It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Shea, 56, a judge since 2007, thought he had settled the complaints against him by signing an agreement June 1 with the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the state panel that polices judges.
It had formally charged him with violating three judicial canons – in summary, losing his temper and behaving like a bully.
The commission cited nine instances of bad behavior, including three that were vaguely sexist. One time he asked a female assistant state attorney to get coffee for everyone in the courtroom. Another time while the same attorney was at a bench conference, he shaped his hand like a talking mouth and said he sometimes found it wise to let a woman "just talk until she's finished" then do whatever you like.
... he sometimes found it wise to let a woman "just talk until she's finished" then do whatever you like.
The state high court, though, ruled two weeks ago that a reprimand was too mild a sanction. Shea should be suspended for 60 days without pay, foregoing $24,000 in pay. He also should write letters of apology to seven people, five of them assistant state attorneys whom he had mistreated, and continue with mental health counseling to get control of his temper.
Orange-Osceola Circuit Judge Tim Shea today told the Florida Supreme Court no, he won't agree to a 60-day unpaid suspension as punishment for bullying attorneys who appear in his courtroom.
Kirkconnell said the matter now goes back to the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the state agency that polices judges and had filed charges against Shea in the first place.
JQC proceedings are much like criminal court cases, and when a plea offer falls apart in criminal court, the two sides often try to cobble together a new deal or the matter proceeds to trial. Either of those things could happen with Shea.
What's extraordinary in this case is that the final arbiter in all JQC cases – the Florida Supreme Court – has already made clear that it thinks Shea was in the wrong and how he should be punished.