Judges Can't "Friend" Lawyers in Florida

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Florida's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has found in a recent opinion that judges and lawyers can no longer be Facebook friends. The committee says that when judges 'friend' lawyers who may appear before them, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, since it 'reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer "friends" are in a special position to influence the judge.' Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University, says the Florida rule goes too far. 'In my view, they are being hypersensitive because in the case of a truly close friendship between a judge and a lawyer involved in a case, the other side can simply seek to disqualify the judge. Judges do not "drop out of society when they become judges," Gillers says. "The people who were their friends before they went on the bench remained their friends, and many of them were lawyers." Still, legal sycophants can take heart: lawyers can declare themselves Facebook "fans" of judges, the committee says, "as long as the judge or committee controlling the site cannot accept or reject the lawyer's listing of himself or herself on the site."'"

Comments

On a slightly unrelated note

[macragge]

I recently had the privilege of serving as a juror in a DUI trial. I was quite pleased to discover that the Judge appeared unbiased, if not slightly more lenient towards the defense.

Also, the defense attorney poked so many holes in the prosecutor's argument: that the jury only had to deliberate for about ten minutes. I was absolutely shocked to learn that he was a public defender.

On top of that, the defendant was a black male from the city while the jury was entirely white suburbanites.

Going into the trail, I expected that the system was going to screw the defendant, but the Judge showed no bias, the Public Defender was competent, and the Jury presumed the defendant to be innocent. Now I feel like the media is full of shit.