Florida court scandals had their own Deep Throat
By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published June 12, 2005
TALLAHASSEE - Richard Nixon was manipulating the Justice Department and CIA to conceal serious crimes. Suppose that he had gotten away with it. What would he have done next?
It is thanks to the Washington Post's Deep Throat, now known to be the FBI's own former No. 2 man, W. Mark Felt, that those are only "what if" questions.
One certain lesson of history is that a democracy depends on such confidential sources to keep its government responsible.
It's not just the press that needs them. The audience for the Woodwards and Bernsteins is an American public that cares deeply about the public trust.
One of the worst misuses of public power is to punish and even destroy the whistle-blowers, without whom we would not know the bad things that happen. Felt trusted his career to the reporters' promise that they would not betray him.
Many journalists have had sources like that; people whom we cannot quote, even anonymously, but who provide priceless leads that help put an end to wrongdoing and make things better.
There were several who helped me and other journalists expose gross misconduct at the Florida Supreme Court some 30 years ago. I doubt that we could have done it without them.
One brought me a document revealing that some justices were conversing improperly with a utility lawyer in a case involving potentially millions of dollars in higher monthly bills, while the decision was pending. That led to the further disclosure that the lawyer had also secretly written a draft opinion that one justice had turned into the court's proposed decision before some of the research aides - not any of the justices, mind you - took alarm. One of the implicated justices eventually resigned to avoid being impeached.
The court had tried to cover up the scandal by rewriting the opinion and by trying to find out and jail or disbar whoever had leaked the original document to me. I even got a call about it from the local state attorney, a cousin of one of the justices, who was shocked that I declined his "invitation" to visit his office but decided wisely against issuing a subpoena.
The other critical disclosure was that Justice David McCain had tried to tamper with a lower court on behalf of a labor union leader appealing a bribery conviction. It was claimed that McCain himself had been bribed, though we didn't know it at the time. What we did know, as he admitted, was that he had been cozying up to the union for campaign support while the case was working its way up the appellate ladder.
Armed with those facts, I went to Richard T. Earle Jr., a St. Petersburg lawyer who was vice chairman of Florida's Judicial Qualifications Commission, to see if I could dig out any more. I knew, of course, that the Constitution required the commission to keep all its work secret until it voted to ask the Supreme Court to publicly discipline a judge or until the judge waived confidentiality.
Earle said nothing about what the commission might be doing. He did say that it would be worthwhile for me to contact Judges Joseph McNulty and Robert T. Mann of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. A justice - McCain - had called them to try to influence a case they were deciding.
It was the labor leader's case, as McNulty and Mann revealed on the record. They did not tell me - though it came out later - that they had reported McCain to the JQC after he voted to overturn the conviction they had upheld. Like Earle, they had not disclosed what was or wasn't actually going on inside the JQC. But they thought it was vitally important for the public to know what ought to have been going on. The disclosure, coupled with other unethical favors for friends, led eventually to McCain's resignation and disbarment.
I have always assumed that Earle gave me that lead because the JQC wouldn't act. I never asked him, however, and he went to his grave without saying. Recently, I was told that a volunteer investigator - they had no money to pay anyone - had been sitting on the case, perhaps because he had too much else to do. One can only guess the outcome if Earle had not been my Deep Throat, but it is good that we don't have to guess.
The combined Supreme Court scandals persuaded the Legislature to put the appellate courts as far out of politics as possible by providing for the merit retention of their judges. There would be no more election campaigns to tempt judges to look for help where they shouldn't.
Can Florida keep those courts out of politics? I'm not so sure, but we had better try.
Martin Dyckman's e-mail address is dyckman@sptimes.com