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.

Misdemeanor DV Court Gets "It"

In 2007, Orange County implemented at specialized misdemeanor domestic violence division. Court personnel received training about the dynamics of DV as well as knowing what the Statute requires. Judge Jerry Brewer presided over this division until Dec 2008 (except for 4 months in 2008 when budget cuts caused it to shut down). He did a phenomenal job of running this division and CourtWatch was disappointed when he was reassigned to traffic court in January.


Because of their specialized training, the prosecutors and judge in this division routinely include BIP (the 26 week Batterer's Intervention Program) in their plea agreements and sentencings. I spent a lot of time in Judge Brewer's courtroom in the early months of my courtwatching career and learned a great deal from him.

Once I began to monitor the felony courts more often, I was astonished to see the prosecutors and judges rarely, if ever, order BIP for domestic violence offenders - either in their plea agreements or when they'd been adjudicated by a jury. I can only assume that because their divisions handle a wide variety of offenses, that they didn't know that the Statute says:

• if a defendant pleads guilty or no contest to a crime of domestic violence, even if adjudication is withheld, Florida Statute requires they be receive 1 year's probation and be ordered into BIP - if the Court finds BIP is not appropriate (which would be the case in non-intimate partner violence), it must state on the record why it is not


• if a defendant is adjudicated guilty of a crime of domestic violence and they've intentionally caused bodily harm to the victim, they must be sentenced to a minimum of 5 days in jail

Last fall we presented our concerns to Chief Judge Belvin Perry about our findings that sentencings in felony divisions were not in accordance with statutory requirements. After researching the Statute, he agreed and issued a memorandum to the judges to make them aware of what the law requires. This memorandum was sent by CourtWatch to Lawson Lamar, the State Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit (Orange/Osceola) in February.

In State v. Steven Piantieri 2008CF16896 (about which we previously blogged), the defendant was charged with felony battery and pled to misdemeanor battery on 3/31/09. He was ordered to complete 1 year of probation; have no contact with the victim (yet he was ordered to write her an apology letter!); 1 day jail with credit for time served (where is our 5-day jail term?); complete 35 hours of community service; continue with anger management counseling on a weekly basis with his existing counselor and provide proof to his attorney.

Orange County Probation's specialized DV unit asked for a hearing this week to clarify the sentence because there is no such program as Domestic Violence Anger Management. You can order either Anger Management or BIP (which is geared toward counseling batterers about issues of power and control - not anger). The victim definately wanted BIP ordered. The judge was inclined to agree. HOWEVER, the Assistant State Attorney handling the case, Diane Murphy, said that anger management was acceptable. BIP was not ordered for Mr. Piantieri.

For CourtWatch, and for the victim, this is unacceptable! We need the State Attorney and his Assistants to do their best to enforce the law. That is what we as citizens should expect from our prosecutors.