Panel levels more charges against judge

Circuit Judge Cynthia Holloway now is accused of using her influence improperly in three more cases.

By ANGELA MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 20, 2001

TAMPA -- Three new allegations have been added to a list of formal charges against Cynthia Holloway, the Hillsborough circuit judge accused by a state judicial ethics panel of misusing her position.

Holloway already had been investigated and charged with using her position as a judge to influence a friend's child custody case, a bitter battle that included accusations of sexual abuse.

Florida's Judicial Qualifications Commission determined in October 2000 that Holloway had lied about her role in the custody case.

On Tuesday, Holloway was served with the amended charges against her, which include an incident related to the custody case and two other unrelated incidents which JQC members said constituted a misuse of her power.

The first new charge concerns a conversation Holloway had with fellow judge Ralph Stoddard on March 3, 2000. Stoddard was the judge presiding over the custody case. JQC officials already had included the first part of their conversation among Holloway's charges, when they say she berated Stoddard and tried to influence him.

But as she was leaving Stoddard's chambers, Holloway reportedly remarked that the opposing attorney in the child custody case "must have pictures (with Judge Stoddard) and a dog, and that's why somebody can get something out of you and nobody else can."

Stoddard's judicial assistant, Sharron Crosby, confirmed that she heard Holloway make a comment as she was leaving "about pictures of a dog."

Holloway's attorney, Scott Tozian, said he could not comment on the conversation with Stoddard. But he had plenty to say about the other two new allegations.

"The JQC is dead wrong about those," Tozian said. "I'm at a complete loss."

The first alleges that Holloway used her position as a judge to keep tree cutters from removing trees from the front yard of the law offices of Jeanne T. Tate, an attorney in Hyde Park. The other charge is that Holloway improperly asked a fellow judge to hurry her brother's uncontested divorce hearing through the court docket, as the younger Holloway had a plane to catch. Both events happened nearly two years ago.

"I was shocked by the charges," Tate said. "I vehemently disagree that she acted improperly. She did what any judge would've done."

On July 10, 1999, Tate said, Tate drove by her law practice on a Saturday morning and saw men sawing down 50-year-old oaks in her front yard. When she asked the cutters for their permit, they couldn't produce one. When she asked them to stop cutting, they sped up.

Tate said she tried to call the circuit judge on duty for the weekend, but couldn't locate the duty judge or Chief Judge Dennis Alvarez. So she called the closest judge to her office -- Holloway, who lives on Davis Islands. Holloway showed up, but the tree cutters wouldn't stop cutting until she issued an injunction and called a police officer to enforce it, Tate said.

Tate said they were cutting the trees illegally. And although the JQC charges refer to Tate as a "personal friend" of Holloway's, she is not, the lawyer said. They know each other professionally, but do not socialize, Tate said.

"You could call me friends with every judge in this town, but I'm not," said Tozian, Holloway's attorney. "Of course lawyers know judges. To say they are friends is stretching it."

The last charge concerns the July 29, 1999, divorce hearing of Holloway's brother, James T. Holloway. The JQC charges allege that Holloway asked circuit Judge Katherine Essrig to move up her brother's divorce hearing.

According to Tozian, Essrig didn't mind and obliged the "innocuous and reasonable request." Since the divorce was uncontested, Essrig did not have to offer any judgment on the case.

Tozian said he thinks much of the JQC case against Holloway is unfounded.

"There is some validity to what has been charged," Tozian said. "But there are certain parts that I'm going to have to hear from the Supreme Court that she did anything wrong before I accept it."

Beatrice Butchko, a Miami attorney on the JQC, said Holloway's trial on the charges will likely start in late summer or early fall.

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