to be a criminal. It is to hard-core felons what Disneyland is to Michael Jackson.

In a series being published this week, the Herald used computers to study the effectiveness of Dade’s justice system. The results are shocking, scary and disgraceful.

Dade has the worst crime rate in the country, and does the laziest job of putting bad criminals behind bars. Unless you shoot a tourist or rob the mayor, the odds of beating the rap are hugely in your favor.

Only 15 of 100 convicted Dade felons go to state prison; the national average is 46 per 100. Out of 24 major metropolitan areas, Dade is dead last in punishing serious crime.

The customary excuse, swallowed so gullibly by us in the media, turns out to be a myth: There are beds available in Florida prisons, but Dade uses less than half its share.

State Attorney Kathy Rundle insists that crooks often serve more time when sent to county jail rather than state prison. Statistics show that’s not true.

Moreover, since 1990, inmates in state prisons are serving increasingly longer stretches of their sentences (44.2 percent today, compared with 33.1 percent four years ago).

To appreciate Dade’s marshmallow-softness on crime, consider that a robber arrested in neighboring Broward is three times more likely to go to prison.

What’s going on? An incredible jamboree of plea-bargaining.

All big-city prosecutors and judges are snowed under by cases, but dumping them has become an art here in Dade. Of 162 felony defendantsone day’s worth last springonly 12 got prison.

Most of the rest got deals. They had the charges dropped, were put on probation, or were sent through pretrial diversion. One such program, the much-hyped Drug Court, was designed to help first offenders. It’s now used as a prison-dodging scam by career crooks. One recent enrollee: a burglar with 28 prior convictions.

Much of the blame falls on prosecutors, and the judges who routinely accept (and encourage) outlandish deals for the sake of expediency.