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TALLAHASSEE - A lawyer for former Florida Senate President W.D. Childers argued Tuesday that Childers' bribery conviction should be tossed out because the trial judge refused to let a key witness be questioned about a change in his story.
Richard Lubin argued before the 1st District Court of Appeal that Childers should get a new trial because of the judge's ruling during the 2002 trial.
Childers, 70, who served a term as president of the Florida Senate in 1981-82 during his 30 years representing Pensacola and Escambia County in the Legislature, retired in 2000 because of term limits. He then ran for and was elected an Escambia County commissioner.
In 2002, a jury found Childers guilty of giving fellow Commissioner Willie Junior a cooking pot filled with cash after Junior voted to buy a former soccer complex for $3.9-million.
Gov. Jeb Bush suspended Childers, Junior and two other commissioners. All were charged with violating Florida's open-government Sunshine Law, but Junior and Childers also faced more serious allegations.
Junior pleaded no contest to a laundry list of charges, including bribery, extortion and grand theft, and he agreed to testify against other defendants. In exchange, he was promised no more than 18 months in prison. He was to be sentenced today in Pensacola.
In Tallahassee, Lubin told the appeal judges he should have been allowed to question Junior about his motivation for changing his testimony after the man who sold the soccer complex to the county was acquitted of bribery.
"He realized ... after the acquittal that his story wasn't selling and he better do something or he wasn't going to get the (plea) bargain he hoped for," Lubin said.
One of the changes involved a note Junior said Childers gave him with the figure "100" written twice, Lubin said. Junior originally testified that Childers said nothing when he passed him the note but later said Childers told him it meant $100,000 for each man.
But a lawyer for the state said the trial judge allowed Lubin to fully explore inconsistencies in Junior's testimony as well as the terms of his plea agreement.
Assistant Attorney General Trisha Meggs Pate dismissed Lubin's argument about Junior's reason for changing his story as "pure speculation." She also pointed out that the judge dismissed prosecutors' motion to revoke Junior's plea agreement, finding his changes in testimony were insignificant.
Appellate Judge Charles Kahn challenged Pate: "Ms. Pate, how can you say, as an assistant attorney general, that testimony that a witness comes in and says "$100 for me and $100 for you' in a bribery case where he had never said that before is not incredibly important for the defense?"
Pate responded that Junior was a difficult witness with many inconsistencies in his testimony.
Last month, the 1st DCA upheld Childers' convictions of violating the Sunshine Law by speaking privately about county business with other commissioners.
Childers served 38 days of a 60-day jail sentence in the sunshine case before he was freed on appeal bond.
He is the first public official to be jailed for violating the open meetings part of the Sunshine Law. An Escambia School Board member earlier went to jail for violating the public records portion.
Childers also is free on bail pending appeal of his bribery convictions and a 31/2-year prison term.