Students compete for chance to make law

By Times Staff Wtiter
Published January 12, 2008

TAMPA

If Hillsborough students got to write the law, several School Board members soon could be looking for new jobs. Erin Jones, a senior at Gaither High, thinks they should face term limits.

Hillsborough's lawmakers are listening.

In today's fourth annual "ought to be a law competition," high school students make their pitch to a panel of Hillsborough legislators. The winning idea advances to Tallahassee as a bill that Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Lutz, and Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, will champion during the spring session.

Don't discount students just because they lack experience. Last year, a Hillsborough High teen brainstormed House Bill 1161, the High School to Business Career Enhancement Program. Now in law, it allows students to gain internship experience with local businesses.

TAMPA

Special public defender offices ordered to close

Three weeks after declaring the state's five special public defender offices unconstitutional, a Leon County judge on Friday ordered them to close.

Doing so, Circuit Judge P. Kevin Davey said, saves taxpayer money and protects the due process rights of indigent defendants.

More than 50 people were hired in recent months to handle conflict-of-interest cases from public defenders' offices and some civil cases in a 14-county region that includes Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties.

Conflicts arise for the public defender's office when two or more defendants are involved in the same criminal case. Judges had been appointing private attorneys to represent those clients until the regional conflict offices began accepting cases statewide at the end of 2007.

That practice will be revived by month's end.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 23:35:08]