UPDATE: Unfortunately the Governor made the appointment within minutes of me having posted this. Sorry for the late notice. No one realized LaBarga was a possibility until this morning. We must remember this in the future: Charlie Crist had the opportunity to put a conservative on the Florida Supreme Court and he chose not to.

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Call Governor Charlie Crist at 850-488-7146. Tell him not to appoint Jorge LaBarga to the Florida Supreme Court.

The guy is very bad for conservatives and we need to change Crist’s mind. The appointment could come today, but with some solid push back Governor Crist might change his mind.

Judge LaBarga gave an extremely light sentence to Noel Schultheis, a 34-year old man who lured young boys, some younger than 12 years old, into his house and molested them sexually.  Despite eventually finding him guilty, Judge LaBarga seemed more concerned with protecting the sexual predator than with punishing him; the Judge refused to allow the state to detail Schultheis’s crimes in open court because it could have subjected him to the anger of his fellow inmates who were also in the court.  Judge LaBarga then only sentenced Schultheis to 10 years in what should have been a case resulting in life imprisonment.  Some of Schultheis’s victims won’t even be able to legally drink alcohol before Schultheis is out of prison for molesting them.  (Information gathered in part from re-print of Palm Beach Post article)

Judge LaBarga essentially freed convicted road-rage shooter Vishnu Persad in 2007 when he refused to allow the state to offer evidence of one of the victim’s eyewitness identification during a retrial following Persaud’s conviction by a jury of his peers.  Judge LaBarga refused to allow the second jury to hear and evaluate the eyewitness testimony on which the first jury convicted Persaud.  Judge LaBarga’s bombshell ruling eviscerated the state’s case since eyewitness testimony was the only basis for identifying Persaud as the shooter. Faced with a lack of evidence, the state decided to drop the case and Persaud was freed.  (Information gathered in part from re-print of March 1, 2007 Palm Beach Post article)

In 1994, Judge Labarga successfully represented Clint Albert, the defendant who was charged with murder after stabbing a prostitute to death in a cocaine binge.  He claims he is proud of this case because it was the first time a jury had accepted voluntary intoxication as a total defense to murder.  (Information gathered from Labarga’s application)

Charlie Crist has been on a roll lately undermining conservatives. Behind the scenes, he is trying to drum up opposition to Jeb Bush’s Senate run, not because he doesn’t want another Bush, but because he wants a more moderate candidate.

Adding Labarga to the mix would pretty much disqualify Crist from ever being the GOP nominee for President, let alone anything else.