U.S. jurist Wilkie Ferguson, who died Monday, forced the state to better serve the developmentally disabled.
By Associated Press
Published June 11, 2003
FORT LAUDERDALE - U.S. District Judge Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr., credited with landmark rulings that improved the quality of life for thousands of disabled Florida residents, died Monday. He was 65.
Ferguson died at the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he was battling leukemia. His caseload was permanently reassigned to other judges in the federal district last month because of the cancer.
Born in May 1938 in Miami, Ferguson received his law degree in 1968 from Howard University. His first landmark case came as a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge, when he ruled that blacks had been systematically excluded from a jury.
After becoming South Florida's second black appointed to the federal bench, Ferguson was best known for forcing the state to sharply increase funding for developmentally disabled people.
He held state welfare officials in contempt of court in 1999, after he said they failed to put up enough money to provide health care and other services to people with cerebral palsy, mental retardation and other disabilities.
As a direct result of his orders, the state increased funding for home nursing care and other services, allowing thousands of disabled people to live at home rather than in institutions, said Pat Wear, deputy director of the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities.
"He was a champion for those who couldn't speak on their own behalf," Wear said. "There are just not many folks willing to do what Judge Ferguson did, taking on such an aggressive stance for people with disabilities."
In 2000, Ferguson presided over the trial of a gun smuggling ring that shipped weapons for use by the Irish Republican Army, which has waged a long battle against the British government in Northern Ireland.
At the trial's conclusion, he criticized federal sentencing guidelines that limited the three men's sentences to about five years.
"If in a crack cocaine case a person can get a life sentence for possessing $400 worth of cocaine, this kind of offense ought to be a death penalty," Ferguson said.
Ferguson is survived by his wife, Betty Tucker Ferguson; and their two children, Tawnicia Ferguson-Rowan and Wilkie Ferguson III.
