Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
The wife of the former appeals judge says he made dire threats while drinking. Doctors want him committed for up to six months.
By ANITA KUMAR
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 18, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Eighteen months ago, Judge David F. Patterson acknowledged to colleagues on the Second District Court of Appeal that he had a drinking problem.
Patterson took two months off from his duties as the chief judge of the appellate court in Lakeland and entered an in-patient drug rehabilitation program.
This week, about a month after retiring from the bench, Patterson's wife accused him of making violent threats against her while drinking heavily and obtained an injunction barring him from seeing her.
Police committed Patterson, 62, to the psychiatric department of St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg after finding him intoxicated at his house Monday morning.
Doctors are asking a court to keep Patterson, also a former chief judge of the Pinellas-Pasco circuit, at the hospital for up to another six months.
"Judge Patterson had a problem that he recognized while he was here," said John Blue, chief judge of the Second District Court of Appeal. "He went to rehab and came back and served with distinction."
Treasure Island police took Patterson to the hospital under the Baker Act, which allows officers to commit people for up to 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation. A person being held can be released unless doctors ask a judge for permission to hold the person longer.
Court and hospital officials declined to comment Friday about Patterson's case, but records filed with the Clerk of Court's office show a request has been made to keep Patterson in the hospital. A hearing will be held Friday morning at the hospital.
Some of the allegations made by Patterson's wife, Johnna, cover the time that Patterson was on the bench as chief of the 14-judge appellate court that hears appeals from 14 counties, including Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco.
But Blue said he never detected that Patterson was impaired while on the bench and does not believe his drinking problem affected any cases.
"People will say whatever they want to," he said. "All I can tell you is they would be wrong."
Mrs. Patterson said in a petition to the court that her husband had:
Threatened on July 2 to have a limousine driver "take you down the street two blocks from here and kill you" after he had been "drinking heavily for four days."
Had a gun on a coffee table in July 1999 and was "threatening to commit suicide."
Told his wife this past Sunday -- and during the past four years -- that if she filed for divorce, "I will destroy you."
This week, Mrs. Patterson obtained a temporary injunction in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, barring her husband from seeing her at their home.
That does not mean the allegations have been proven, just that the court considers them legally sufficient to keep him away from his wife until a more complete hearing is held next week.
He was ordered in the injunction to turn over all firearms to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. His wife's petition says he owns a .357 Magnum pistol and three other handguns, which had been confiscated by a friend.
Mrs. Patterson said in her petition that she told her husband Sunday that she intended to file for divorce. That day he allegedly pulled her hair while struggling over a hidden bottle of rum she had discovered, according to the petition.
The next day, he called her on her cell phone saying "I am going to do something exceptionally violent," the petition says.
A Treasure Island police officer responded to the house after Mrs. Patterson and a family friend said Patterson was "intoxicated and unable to take care of himself," according to a police report. The report says "it was obvious that D. Patterson has been drinking and was impaired."
"It's just not in keeping with the David Patterson that I know," said Pinellas County Sheriff Everett Rice, a friend of Patterson's. "If he does have a problem with alcohol, he'll get through it."
- Times staff writer Curtis Krueger and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.