Sworn to be wild

Rex Barbas wears a ponytail and rides a Harley Davidsen. But he's also a circuit judge who gets choked up signing adoption decrees.

By BILL COATS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 31, 2002

LUTZ -- As much as he enjoyed his first election campaign, Circuit Judge Rex Barbas will not be staging another one this year. He and 23 other local judges were automatically re-elected two weeks ago when nobody filed to run against them.

That gives Barbas, 51, more time to ride his motorcycle or his bicycle, to paint, to read, to stay in touch with friends, to plan his weekly college lectures.

More time, in other words, to pursue life the Barbas way, actively and eclectically.

"He's certainly, to this point, lived his life to the fullest," said Barbas' brother and former law partner, Steve.

Todd Bray, a Tampa stockbroker, has a special place among Barbas' friends. The two were neighbors and classmates at Jesuit High School in the 1960s, and they and their families have celebrated the past 36 New Year's eves together.

Bray nicknamed Barbas "Swivel Hips" while visiting him in New Orleans, when Barbas was a top student at the Loyola University Law School.

Barbas said the nickname stuck for a couple years. "I used to love to dance," he said.

Over time, Barbas became known instead as "Sexy Rexy," a name his younger brother Randy gave him when the future judge was a pre-teen. When Barbas became president of the Rough Riders social krewe in 1990, a nickname was obligatory. Sexy Rexy became official.

"I don't think it has anything to do with any particular exploits or deeds," said Bray, who was a fellow Rough Rider at the time. "I'm not going to comment on that."

Rex Barbas is flamboyant like his father, who was a gregarious Ybor City physician, Steve Barbas said.

"Everyone could hear my dad laughing, and everyone can hear Rex laughing," he said.

"He has a wonderful warmness about him," said Bob Anderson Mitcham, a retired circuit judge and law partner of Rex Barbas.

Wild turkeys

Barbas, a Catholic, became attached to the discipline and creativity instilled by Jesuit priests while at Jesuit High. So he sought a Jesuit-run college. He considered Spring Hill College, in a shady old suburb of Mobile, Ala. And he considered Loyola University New Orleans, 15 minutes from the French Quarter. Case closed.

Barbas' dad had hoped his oldest son would become a doctor or lawyer. Barbas studied journalism and religion. After graduating in three years, he enrolled in law school to satisfy his father, he said.

Barbas privately hoped to follow the example of Fred Graham, a lawyer/correspondent for CBS News at the time, covering the great Supreme Court confrontations of the Richard Nixon era.

One day, a law professor discovered that Barbas had never been in a courtroom. So they went to a rape trial outside New Orleans, and Barbas saw his destiny. He vowed to become a great trial lawyer and a judge.

"I just fell in love with the whole trial process," he said.

Barbas returned to Tampa in 1975 as an assistant state attorney. He progressed from traffic prosecutions to homicides and white-collar crime.

Then he spent more than 15 years in private practice, defending criminal suspects but mostly working in civil litigation involving fraud, real estate and medical malpractice.

"He was a good money-maker," said Mitcham. "He sure held up his end. I could always count on Rex to have some money in the bank."

In 1988, Barbas moved from south Tampa to Lutz for country life. His neighborhood off Livingston Avenue backs up to the Cypress Creek Preserve.

"I have a flock of wild turkeys drinking out of my pool," Barbas said.

His buddy, Todd Bray, mourns the loss.

"His wife wanted to move out in the country and have horses," Bray said. "You get him out there, you can never get him back again."

'I started crying'

In 1996, as head of an 11-lawyer firm, Barbas filed to run for a vacant circuit judgeship. He faced Linda Swanick, an assistant public defender who said her campaign was low key because of her pregnancy.

Steve Barbas contends success comes easy to his brother, and the campaign was no different.

"He just loved being out there shaking hands, glad-handing, going to functions," Steve Barbas said. "He just ate all that stuff up."

Barbas received 53 percent of the vote, winning a six-year term and a salary of $130,000, a drastic pay cut, he said.

It wasn't long before judges heard from him. When Barbas' calendar fell open, he would e-mail the county's 50 other judges, offering to take work from anyone whose docket was jammed.

"That's always refreshing when you get that from a fellow judge," said Jim Moody, now a U.S. district judge.

Moody chuckles at one of Barbas' e-mail sign-offs, "Have gavel, will travel."

"I'm a workaholic," said Barbas.

Judgeship has held its joys and its miseries, and several inches of paperwork every day, Barbas said.

His first assignment was in family law, filled with bitter divorces and gut-wrenching child-custody decisions. One of Barbas' divorce cases involved a five-year marriage that filled 14 volumes of court files.

But family law also involved adoptions. Barbas, a father of three with an adopted daughter, would hold the adoptive children for photos while he signed their papers.

"Man, I was beaming for the rest of the day," he said. "There's no feeling like it."

Now Barbas hears serious criminal cases as a felony judge. Last August, he imposed his first death penalty. The murderer was Ray Lamar Johnston, sentenced for strangling a Seminole Heights woman in 1997. Barbas read his death-sentence order in court, but broke down near the end.

"My voice started cracking," he said. "I started crying. I couldn't look at him."

Barbas later asked other judges about the experience. They said it was normal.

Barbas anguishes publicly over difficult decisions. He mourns the "wasted lives" he sees parading before him. He isn't a poker-faced judge.

Moody, the federal judge, thinks lawyers and others appreciate that.

"When they see you go through that, they know you didn't just discard their arguments out of hand," Moody said. "They know you listened."

'Act of rebellion'

Barbas is dreaming of at least one more career: teaching.

As a lawyer, he taught courses at the University of South Florida. He gave lectures at local bar association meetings.

Now, Barbas conducts quarterly talks for the Florida Bar. He teaches ethics and law to business students at the University of Phoenix, which conducts local classes. And he stages an animated forum at Florida's annual conference of circuit judges.

Teaching is among Barbas' myriad activities outside work.

He bicycles on weekends. He has been a scuba diver, a competitive sailor, a photographer since college, and lately, an artist. A sketched, cloudy self-portrait hangs on his office wall.

But Barbas' leading hobby is his motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic, with leather fringe and paucho pipes that amplify the rumble. It's his sixth Harley. He has ridden his Harleys across Florida, to biker gatherings, and whenever possible, to the courthouse. Some mornings, Barbas' black robe conceals shoulders that were drenched by a surprise rain between Lutz and Tampa.

He's not the only local judge who rides a motorcycle to work. But he's the only judge who rides it wearing a ponytail.

"It's distinctive," he said. "It's me. It's my one final act of rebellion before I turn 60.

It's his second pony tail. "I'm probably getting ready to cut it off again," Barbas said. "It's time for a change."

-- Bill Coats can be reached at (813) 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com.

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