Florida District Court Judges

OK, I feel like I am skimping, but I am also running out of time. I will roll the questions of the five district court judges into one post. In Florida judges are appointed by the Governor, but then every six years have to be voted for “Merit Retention”. That means you get to vote yes or no on each one, to determine if they get another six years. If they are voted out, the Governor gets to appoint someone else. The District Judges up for retention at this time are:

* Vincent G. Torpy, Jr.
* Winifred J. Sharp
* Earle W. Peterson, Jr.
* David A. Monaco
* Jacqueline R. Griffin

OK, the websites just give basic resume stuff. And apperantly judges aren’t allowed to have “real” campaigns where they talk about their views and stuff. And I don’t have the time or resources to actually start going and looking up the case histories for these judges.

In several palces I was able to find summaries of these retention races, and they all looked very similar. Here is a typical one. Basically it gives info on each of the judges and how long they have been in their positions. It also gives a couple of one sentence summaries of a few proiminant cases. It notes that a survey of area lawers showed that all five candidates enjoyed a greater than 80% support rate for retention.

Another article that I found makes the point that since Florida has had this system, there has NEVER been a judge removed by this system. OK…

In thew absence of finding any serious move to remove any of these guys, and nothing I could find with any serious problems with them, I’m OK keeping them all.

My votes:

Vincent G. Torpy, Jr.: YES
Winifred J. Sharp: YES
Earle W. Peterson, Jr.: YES
David A. Monaco: YES
Jacqueline R. Griffin: YES