-Caveat Lector-
December 08, 2000
ON THE BENCH
Judge in Case That Gore Lost Had Run-Ins With Justices
By DAVID BARSTOW and SOMINI SENGUPTA
ALLAHASSEE, Fla., Dec. 7 � In November 1998, Judge N. Sanders
Sauls of Leon County Circuit Court was hauled to the woodshed by the
Florida Supreme Court in what many here recall as the most extraordinary
professional humiliation in North Florida's recent legal history.
The justices had summoned Judge Sauls to their offices to discuss his
performance as chief circuit judge in Leon County and more specifically his
efforts to dismiss a court administrator. The justices had been besieged by
complaints that Judge Sauls's style was autocratic and about a courthouse
bitterly divided under his leadership. During a tense meeting, they bluntly
laid down the law, telling Judge Sauls that he had been arbitrary and unfair
and that things had to change.
That evening when Judge Sauls got home, his wife, Cindy, could see right
away that he was livid. "He told me that he could not believe that the
Supreme Court justices, of all people, were not interested in the facts," Mrs.
Sauls recalled in an interview.
And so the next morning he composed a resignation letter to the Supreme
Court, which then promptly stripped him of his title as chief judge with a
terse, unanimous order that noted "the continuing disruption in the
administration of justice" under Judge Sauls.
"There were a lot of complaints, not only from court personnel but other
judges who said he ran the courthouse in an extremely autocratic manner,"
said Gerald Kogan, a retired Florida Supreme Court justice who
participated in the meeting.
Mrs. Sauls, a former legal secretary, saw it differently. "I think it was
because he wouldn't bend over and kiss their boots," she said.
Today, all but two of the seven justices who demoted Judge Sauls two
years ago are reviewing his most important handiwork: a sweeping ruling
this week that struck a severe blow to Vice President Al Gore's quest for
the White House and could leave Judge Sauls as the man who, in effect,
chose the next president of the United States. There is no evidence that
this ugly chapter of courthouse factionalism will color the justices'
assessment of Judge Sauls's ruling.
"They'd treat him as fairly as they'd treat any other judge," Justice Kogan
said.
And yet the episode is an example of how the unfolding national political
drama is intersecting with the intricate, layered dynamics of a small and
clannish legal community.
In this case, Mr. Gore's presidential ambitions have become enmeshed in
the history of hard feelings between Judge Sauls, a Democrat and a law-
and-order conservative, and the Florida Supreme Court, which in 1997
overturned one of his death sentences, citing the 19-year- old defendant's
low I.Q., history of mental illness and abusive childhood. A history buff who
can quote from the Federalist Papers and who applies a literalist approach
to statutes, Judge Sauls shares the views of leading Republicans who say
the Florida Supreme Court is a liberal bench that too often makes new law,
his wife and friends said.
Judge Sauls declined to comment for this article. But his wife, eager to
counter what she described as a smear campaign by his "enemies" in the
liberal wing of Tallahassee's legal and political community, spoke at length
after receiving his permission.
And so with Judge Sauls sitting in their living room, Mrs. Sauls stood on
their front steps late Wednesday night and launched a passionate defense
of her husband. "Loving him and seeing him bashed has been hard," she
said, ignoring the chill night air.
She blamed liberal lawyers for ganging up on Judge Sauls to give him a
low rating in local bar association polls, and she asserted that liberal bias
by The Tallahassee Democrat resulted in unfair coverage of his tenure as
chief judge.
In short, Mrs. Sauls described her husband as a man who long ago
decided he would rather stand up for his conservative principles than
simply go along to make friends, or curry favor with his local newspaper, or
win approval from his superiors on the bench. "When you are a man who
stands up for what you believe, and you don't pass the buck, you are not
always the most admired man," she said.
"My husband," she added, "is not a politician."
But his stubbornness, critics in the legal community said, has contributed to
a record of reversals that exceeds that compiled by several of his
colleagues on the Leon County circuit bench. In examining 198 of his
cases, appellate courts have reversed him 61 times, according to a search
of Lexis, a legal database. Another Leon County circuit judge, George
Reynolds, has been reversed in 28 of 199 cases. A third circuit judge from
the county, Nikki Ann Clark, who is hearing one of the other cases in the
post-election fight, has been reversed in 49 of 219 cases.
