Harry Lee Anstead: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

When a couple of Bermuda-shorts-clad, camera-toting tourists peek into the empty courtroom at the Florida Supreme Court and shyly step inside, a man wearing a black robe bellows out: "Welcome! Come on in! Where are you folks from? Why, Jacksonville is my hometown, too."

Moments later, when the newest justice, Raoul Cantero III, and his three children and wife walk into the court-room, he greets them all with hugs.

That's Harry Lee Anstead--friendly, unpretentious, genuine, treating everyone the same.

The courts belong to the people, every person deserves a fair shake at justice, and all people are created equal--these are philosophies that 64-year-old Anstead takes to heart and will bring to the court as chief justice, say those who know him well.

"He is one of the purest hearts you are ever going to find in the judiciary. He's a very purely motivated, highly idealistic, and highly altruistic judge with strong beliefs about fairness and equity. He feels very strongly about his goals and ideals and lives them. I think he'll make a great chief justice," said former Bar President Terry Russell, who grew up in Jacksonville's Springfield area, across the tracks from the Brentwood housing project where Anstead was the youngest of six children raised by a single mom.

"He had an upbringing that I'm sure greatly affected his outlook and made him a very compassionate man," Russell said.

During the Great Depression, right after Anstead was born, his father deserted the family, and his mother Loretta, a genteel woman who could play piano by ear and paint, who was educated in a convent and had little practical experience, worked at whatever job she could find to keep her family together.

"In those days, as today, the government's solution would be to take each of those six children and place them in different foster homes. My mother made up her mind that was certainly not going to happen," said Anstead.

"To see my mother overcome financial hardships was the greatest role model for me."

The turning point for the family was moving into the new Brentwood housing project.

Framed behind Anstead's desk is a letter from U.S. Senator Claude Pepper to his mother, praising her for being devoted to her children despite being broke, and for refusing to give up as she was tossed from one social agency to another. Even though she didn't have a job to pay the meager rent, finally she qualified for the subsidized housing.

"This was the most wonderful thing that happened to us," Anstead said. "It was newly constructed. The main street was lined with trees touching each other. I was raised in an environment I would never substitute if I had a million choices."

He smiles recalling the warm sense of community at Brentwood at that time: a full-time day care center, an elementary school within walking distance, a nearby garden-style park with rose bushes, and a Grecian-temple style band shell that drew neighbors together. Very important to young Harry Lee Anstead, a self-described "latch-key kid," were the athletic fields, staffed with coaches who inspired him to play every sport.

Still, there were plenty of barely-scraping-by bleak times.

Michael Anstead, a computer software analyst, said his father would tell stories of passing out in school from malnutrition.

Boyhood jobs took Anstead to treetops for mistletoe to sell door-to-door at Christmas and peddling his bike with a big basket to deliver groceries. A scar on his hand is a lasting reminder of the frugal deli manager who insisted none of the bologna roll be wasted when shaving slices on the electric cutter. Like his siblings, Anstead contributed what he earned to help pay the family's bills.

"I think we have a wonderful ability to forget the painful, and it's the togetherness and everybody looking out for everybody else that you really remember in a positive way," Anstead said.

Wilson Barnes, marshal at the Supreme Court, says it is because Anstead does remember his tough childhood that makes him a great justice today.

"I'm an African-American with my roots in the Deep South in Virginia, and I worked very hard in whatever I had to achieve in life," said Barnes.

"He comes from what I call the same socioeconomic model. And some people, when they arrive at a particular station in life, they kind of forget this background from whence they have come.

"But I can tell you that Harry Lee Anstead has not.

"He's very passionate about children, very passionate about those who need uplifting. As I analyze it, that is probably the primary basis of our closeness. And then, he's just nice people!"

Tallahassee lawyer Pete Antonacci recalled that when he was deputy attorney general, he got a call at 8 a.m. from Anstead on the day in 1994 he was to be sworn in as a justice on the Florida Supreme Court.

"You know, I'd like to meet some of your people," Anstead told Antonacci, who explained there was only a very small staff at the Capitol and most were housed at an office complex miles away. Anstead said he'd love to go, and he spent four hours meeting the worker bee state lawyers.

"He went into people's offices, and I'd say, 'This is the new Supreme Court justice,' and you could see people just fainting. State lawyers don't often get recognition. But Harry Lee Anstead was completely gracious with everyone and interested in anyone," Antonacci said.

At the July 2 passing-of-the-gavel ceremony when Anstead became chief justice, an attorney commented to his daughter, Laura, that her father sure is serious.

