Seminole County judge faces public punishment
Rene Stutzman | Sentinel Staff Writer
March 17, 2009
SANFORD - The state panel that watches over judges recommended that Seminole County Judge Ralph Eriksson be publicly reprimanded for being mean.
The Judicial Qualifications Commission concluded that Eriksson intentionally threw a man in jail to punish his lawyer. It also said he was "cavalier and insensitive" to several people who appeared before him one day asking for domestic-violence injunctions.
In case after case that day, Oct. 30, 2007, Eriksson turned away people who had no lawyers, misleading them into thinking they needed independent witnesses to corroborate their accounts. When they produced none, he threw out their cases.
It's not clear what will happen to Eriksson, 61, of Longwood, who has been a judge in Seminole for 14 years.
The panel's recommendation, made public Monday, now goes to the Florida Supreme Court, which will either accept it, come up with a different punishment or conclude that Eriksson did nothing wrong. It's not clear when that might happen.
A six-member panel of the qualifications commission put Eriksson on trial in Sanford in December. Late Monday, it announced its verdict: guilty of wrongdoing in two cases. Eriksson testified, saying he did not knowingly do anything wrong.
Neither he nor his attorney, Chandler Muller, was available for comment Monday evening.
At his trial, Eriksson said he was not being vindictive when he ordered Bob Lee Walton III to jail on Feb. 19, 2007.
When Walton's lawyer, Kendall Horween, won a continuance that Eriksson had earlier denied, the judge increased Walton's bail to $10,000 and had him jailed, saying he was interfering with the administration of justice.
The commission panel, though, said Eriksson was trying to punish Horween.
"Judge Eriksson believed that Mr. Horween was at fault, but he took no steps to sanction him," the panel wrote. "Obviously, the client should not be made to suffer for the sins of his attorney even if the attorney engages in wrongful conduct."
The panel acquitted the judge on one count. Eriksson was accused of needlessly jailing a second man, Daniel Bradshaw, when the defendant failed to plead guilty as the judge had anticipated. The panel said there was no clear, convincing evidence of wrongdoing by Eriksson in that case.
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