TAMPA BAY: Bulldog attorney Merkle dies

CLEARWATER - Robert W. Merkle Jr., the former U.S. Attorney whose pugnacious style led to convictions against international drug dealers and county commissioners alike, died Monday (May 5, 2003) after battling cancer. He was 58. Mr. Merkle, who in previous years successfully fought cancer, died at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater about 7:15 p.m., surrounded by eight of his nine children and Angela, his wife of 37 years.

"In the last few days, we were all able to talk to him and be with him," said Mr. Merkle's oldest son, Rob Merkle, 34, who spoke from the family's Clearwater home. "It's been a very beautiful and healing experience. He was at peace and very happy in the end. Obviously, he didn't want to leave my mother."

Mr. Merkle was a hard-charging former Pinellas prosecutor and one-time U.S. Senate candidate whose bare-knuckled aggressiveness roiled Tampa politics during his stint as U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida from 1982 to 1988.

The former Notre Dame football fullback jousted with Tampa's power elite in search of corruption, stamping the controversial Merkle style into Tampa Bay's legal folklore.

"He gave no quarter, and he asked for no quarter," said Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe, who worked with Mr. Merkle before he became U.S. attorney. "He was the smartest and most-intense lawyer I ever knew."

Mr. Merkle's office developed the federal drug smuggling and money-laundering case in Tampa against Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. He won the conviction of Carlos Lehder Rivas, reputedly one of the founding members of the Colombian Medellin drug cartel.

But his stint as U.S. attorney also brought accusations of abuse of power. He ended E.J. Salcines' career as Hillsborough's top prosecutor with a grand jury investigation that never yielded charges.

Mr. Merkle accused the Hillsborough County Commission of acting as a racketeering enterprise, winning sweeping indictments of several commissioners and others. Yet, all but four were later acquitted.

He once accused former Gov. Bob Martinez of taking illegal campaign contributions and cash gifts without ever bringing charges.

"He was suspicious of everybody who worked at the courthouse - the judges, the assistant state attorneys, the criminal defense attorneys," Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett said of Mr. Merkle's 1980s probes. "He seemed to be convinced there was corruption, and he pursued it, and he found very little."

Longtime friend and law partner Joe Magri said Mr. Merkle was a crusading renaissance man, as easy at the piano as he was in front of a jury.

"Say what you want about the man," Magri said. "He brought about a fundamental change in the way people in Tampa reacted to corruption. It is no longer an acceptable way of business on a grand scale. It was worth the slings and arrows he took."

Critics seldom questioned Mr. Merkle's skills as a lawyer, or doubted his ability to make headlines.

Mr. Merkle once punched a Pinellas motorist in a traffic altercation, leading to perhaps the longest and most bizarre misdemeanor trial in Pinellas history.

It ended with Mr. Merkle's acquittal and jurors serenading him at his house.

In an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign in 1988, Mr. Merkle mockingly debated a cardboard cutout of opponent Connie Mack, dubbing it "Cardboard Connie," after Mack's refusals to debate.

During his years as U.S. attorney, Mr. Merkle weathered three campaigns to have him removed, antagonized several federal judges, two Democratic U.S. senators, state attorneys and won a loyal base of supporters.

"A lot of people didn't like General MacArthur, General Eisenhower," Mr. Merkle told a St. Petersburg Times reporter in 1983. "I'm not saying I'm a general. But we're in a war here" fighting crime.

Robert Woods Merkle was the oldest of nine children, the son of a flight surgeon who retired to become a country doctor in rural South Carolina. His father was the only white physician in town who would deliver the babies of black women.

A devout Catholic who attended the University of Notre Dame, Mr. Merkle at 6 feet 2 and 240 pounds, played fullback on the football team.

He was recruited straight out of law school to join the Justice Department during the Nixon administration, prosecuting political terrorists, including people who bombed government buildings.

By 1977, Mr. Merkle left the federal government to join the staff of then-Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Jimmy T. Russell, prosecuting career criminals.

He got the nickname "Mad Dog" in Pinellas when he prosecuted an intoxicated driver, son of a Pinellas sheriff's lieutenant, after others in Russell's office dropped the case.

The case brought him to the attention of U.S. Sen. Paula Hawkins, who interviewed him for the U.S. attorney's job. Mr. Merkle was sworn in at age 39.

Mr. Merkle pursued public corruption like few U.S. attorneys before him, winning his share of critics, but also staunch admirers who saw him as a prosecutor unbending to the politic wind.

His investigation of the Hillsborough commission garnered convictions of three commissioners, in addition to a fourth who went to jail after testifying for prosecutors.

"He was bigger than life," said J. Larry Hart, who worked with Mr. Merkle as a federal prosecutor. "He had human weaknesses. Something that made him great also weakened him. And that was his dogged determination.

"I once told him, "Bob, you don't have to kick in every door,' " Hart said.

Mr. Merkle investigated Salcines for three years, looking into allegations of case-fixing. Salcines, now an appellate judge, was injured politically when he invoked his Fifth Amendment right and refused to testify.

An indictment of Salcines' longtime chief assistant, Norman S. Cannella, accusing him of taking bribes to fix cases, was so flimsy that a judge dismissed charges before Cannella put on a defense.

Mr. Merkle retired as a prosecutor in 1988 to run for U.S. Senate, ending 17 years as either a state or federal prosecutor.

Mr. Merkle was a late entry in the Senate race against Mack and was outspent by a wide margin. But he won a surprising 38 percent of the vote in the primary election.

In private practice, Mr. Merkle was every bit as tenacious.

In 1993, Mr. Merkle punched a motorist during a traffic dispute in Largo, saying he felt threatened and feared for the safety of his wife. A jury acquitted him.

In 1995, Mr. Merkle championed the case of a 145-pound Great Dane named Beethoven, sentenced to die after biting a child. Gov. Bush refused Mr. Merkle's plea to spare the dog, which was put to sleep. Mr. Merkle described Bush's decision as "nonsense."

And last year, Mr. Merkle took up the defense of embattled Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Charles Cope, accused of trying to get into the hotel room of two women in Carmel, Calif.

Mr. Merkle took criticism for his aggressive attacks on the alleged victim in the case. But he helped convince a Judicial Qualifications Commission panel to drop the most-serious charges against Cope. Cope was convicted of two JQC charges, including public intoxication.

"I don't know if Bob would have agreed that he was a Mad Dog," said Pinellas lawyer Denis de Vlaming, who represented Mr. Merkle in the punching incident. "But he sure wasn't a poodle. A lot of people will miss him."

The family said a public viewing will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Rhodes Funeral Home, 830 N Belcher Road, Clearwater. A funeral mass will be held at Light of Christ Catholic Church, 2176 Marilyn, also in Clearwater, on Friday at 11 a.m.

- Times staff writers Christopher Goffard, Kathryn Wexler and Craig Basse contributed to this report.

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