After a two-day bench trial before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Miguel de la O, Precious Bland was acquitted of all counts by reason of insanity:
“As to count one, aggravated manslaughter, the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity. As to count two of attempted murder in the first degree, the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity. And as to count three attempted murder in the first degree, the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity,” De La O said.
The state had accused Bland of intentionally drowning her 15-month-old daughter in a bathtub in 2021, and Judge de la O entered a judgment of acquittal. Bland’s defense lawyer, Larry Handfield, argued that she was suffering from a COVID-induced psychotic breakdown. Given the nature of the accusation, the age of the victim, the theory of defense, and the Court’s verdict, the stage was set for hysterics. And Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier delivered in schtick.
The call for impeachment comes just days after a judge delivered the verdict following a two-day bench trial for Precious Bland.
“When you have someone who’s drowning a baby, and then a judge in a bench trial is letting her off for insanity, and then she’s going to go right back out to the public, this is wrong,” Uthmeier said Thursday.
For impeachment, only the Florida Legislature may remove a state Judge after two-thirds majority vote in each chamber, and no Judge has been the subject of impeachment proceedings in six decades. As for any accusations of improper conduct, those claims are usually brought before the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission. I’m no expert on the Florida Rules of Judicial Conduct, but I’d bet the house that Judge de la O did nothing improper while presiding over this trial.
Judge de la O is highly respected by defense lawyers, prosecutors, and fellow Judges. His courtroom is inside what’s referred to by Miami practitioners as “The Justice Building.” Folks usually put a lot of focus on Judges’ temperament, and I’ve never heard a story about Judge de la O losing his cool. CDLs more experienced than me will agree that when you step inside his courtroom, you will get a fair shake, which is all you can really ask for when defending the accused.
Florida Governor De Santis is also outraged against the Judge, and he is the third judge that AG Uthmeier has publicly called for impeachment this year.
Moves like these appeal to others’ ignorance about our legal system, and it feeds a sense of hysteria that threatens law and order. It’s a tried-and-true, low-rent appeal to the mob for political points. Many people see courthouses a place to find the truth and justice. What justice is eludes me, as I only know injustice when I see it, but that’s not the point.
Naïve CDLs like me see courthouses as a sort of prophylactic against mob justice, and all of the stupidity that comes with it. These are places where there are rules, order, and where each side uses its best wit and zeal to find victory, within the ethical parameters. Those magnificent marble buildings is where, if you throw temper tantrums and let your lizard brain take over, you do so at your client’s peril.
Now, all the nutjobs are going to come out, in spades. I hope that Judge de la O won’t be the subject of threats, which are not uncommon when mob justice is aroused this way. If it does, it will be for shame.
I’ve had the privilege of practicing all over Florida, and Miami’s Justice Building is the only courthouse where I haven’t seen the bailiffs armed (which is ironic, given Miami’s rep). Even with all of the insanity that we deal with, there is always a sense of order there. This won’t change all that, but I still find those hysterics particularly irritating, given the stakes.
And yes, I know that no reader will ever find himself sitting at defense table, facing the prosecutorial might of the state. But, if by some freak occurrence, it happens, you’d be praying for a zealous defense, and for a Judge or jury willing to do right by the law, even when it won’t necessarily be popular. It’s why we sometimes ask juries, or Judges, to have the courage to render a two-word, and sometimes a six-word, verdict.
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When someone tells me something happened of import, I check to see if something of import really happened. That’s just lawyerly nature–confirm stuff. So I went to the Dade* docket. Until someone comes in who knows my password for that circuit, I’m stuck with the public docket. I saw the defense wit list includes a couple MH experts. I don’t know about the state because there’s no wit list for it. I also didn’t see a pretrial comp report. I see one was ordered and scheduled, but there’s no notation of it being filed. That could be a quirk of Dade; it has many quirks.
I know nothing else because I wasn’t at the two-day trial. If someone asks me what happened, the answer will be, “dunno.”
The Swamp AG dunno, neither. His office had nothing to do with the case; his lawyers weren’t there. But if the office tried the case, two things are certain: trial would have been six days and lawyer tears would have stained the courtroom. In the words of my late pal, “just STFU.” Talking when you don’t know what you’re talking about violates Skink’s 3rd Rule of Lawyerin’.
*I don’t care how many decades go by, I ain’t calling it “Miami-Dade.”
I say we just call it “Miami.” And the prosecutors coming out of the AG’s office as of late have not been the toughest adversaries. So yes on the tears.
There’s another thing, and it trembled my cells. It concerns “magnificent marble buildings.”
I hear you got you a new courthouse down there. I haven’t had a state court case there for a couple years, so I haven’t enjoyed it. Does it really have marble? I ask because I had lots of cases over 25 years in the old one. I never went there without there being scaffolding surrounding the thing. That’s because the outside of the building started falling off in about 1980. Rocks falling on defendants’ noggins is a constitutional violation.
But there’s more. The build was in the 1920s. They got about 10 floors in before it started sinking because they didn’t dig far enough into the Swamp muck to get to rock. The fix was to put stuff in the basement (pro tip: underground rooms in the Swamp is bad juju), and put extra columns through the middle of the floors.
That didn’t work great. For longer than the scaffolding was present, there were pumps running real hard to send the Atlantic Ocean back where it belonged–see the bad juju. They had to make it so the building didn’t fall on the Cuban bakery across the street. It’s a great bakery!
Then there’s them columns. They were about 2X2 feet and there could be 4 in a very small courtroom. It was tricky to get a seat where I could see the judge, witness and jury without a bunch of strange movements. It was like Twister trial.
I miss that place.
Aren’t judges in Florida elected? Isn’t this best left to the voters?
They’re elected, but that’s not the point. And it’s not best left to the voters.
I was surprised to hear of a link between Covid-19 and psychosis, but I found a review article that stated, “Available evidence only supports a biological plausibility for the association between COVID-19 and new-onset psychosis. The limitations of this review are inherent in the heterogeneity of methods used to assess psychosis in existing literature and in the limited number of available reports specifically addressing the issue. However, the bulk of evidence points to the possibility that viral entry in brain structures may facilitate the onset of psychotic behavior in vulnerable persons.”
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]