What's Doin' In Dade & Monroe |
Woman chastised for "kissing boyfriend" | ||||
| Judge MARK KING LEBAN lectured
at three sessions of the National Lesbian and Gay lawyers’ Association conference in
Washington, D.C., on October 19-20, 2000 on domestic violence in same sex cases, voir
dire, and professional ethics. Judge MARVIN H. GILLMAN is retiring after
twenty years on the bench. Judge Gillman is looking forward to being a senior judge or a Senior Judge ED SWANKO was admitted to the Hall of Fame of Perthamboy, New Jersey High School. The Infraction Backlog Committee, Chaired by Judge STEVE LEIFMAN, recently
received the Davis Award for the most innovative change in state government for the State
of Florida. The
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 By
Kevin Kaley Highlands Today (11-8-00) WAUCHULA – A judge on Monday reprimanded a woman for “kissing her boyfriend in public and ordered her to pay $130, but he stopped short of adding a misdemeanor conviction to her record. “I recommended that in the future you find a private place rather than a public place to kiss your boyfriend,” said County Judge Earl Collins. Collins withheld adjudication in the trial of Teresa Alvarado, where he also acted as the jury during the short trial by court. The evidence presented against Alvarado, 27, of Bowling Green, consisted of a police officer’s account of what he saw when he approached her car Aug. 31. Alvarado went to trial facing a charge of committing an unnatural and lascivious act. Cpl. Dennis Lake of the Wauchula Police Department said he received a call from the sheriff’s office that morning concerning a suspicious car. He found Alvarado’s white Geo Tracker parked in a field behind the Circle K store on State Road 35 at Polk Road. Lake testified that he pulled in behind the Tracker and quickly walked up to the car. Inside, he saw Alvarado performing oral sex on co-defendant Michael Boyette. When Boyette noticed the officer, he pushed Alvarado away and she began kissing his neck to make it seem that’s all they were doing, Lake said. Alvarado’s attorney, Alyna Heylich-Gonzalez, questioned whether Lake could see anything through the dark, tinted windows on Alvarado’s car on a rainy morning. Lake said he doesn’t remember the windows being that dark. But Alvarado testified that her car windows are covered with limousine-quality tinting and there is no way Lake could have seen what was going on in the car. She said she was simply kissing Boyette and insisted that Boyette’s dachshund was sitting in his lap the whole time. Lake testified he saw the dog for the first time in the back seat of the car after asking Alvarado and Boyette to get out of the car. Boyette faced the same charge as Alvarado but the state attorney’s office declinded to pursue it and it was dropped as one of several charges in a plea bargain package, said Assistant Public Defender John Kilcrease. “I would have won the case in any event,” the attorney said. “She was doing something to him. It wasn’t the other way around.” Committing an unnatural and lascivious act is a second degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in the county jail. |
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Committee Reports
| Welcome New Judges |
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mediator in Jacksonville this spring. You may call Judge
Gillman at (904) 241-5848.
recipients received a $2,500.00 cash
award which is being donated to the United Way. The innovative change was the implement of
a pre-trial system for traffic citations. The change has reduced police overtime by over
five million dollars per year and put over, 100,000 police officer hours back on the
street. Also, new revenues in cost and fees has increased by millions of dollars.
In November, Judge JANE FISHMAN was honored to be the keynote speaker
at the joint induction for the Nova Southeastern University Law Review, the Moot Court
Society, the ILSA Journal and the Travel Law Journal. The induction was held at the
Shepard Broad Law Center of Nova Southeastern University.