The governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis, announced today that he appointed Judge Robert Luck to fill the second of three vacancies in the state Supreme Court.
DeSantis made the announcement at the Scheck Hillel Community School in North Miami Beach (southeast Florida), where Luck grew up.
The judge chosen by DeSantis has a law degree from the University of Florida (UF) and since 2017 holds the position of magistrate in an appeals court.
“Judge Luck has a dedicated public service heart” and a “deep understanding of the constitutional separation of powers and the proper role of the courts,” said the governor.
Luck’s election comes five days after DeSantis chose Cuban-American judge Barbara Lagoa to fill the first of three vacancies in Florida’s highest court.
Lagoa replaces Judge Fred Lewis, who retires by age, and is the first Hispanic woman to be a magistrate of the Florida Supreme Court, composed of seven magistrates with a term of six years renewable.
In his first days in office, DeSantis is announcing various appointments, ceasing public office or calling for the dismissal of others.
In this sense, the governor suspended last Friday the sheriff of the county of Broward, Scott Israel, for the numerous errors that emerged in the wake of the shooting that ended the lives of 17 people in a school in Parkland, north of Miami, in February 2018.
DeSantis, 40, a lawyer by profession, who took office last Tuesday as the new governor, announced that retired Coral Springs Police Sgt. Gregory Tony will be the new sheriff of that county, north of Miami.
Tony thus becomes the first African-American to hold the post of Sheriff of Broward County.
Although the state senate is the one with the final power to remove the sheriff, the governor may suspend it for negligence or embezzlement. DeSantis also has the power to replace the sheriff for the period of suspension.
Israel stated that the suspension is due to political motives and that there were no mistakes, in turn, in the response to the shooting.
Israel and its department have been the subject of numerous criticisms, both for the way they handled the shooting and for the numerous previous warnings they received about the dangerous behavior of its author, the alumnus of the school Nikolas Cruz, without any of this leading to an action by the Police. (EFEUSA) .-
