Thursday, October 8, 2009

DV Offender Employed by Lawson Lamar Gets Slap on the Wrist


It helps to work for the State Attorney when you commit a crime.

Defendant Michael Emmons (2009MM10127), employed by the Orange County Office of the State Attorney in the MIS Department, pled no contest today to one count of Interception of Wire/Oral Communications involving his wife (offense date 12/27/08). Adjudication was withheld and he is to serve 12 months probation.  The Seminole County State Attorney's Office prosecuted this case because of Mr. Emmons' job with Orange County.

Judge Leon Cheek would have gotten an A+ from CourtWatch if only he had adjudicated Mr. Emmons guilty. The judge asked several good questions of the prosecutor and took several minutes to review other witness statements in the State's file.  He emphasized to Mr. Emmons how foolish he was to jeopardize his job by breaking the law while at work and told the defendant he expects him to show more restraint.  He also told Mr. Emmons that he doubted the defendant's assertion that he didn't know what he did was illegal since the defendant was in a position to know that it was.  Judge Cheek gave an excellent definition of what "no contact" means as he ordered the defendant to have no contact with his wife (she obtained an injunction against him in Seminole in March), and in fact told him that he was not even allowed to speak about her in a derogatory fashion to his friends. Defense Counsel Daniel Brodersen requested "unsupervised probation" and the judge emphatically told him there's no such thing.  Finally, as the hearing concluded, Judge Cheek asked if the victim was present in order to make a statement. Most judges don't mention this unless an attorney alerts them to do so.

One distressing part of this story is that Mr. Emmons had a separate battery charge (12/31/08) against his wife that was referred to a pretrial diversion program by the Seminole prosecutor in May because he had no prior offenses.  The evidence against him included a one hour police interview tape in which he makes admissions to pushing her down, wrestling her, head butting the wall, and grabbing her. He was required to enroll in a Batterers' Intervention Program as part of that agreement.

The most distressing part of this story, which really indicated to me that Mr. Emmons doesn't take personal responsibility for his actions, was that he represented to Judge Cheek today that "she has made my life miserable - she punched herself in the eye - I didn't realize it was against the law to put my hands on her to intervene."

The judge didn't buy his story. I only wish Emmons had been adjudicated guilty today.

6 comments:

  1. Why is this monster still working for Lawson Lamar. This case negatively impacts the integrity of the entire state attorney's office. Aside from the domestic violence, he committed crimes while at work.

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  2. This is outrageous......what kind of justice system do we have? He was blatantly GUILTY and is still allowed to work for the state.....the Judge might as well as told him what he did was nothing.......

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  3. Does Lamar have a law degree? Having been the OC
    Sheriff and all...

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  4. Lamar's protecting his own. I just read the blog again and this Emmons guy admitted to abusing her on police tapes..what more evidence does Lamar need. nothing like using his wife as a punching bag then having his office cover it up and protect him

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  5. THis is ridiculous. Just because he has connection he is not charged but i bet you if it were just a regular citizen who had a regular job would most likely be let go for a misdemeanor charge. What type of justice is that?

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  6. Court records prove it, public record, look up the 'so called' victim in this case, she is evil. Just wait and see, she'll be a "Dateline" story one day soon, then all the past husbands of hers will be vindicated. As this past husband was not her current victim.

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