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LARGO - When we last saw Floyd Lamore, the former letter carrier and taxi driver was fighting a felony charge of faking a dead man's will. The wheels of justice turn slowly but they do turn, and I am here to report to you that his trial began on Tuesday in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court. He is conducting his own defense.
Floyd, who is 53, looks a little like a poor man's Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court justice. He opted for a beige blazer, a vertically striped, multicolored short-sleeve shirt, and no tie. His adversary, Assistant State Attorney Allison Ridenhour, regarded him coolly in a purplish-gray suit, her long blond hair tied in a ponytail. She came armed with a laptop and a box of well-organized files; Floyd clutched a black briefcase and a slippery stack of folders. The judge, R. Timothy Peters, comes directly from central casting and reminds me somewhat of the actor Gregory Peck.
The first order of business Tuesday was what to do about Roberta.
Roberta Wheeler is Floyd's girlfriend and erstwhile co-defendant. Her case has been separated from Floyd's and they are worried that the state is, shall we say, putting the squeeze to her. Wearing a simple green dress and a twin row of pearls, she sat in the back row moaning, "This is so unfair." Her hearing was delayed for another couple of weeks.
"If my voice is wavering, I'm kind of nervous," Floyd said when it was his turn to speak. First, he demanded to know the state's intentions for Roberta, which got him nowhere. Next, Floyd moved to have Ridenhour removed or punished on the grounds she was "biased, prejudiced and she's persecuting me." The judge declined. Then it turned out one of the witnesses waiting out in the hall had been drinking and had to be excused.
Floyd did pretty well in the jury selection but things got a little tougher when the testifying part started. Ridenhour clipped along briskly through her case. An elderly fellow named Morris J. Desbonnet died in St. Petersburg in May 2001. He did not sign the will his own lawyer had prepared. After Debonnet's death, Floyd and Roberta showed up at the courthouse and filed a new will with his purported signature. Floyd got himself named personal representative, went to the bank and tried to withdraw money from the account.
Meanwhile, Roberta's parents - who do not care much for Floyd - said they found drafts of a will that Roberta had typed on the family computer and called the Sheriff's Office, which investigated and nabbed Floyd.
Floyd's defense is based largely on the dislike of Roberta's family for him. But to his frustration, he found Tuesday that the rules did not allow him to ask some of the questions he intended, nor to introduce many of the documents he had prepared. Floyd had invited me to follow his case, and I was mildly surprised that he had not undertaken to master these rules. He had fired all his lawyers and insisted on representing himself, risking a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Testimony was interrupted when Roberta was brought back into the courtroom. The friend who had driven her to court that day was an alcoholic who appeared to be close to having a seizure. Roberta needed to be excused as a witness to drive her to the drugstore. The state said that was okay, but Floyd refused to let her go, saying: "I don't believe she'll be back." Roberta shot Floyd an angry, hurt look as the judge refused her request.
Ridenhour finished the state's case a little after 4 p.m. and Floyd said he had three witnesses. Only at this point did Floyd let slip that one of his witnesses had been sitting in the courtroom behind him all day.
Now, the first thing that happens in any criminal trial is that the judge orders all the witnesses out of the courtroom so they cannot hear each other's testimony. Upon realizing that Floyd's fellow had been there the whole time, Peters looked away, seemed to grind his jaw and took off his glasses. I thought it possible for a few seconds that he might burst something, or speak in an unjudgely way. Finally he muttered a few times about how his instruction that morning "couldn't have been more clear" and banned the testimony.
The trial resumes at 10 a.m. today. While the first-string legal journalists follow more important matters, I feel a certain kinship with this case, and intend to return to chronicle the remainder of Floyd's legal struggles.