Gov. Jeb Bush lifted the suspension of Marcelo Caruso last week and returned him to office on the Oldsmar City Council - an appropriate action by the governor after Caruso was given his day in court and found not guilty of criminal charges.
After a trial that lasted two days, a jury took a mere eight minutes to acquit Caruso of misdemeanor battery and felony burglary of an occupied vehicle.
The outcome was no surprise to anyone who followed the case that prosecutors eventually tried to make against Caruso. The charges seemed excessive, given Caruso's transgression: He reached into the open window of a vehicle and yanked the sunglasses off the face of his estranged wife's boyfriend, then tossed the glasses back at the man.
The confrontation occurred in April as Caruso and his wife Michele, who are divorcing, met on an Oldsmar street to exchange their 3-year-old daughter for visitation. Caruso became angry when he saw his wife's boyfriend, Louie Martinez, was there. Martinez was sitting in his vehicle when Caruso reached into the car, jerked his sunglasses off and threw them back at his chest. No one was injured. The sunglasses were bent.
Though prosecutors noted that Caruso's actions were illegal because he did not have permission to reach into Martinez's vehicle or touch him, everyone from judge to jury to spectators seemed to consider the trial a waste of good court time.
But the trial was extremely important for Caruso, who not only faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted, but whose wife admitted in court that a finding of guilty by the jury would make it easier for her to get custody of their daughter and move to England.
The charges eventually prosecuted against Caruso were less serious than the initial allegations made by Pinellas sheriff's deputies who arrested him. They had considered him a suspect in the theft of his wife's car, which was found in a pond in Hillsborough County, but prosecutors later declined to pursue that charge. Also, deputies reported that after Caruso was arrested, he threatened to kill his wife, daughter and himself.
With all that behind him, Caruso now returns to his seat on the City Council to finish out his term, which ends in March. As of this writing Tuesday, he had not announced whether he would seek re-election.
If Caruso truly cares about Oldsmar, he will announce now that he intends to finish his term and then give someone else a chance to serve. Though he no doubt feels vindicated by his acquittal, the altercation with his wife's boyfriend was just one more example of how Caruso's temper and lack of good judgment get him in trouble and bring embarrassment to the city. There has been one example after another since he was elected in 2001.
Oldsmar residents expect their City Council members to be mature, deliberative, and well informed, and to possess a demeanor appropriate for a person in elective office. Oldsmar surely has residents who, if they chose to run, could better fulfill those expectations than Caruso.
