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April 2021 Millar's JurisDiction - It’s Witchcraft

by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

I don’t know much about witchcraft. For some reason it has not attracted my attention. I do remember reading about the Salem Witch Trials which took place in 1692 and 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts, and which, despite outward appearances, was before my time. Thirty people were found guilty and nineteen were executed.

It was not a good time to be a witch.

If you were to ask me about witchcraft, the first thing that would come to my mind would be the song “It’s Witchcraft” made famous by Frank Sinatra.

Those fingers in my hair,

That sly come hither stare,

That strips my conscience bare,

It’s witchcraft.

So, it came as a surprise to me to learn that witchcraft is alive and well and still being practiced.

In Florida.

By judges.

I have it on good authority that it is true. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “good,” seeing as how my “authority” recently was disbarred. But, as any lawyer knows, “youse takes your authority where youse finds it.”

Still, it’s hard to get a visual. Somehow a bunch of judges in the lunchroom bent over in their robes and murmuring “Double, double, toil and trouble,” over a pot of stew just doesn’t work for me.

It worked for Edward Lynum, however.

Mr. Lynum until recently was a member of the Florida Bar. He came to the attention of the Bar because of his Facebook posts about Sumter County Circuit Judge Michelle T. Morley, who, until she recused herself, was presiding over Mr. Lynum’s marriage dissolution. In a blog, he referred to her as “an un-indicted criminal who happens to also be a Florida circuit judge.”

In an effort to purportedly make “the public aware of the cult of her actions . . .” he said: “Her reputation now is a judge who fabricates evidence and fabricates the evidence in red font, so it screams pagan witchcraft. Her decision to fabricate evidence in red-font screams ‘I am Satan’ in white people’s words.”

Judge Morley’s successor, Judge Daniel B. Merritt fared little better. He was accused of “objective criminal behavior and practice of witchcraft.”

After the appellate court affirmed Judge Merritt’s order denying his recusal, Mr. Lynum wrote: “Daniel Merritt denied a motion for his recusal which the appellate court affirmed without reason, along with a satanic order that creates a child that doesn’t exist in Miami. A fabrication only made by people who practice witchcraft.”

The Florida Bar presented the Referee with “an overwhelming number of social media posts” but, due to time and space limitations, the Referee declined to publish them other than to summarize that Mr. Lynum called Judge Morley a “dumb, satanic sl*t” and called the Bar counsel “a worthless and inept satanic sl*t,” and topped it off by urging that the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court “should be executed for tolerating hate crimes, witchcraft, and domestic terrorism.”

The Florida Supreme Court disbarred him on January 21, 2021.

Cause it’s witchcraft,

That crazy witchcraft.

 

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is Of Counsel with the firm of Friedman Stroffe & Gerard in Irvine. He can be reached at rmillar@fsglawyers.com.