Lynn Tepper's ruling in the Kristina Gaime murder trial isn't the first to draw protests.
By CHASE SQUIRES
Published February 19, 2004
DADE CITY - From her election to a county court bench in 1984 to her current position, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper has made waves.
She made news again Tuesday, when she stripped what a prosecutor described as a "critical piece of evidence" from the murder case against Kristina Gaime.
It isn't the first time she has criticized a Pasco County Sheriff's Office investigation. She once criticized the courtroom testimony of two sheriff's detectives as "unprofessional."
Tepper, 51, came to Pasco County in 1978 after graduating from Bard College in New York with a degree in drama and dance and from Stetson University with a law degree. She served as an assistant public defender and went into private practice in Hudson before winning a county judgeship.
In County Court, she was credited with establishing a DUI school advisory board, the county's Report Impaired Drivers (RID) effort and programs for supervised probation, pretrial intervention, mediation and night court.
In one case, her ruling that residents should not be forced to come to the aid of police officers in trouble, which was criticized by the Sheriff's Office, was overturned by an appeals court.
Soon after taking the Circuit Court bench in 1989, she made her presence known there. Although she has been lauded for her work in family court, attracting the notice of state Supreme Court justices with her programs, she also has been vocal in civil and criminal court cases.
In 1989, she barred prosecutor Phil Van Allen from presenting a sheriff's deputy as a witness in a child molestation case because he didn't provide adequate notice. Then she cut nine of the 12 charges against the defendant for assorted reasons. But when he was convicted on the remaining three counts, she sentenced him to life.
Later that year, she irked prosecutors by giving a below-guidelines sentence to a child abuser, finding the 22-year-old woman was not a threat to society.
In 1993, she caused a stir by sparing a Pasco High School star quarterback from a nine-year prison term, allowing him to do a 60-day jail stint on weekends so he could accept a college scholarship. Four months later, he was back in jail, charged with violating the drug use provisions of his probation. Another judge sentenced him to prison.
In 1994, Tepper was invited to appear on the ABC news program Nightline to debate defense attorneys' use of the "abuse excuse."
Tepper was invited because she had rejected a defense argument that a client deserved leniency in a battery case because he was a victim of child abuse. Tepper exceeded state recommendations with her sentence.
That same year, she joined other judges in challenging the way the Sheriff's Office controls court bailiffs.
In 1995, Tepper berated county officials for lagging on a paving contract agreement, resulting in a $1.7-million judgment against the county, and she refused to hear the county's appeal.
Also in 1995, she lambasted the Sheriff's Office for its showing in a Dade City drug trial. At trial, jurors said detectives were unprofessional. Tepper wrote to Lee Cannon to criticize his department's efforts, calling the detectives' work "inadequate and unprofessional."
In December, Tepper took the county School Board to task for its handling of charges against a Pasco High senior accused of bringing alcohol to a cheerleading camp. After ruling in the teenager's favor, she criticized the way school officials handled the investigation.
"It's outrageous," she said. "This, in essence, becomes a silent witch-hunt."
Most recently, the Dade City Public Defender's Office asked her to step aside from all cases handled by its attorneys after it hired an attorney who is getting a divorce from one of Tepper's friends.
In a court motion, an attorney with the office said Tepper chastised his bosses for hiring him. She rejected the recusal motion, and the public defenders' appeal. The 2nd District Court of Appeal last week rejected the appeal and ruled it could not be resubmitted.
