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Pennekamp v. State

22 So. 2d 875, 156 Fla. 227, 1945 Fla. LEXIS 799
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedJuly 24, 1945
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 22 So. 2d 875 (Pennekamp v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pennekamp v. State, 22 So. 2d 875, 156 Fla. 227, 1945 Fla. LEXIS 799 (Fla. 1945).

Opinions

TERRELL, J.:

On November 2, 1944, the Circuit Court of Dade County issued a citation to John D. Pennekamp and the Miami Herald Publishing Company, appellants, commanding them to show cause on a day certain why they should not be adjudged in contempt. The basis for the citation was two editorials and a cartoon published in the Miami Herald. The first editorial and the cartoon were published November 2, 1944, and was as follows:

“Courts Are Established — FOR THE PEOPLE
“The Courts belong to the people. The people have established them to promote justice, insure obedience to the law and to Punish Those Who Willfully Violate It.
“The people maintain the courts by providing the salaries of officials and setting up costly chambers and courtrooms for the orderly and dignified procedure of the tribunals.
“Upon the judges the people must depend for the decisions and the judicial conduct that will insure society — as a whole and in its individuals — against those who would undermine or destroy the peace, the morality and the orderly living of the community.
“In order that the courts should not be amenable to political or other pressures in their determination of matters placed before them, Florida Circuit Judges are called upon to *231 face the electorate less often than are other elective office holders.
“So long are their terms, in fact, that in Dade County no circuit judge, and only one judge of another court, has come to the bench by public choice in the first instance. All the others have been named by a governor to fill a vacancy caused by death or resignation, or similar circumstance.
“Judicial terms in Dade County run:
1. Six years each for six Circuit Judges.
2. Four years each for two Civil Court of Record Judges.
3. Four years for the judge of the Criminal Court of Record. .
4. Four years for the judge of the Court of Crimes.
5. Four years for County Judge.
6. Four years for Juvenile court judge.
“These twelve judges represent the majesty and the sanctity of the law. They are the first line of defense locally of organized society against vice, corruption and crime, and the sinister machinations of the underworld.
“It is beyond question that American courts are of, by and for the people.
“Every accused person has a right to his day in court. But when judicial instance and interpretative procedure recognize and accept, even go out to find, every possible technicality of the law to protect the defendant, to block thwart, hinder, embarrass and nullify prosecution, then the peoples’ right are jeopardized and the basic reason for courts stultified.
“The seeming ease and pat facility with which the criminally charged have been given technical safeguard have set people to wondering whether their courts are being subverted into refuges for lawbreakers.
“This week the people, through their grand jury, brought into court eight indictments for rape. Judge Paul D. Barns agreed with the defense that the indictments were not properly drawn. Back they went to the grand jury for representation to the court.
*232 “Only in the gravest emergency does a judge take over a case from another court of equal jurisdiction. A padlock action against the Brook Club was initiated last spring before Judge George E. Holt, who grantéd a temporary injunction.
“After five months, the case appeared Tuesday out of the blue sky before Judge Marshall C. Wiseheart at the time State Attorney Stanley Milledge was engaged with the grand jury.
“Speedy. decision was asked by defense counsel despite months of stalling. The State Attorney had to choose between the grand jury and Judge Wiseheart’s court.
“The judge dismissed the injunction against the club and its operators. The defense got delay when it wanted a prompt decision from the court when it profited it. •
“On October 10 Judge Holt had before him a suit by the state to abate a nuisance (bookmaking) at the Tepee Club.
“Five affidavits of persons who allegedly visited the premises for the purpose of placing bets were introduced by the State over the objection of the defendants.
“Judge Holt ruled them out, explaining in denying the injunction against the Tepee Club.
“‘The defendant cannot cross-examine an affidavit. The Court cannot determine who is testifying and whether belief can be placed upon such testimony . . . The fact that such affidavits were taken before the State Attorney does not give them any additional weight or value.’
“This may be good law, exact judicial evaluation of the statutes. It is, however, the character of legal interpretation which caused people to raise questioning eyebrows and shake confused heads in futile wonderment.
“If technicalities are to be the order and the way for the criminally charged either to avoid justice altogether or so to delay prosecution as to cripple it, then it behooves our courts and the legal profession to cut away the dead wood and the entanglements.
“Make it possible for the state’s case, the peoples’ case, to be seen with equal clarity of judicial vision as that accorded accused lawbreakers. Otherwise technicalities and the courts make the law, no matter what the will of the people and of their legislators.”

*233

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Turkington v. Municipal Court
193 P.2d 795 (California Court of Appeal, 1948)
Pennekamp v. Florida
328 U.S. 331 (Supreme Court, 1946)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
22 So. 2d 875, 156 Fla. 227, 1945 Fla. LEXIS 799, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pennekamp-v-state-fla-1945.