Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court
A Times EditorialPublished August 19, 2006
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 9
Christine Helinger
All the candidates in this race to replace retiring Circuit Judge Crockett Farnell are employed by the state. Mary Handsel and Glenn Martin are longtime prosecutors and Christine Helinger is a veteran public defender.
All three candidates are well regarded professionals who are respected by their peers in the legal community. Voters would not go wrong in choosing any one of them. But since a choice has to be made, we give Helinger the edge.
For the last 25 years, Helinger, 55, has worked for the Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender's Office. She has been working part-time for that office since 1997 and has specialized in particularly complex and challenging cases, including death penalty cases. She is considered a tenacious attorney who goes the extra mile to investigate her cases and represent her clients. In 2000, Helinger was named the best assistant public defender in the state. Helinger says the essential qualities in a judge are patience, integrity, a sense of fair play and hard work. She promises to embody those qualities on the bench.
Handsel, 42, has been a prosecutor in the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office for 16 years. She supervises the West Pasco office, where she manages 15 prosecutors. Martin, 53, has been a prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office for 22 years. Before that, he was a police officer in St. Petersburg. While he has a law enforcement background, Martin is considered eminently fair to defendants and quite a good lawyer. The questions raised about Martin's candidacy have to do with his temperament.
For Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 9, the Times recommends Christine Helinger.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 32
Pat Siracusa
Pat Siracusa, 38, is our choice to fill the seat being vacated by Brandt Downey, who is retiring.
Siracusa has been a prosecutor in the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office for 11 years and an adjunct professor at St. Petersburg College since 1998. In 2005, he was named prosecutor of the year for the 6th Judicial Circuit by Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe.
Siracusa is a sought-after training instructor and lecturer, sharing his expertise on trial techniques, sentencing, child protection and drug enforcement among other areas to a variety of audiences locally and nationwide. He seems to have boundless energy for his work.
Siracusa has had plenty of experience in the courtroom, having been lead counsel in 80 jury trials. He is considered to have solid skills and smarts.
Although prosecutors are constrained in the pro bono work they may do, Siracusa has regularly volunteered in the local schools, giving pre-prom warnings to students about the dangers of drinking and driving and speaking to classes about the legal profession.
Also running in Group 32 are LeAnne Lake and Mark Schleben, both in private practice. Lake, 42, has been practicing for 16 years and has wide-ranging civil and criminal experience, though she does mostly family law cases. Lake is considered a good lawyer, but a number of her colleagues expressed concern about her temperament.
Schleben, 50, is a bit of an enigma in the legal community. He has worked locally as a sole practitioner for 23 years but has not made much of an imprint. His work is primarily in family law and bankruptcy.
For Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 32, the Times recommends Pat Siracusa.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 45
Jack Day
Jack Day, 57, is the clear choice in this race. Day is a seasoned litigator whose experience far outshines that of his opponent, Robert "Bo" Michael.
During the 29 years Day has been practicing law, he has garnered some impressive legal credentials. Day is a board-certified civil trial attorney who has earned the highest peer rating given to lawyers by the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory. The rating is an indication of an attorney's ethics and professional abilities.
Day has experience in every area of the law within the various divisions of the circuit court, including a stint early in his career as a prosecutor in Sarasota. Day now spends most of his time doing negligence and personal injury cases, but about a quarter of his time is devoted to mediation and arbitration.
Every other week Day spends an evening volunteering with St. Petersburg's Community Law Program, staffing an intake and advice clinic at Gulf Coast Legal Services. He has been working with this program for more than 10 years.
Day's colleagues in the legal community say he is well qualified for the bench. He says being a judge "is a calling, not a career move."
In the interest of full disclosure, Day has done legal work in the past on behalf of the Times, and he is currently associated with the law firm of Rahdert, Steele, Bole & Reynolds, which represents the Times.
Michael, 46, is making his fourth run for a judgeship since 2000. As he has done in past races, Michael left his law firm - where he had worked for only a short time - in order to be on the campaign trail full-time. Part of what makes it difficult to evaluate Michael's candidacy is that over the last seven years he has focused far more energy on running for judge than burnishing his professional credentials. He obviously wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was an area circuit court judge for about 20 years.
For six months in 2003-2004, Michael worked in the attorney general's office in St. Petersburg, where he did child support enforcement work. Michael boasts about his trial experience, but the bulk of this work has been in hundreds of child support enforcement hearings, not complex trials.
For Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Group 45, the Times strongly recommends Jack Day.