Judge Sauls has been repeatedly reversed for taking too narrow an
approach with admitting evidence and for punishing defendants too harshly
by misinterpreting statutes and sustaining convictions without adequate
proof. Likewise, Judge Sauls prides himself in carrying a large caseload,
but he has been reversed in several cases for improperly throwing out
lawsuits brought by poor people, prison inmates and plaintiffs who don't
have lawyers. Appellate judges have criticized him for imposing too strict a
standard on filing schedules and other administrative requirements.
Given his record, some members of the Gore legal team now say they
feared from the beginning the very result they are now trying to overturn.
One Gore lawyer, Dexter Douglass, who has known the judge for decades,
said he was concerned from the start that Judge Sauls could not be pushed
into acting with the urgency Mr. Gore wanted.
"When we found out it was him, I felt we would have a difficult time," Mr.
Douglass said in an interview.
Norman Sanders Sauls, 59, was raised in Monticello, a small town about
35 miles east of Tallahassee in rural Jefferson County. He came from a
prominent Democratic family. His father, Clyde, who died when Judge
Sauls was a teenager, was the county clerk. His mother, Genevieve Sauls,
who died in the late 1970's, ran the county Democratic organization for
years.
Cindy Sauls said her husband was raised primarily by a black nanny
named Ruby Thomas. As a boy, she said, he sometimes referred to his
mother as "Mrs. Sauls" and Ms. Thomas as "Mama," and to this day Ms.
Thomas remains one of the most important people in Judge Sauls's life,
she said. When Ms. Thomas was recently hospitalized, she said, Judge
Sauls went to the hospital each morning, noon and night to help feed her,
carefully cutting her food and feeding her. "There's a true love there
between them," Mrs. Sauls said today.
The Sauls family was an early supporter of Jimmy Carter, whose mother,
Lillian, once spent the night at their home during a campaign swing.
Genevieve Sauls was also longtime friends with Lawton Chiles, a former
Democratic governor and United States senator. Judge Sauls's friends say
his family's political connections gave him instant access to the good old
boy network, a network that helped him, at the age of 37, land a coveted
judicial perch as a United States bankruptcy judge for North Florida.
When his term as bankruptcy judge expired in 1986, he sought
reappointment but then withdrew that request, court officials said.
His wife said he withdrew because their family, with four children to put
through private schools, needed more income than he could earn as a
judge. In 1993, his youngest daughter, Christine, 16, was killed in an
automobile accident, and friends said he visited her grave almost daily in
the months after.
By then, he had already rejoined the bench. He was appointed to the Leon
County Circuit Court by Gov. Bob Martinez, a Republican.
Today, one of his closest friends and allies is Charles McClure, a former
chief judge of the Leon County court who has campaigned for George W.
Bush in North Florida, and who has also consulted for the Bush legal team,
offering the out-of- town lawyers tips about Sandy Sauls.
Judge McClure gives Judge Sauls the highest praise a conservative jurist
can get: "He's a strict constructionist."
It is a quality that comes through in his personal life. In the mid-1970's, for
example, Judge Sauls argued bitterly over a mere $50 during divorce
proceedings from his first wife. Under the divorce agreement, Judge Sauls
was supposed to pay his former wife $2,000 to get her resettled. He paid
$1,950, but refused to pay the final $50, arguing in court papers that his
wife had violated the agreement by keeping a $75 saddle and bridle he
had bought for their horse, Sunny.
Similar themes would re-emerge some 20 years later during the dust- up
that led to his ouster as chief judge. Ostensibly, the dispute was about a
routine personnel matter. When an important family law position opened up
in the court, Judge Sauls, overriding a search committee, picked his own
candidate, a woman who had less experience than the search committee's
choice but who had come recommended by a friend.
Tom Long, the court administrator, objected, and the judge angrily
denounced him for insubordination. In searing memorandums, the judge
described Mr. Long's intervention as "uncalled for, unnecessary and highly
unprofessional" and issued this stern dictum: "This attitude and conduct
must cease at once."
Mrs. Sauls said she and the judge knew, from the moment he was
assigned the Gore case by random selection, that all the attention would
dredge up the memory of his "heartbreaking" humiliation at the hands of
the Supreme Court.
"He said, `I have it and now I'll do the best I can.' "
He attacked the case in his usual workmanlike manner. After hearing
closing arguments late into Sunday night, he came home and kept at it until
early Monday. Then he rose at his customary time, 5:30 a.m. At the dining
room table, he wrote his opinion in longhand.
Not once did he let on to his wife of 25 years how he intended to rule. She
learned of his decision with the rest of the world, she said, watching him
proudly from a seat in the courtroom.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
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