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By LUCY MORGAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 28, 2000
TALLAHASSEE -- Leon Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls, who had just driven in from rural Wakulla County, looked around the courtroom Monday afternoon at all of the men in dark suits who sat before him.
"Let's see now," he said as he opened the first hearing on Vice President Al Gore's contest of the presidential election. "More lawyers than spectators."
His friends call him a "black-letter-law" judge who maintains control of his courtroom and is always prepared to hear a case. For more than an hour Monday afternoon, Sauls worked through scheduling and various pretrial motions with a mix of direct questions and dry humor.
On lawyers: "Trial lawyers live a dreadful existence. You're always in some crisis."
On a Miami-Dade lawyer's observation by telephone that the county's canvassing board had not been served with the lawsuit: "Be lookin' for the sheriff, I assume."
On the prospect of examining thousands of ballots: "Do you have a magnifying glass?"
A former bankruptcy judge, Sauls made headlines in the Tallahassee Democrat in 1998 when he was removed from his job as chief administrative judge by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Major Harding.
At the time, Sauls and his fellow judges were evenly divided over who should handle administrative duties at the courthouse. Sauls was embroiled in an internal dispute with his fellow circuit judges over the hiring of court personnel.
Sauls, 59, is a registered Democrat appointed to the court by Gov. Bob Martinez, a Republican, on Oct. 2, 1989.
Sauls grew up in Jefferson County, east of Tallahassee, where his father was clerk of the circuit court and his mother a tax collector. At Jefferson High School, where he graduated in 1959, Sauls was voted by his classmates as "most likely to succeed," "most intellectual" and "friendliest."
His 16-year-old daughter, Christine, died in an auto accident in 1993, an incident that some friends say changed his life.
"He was a gregarious, backslapping guy before the accident," said Mallory Horne, a Tallahassee lawyer who said he has known Sauls "since he was in knee britches."
Horne said Sauls' distinguished looks will play well to the international television audience that is watching the country's effort to elect a new president.
"He is very attentive," Horne said. "He'll sit forward in his chair and hear every word every lawyer says."
Horne and several other lawyers in Tallahassee describe Sauls as philosophically conservative, more like a Republican than a Democrat.
"He's very incisive," said Horne. "My guess is he's educating himself on the issues."
He was appointed to serve as a federal bankruptcy judge in 1980, but tired of traveling and resigned in 1988.
He handles civil and criminal cases in the six county circuit comprised of Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson, Gadsden, Franklin and Liberty counties.
Richard McFarlain, a veteran Tallahassee lawyer who is general counsel at Florida State University, describes Sauls as a "black-letter-law kind of guy" who is personable and engaging to be around.
"He knows the law and follows the law and doesn't hesitate to keep his court in order," said Tallahassee lawyer Steve Dobson.
"He is always prepared and will generally cut to the chase," added lawyer Kelly Johnson. "He's pretty no-nonsense."
Lawyer Joe R. Boyd described Sauls as being from "the old school of civility," and tolerant of people as long as they are courteous in his courtroom.
"When he is ready to rule, he'll rule pretty quickly and you'll know what he said," Boyd said. "You may not agree with it, but he follows the law and he won't go off with some harebrained or extraordinary idea."
Journalists from all over the world were interested in the background of the judge who will hear Gore's contest of the election. But Sauls did not have a resume and there was no time to write one. So the judge gave a court spokesman a list of eight friends and their telephone numbers to distribute to reporters.
Among those on the list: Dexter Douglass, the former general counsel for Gov. Lawton Chiles and one of Gore's lawyers.
"I've tried a lot of cases before him, won some and lost some," Douglass said after the hearing. "I hope I'm a friend of every judge within sight of us. This is not a large town."
Sauls showed no deference to Douglass in the courtroom.
After Douglass noted he didn't have a chair because other lawyers beat him to the courtroom, Sauls deadpanned: "Don't be tardy."