State Attorney Seeks Blanket Recusal of Fla. Judge Who Criticized Criminal Justice System
Last November, a Florida judge sentenced a defendant who had never committed a violent crime to a 15-year prison term for trafficking in oxycodone.
The man had turned down a plea deal in which he would have gotten one year, but Judge Barry Cohen said he had no choice but to follow sentencing law.
Now Cohen is the target of a blanket recusal motion that observers say may be unprecedented in Palm Beach County. Interim State Attorney Peter Antonacci is seeking to disqualify him from all criminal cases, contending in an affidavit that “Judge Cohen’s remarks over a period of years reflect a predisposition against the state and a persistent pattern of prejudging criminal cases on account of his bias and prejudices that work against the interest of the state of Florida,” the Palm Beach Post reports.
The judge has said that “there is something very wrong in a criminal justice system” that routinely fills his courtroom with low-income black defendants and expressed unhappiness with mandatory minimum sentences in drug cases. However, Antonacci doesn’t accuse him of ignoring the law, simply disagreeing with it, the newspaper notes.
Cohen can’t comment on the matter, which is pending a possible appeal. But he has routinely scored high on a survey taken by a local bar association and defense attorneys and others speak well of him and question why a judge should be accused of bias simply because he has criticized the judicial system.
He’s a good guy and a great judge,” said Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes, who himself once worked as a federal prosecutor. “He’s a workhorse. He does a good job. What more could you ask for?”