"I think that's a good way to describe him, and although my father may not take that as a compliment, I do. When you meet my father and talk to him face-to-face, you realize just how serious he is," said Laura Anstead, a Manhattan lawyer.

"If he is talking to you, he is sincere about his interest in what you have to say and is sincere in being interested in who you are.

"That part of my father--his sincerity--is the part I most respect and is something that I hope I have inherited."

Chris Anstead, another lawyer in the family and oldest of the five children, said: "The main thing about my father is he's very down to earth and always worries about other people's concerns. He's a very giving person."

Hanging near the entrance to Anstead's chambers is this quote from Aesop's "The Lion and the Mouse": "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."

That's more than a fable to Anstead--it's his philosophy of life.

When Anstead talks about his core values and the meaning of professionalism for lawyers, a movement in Florida he had a huge hand in developing, it is an elaboration on the Golden Rule.

"Talking about the meaning of life, the one thing I'm convinced of is it surely has to do with our relationships with one another," Anstead said.

"We're all in this life together. And if we can make a difference in someone else's life in a positive way, in an intuitive way it shows the meaning of life."

The flip side of the Golden Rule, he says, are the very words woven into America's founding principle that all people are created equal.

"In this country, the law has really been the way that we've gone about trying to carry out what was really a promise--and obviously, still doesn't exist--but we've been striving for that. And isn't that a wonderful thing to strive for? The people who have been leading the effort to strive for that have been law-trained people. And this is what I mean when I talk about the essence of professionalism, what causes you to strive always to do your best."

Two years before Anstead graduated from Jacksonville's Andrew Jackson High School, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

"What the judicial branch did was lead this nation out of darkness, the darkness of racial separation. The other two branches of government would have been more appropriate to do it," Anstead said.

"I am enormously proud to be part of a profession--in the judicial system-that issued this critically important decision in the history of this country. This decision was really the beginning of an enormous drive, in terms of fulfilling this great promise that all people are created equal."

Even though he was only a kindergartner, Michael Anstead will never forget walking with his father on the grounds of the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany.

"My dad had never spoken to me with such a serious intensity on his face. I could truly see, even at that young age, how disgusted he felt about what happened there. Dad had that same look in his eyes when we walked the grounds of the cemetery at Wounded Knee, a short time later. My sister and I stared at the remains of a burned-out chapel that was filled with garbage, as Dad told us of the massacre that occurred there so many years ago," Michael Anstead recalled.

"Dad let us know that hatred and injustice were still being inflicted upon the American Indians. He explained things in such a way that it was easy to understand why and what had happened and how it continued to happen. I know it was so important to Dad for us to understand that everyone deserved to be treated equally. He constantly made us aware of prejudice and racism whenever he could."

Harry Lee Anstead tells how his was the only Catholic family in the neighborhood, and kids at school called him "pope lover," "dirty mick," and "fish eater."

"I remember going back to my mother, and she talked about ignorance that probably stemmed from parents, so don't blame the children. On the other hand, don't you take anything. You can give as good as you get. So after a few bloody noses on the ballfield, that ended with me," Anstead said.

But his Jewish friend, David, who moved in next door after World War II, wasn't so lucky.

"When we were out on the ballfield, I heard him being called names. He was called a `Yid' and a "kike," and I immediately related it to what I'd been called earlier. And I took up for my friend. More bloody noses. I was pretty good with my fists," Anstead said with a proud grin.

"Eventually, that family moved away. But I can tell you I never had the sense that David was ever accepted in the same way that I had been accepted. Even as a child, that lingered with me. Those are lessons that you learn by true experience, the best lessons that life can teach you."

Another childhood story was a summer job working for a moving company. Anstead was stuck in the back of the hot truck with the furniture, along with another boy, who was black.

"The big event of the day would be lunch. I can still remember the shock to my system when we went to a restaurant and my buddy in the back of the truck wasn't allowed in. So the rest of the summer, I spent going into the restaurants and getting our lunch to bring it out or going to the pickup windows where blacks could be served," Anstead said.

"Those experiences did not affect me in a negative way. They just made me feel that you could never walk in somebody else's shoes, truly, but they certainly allowed me to have sort of a sample of when people are not treated with equal dignity. It was a powerful, powerful force for me," Anstead said.

While serving on the Fourth DCA in the 1980s, a trial court judge shared a concern that while black attorneys were being hired by the state attorney and public defender, there was little opportunity to take their trial experience to private practice, the routine career path for white attorneys.

So Anstead summoned several managing partners of significant law firms in the Palm Beach area for what he called "a couple of bull sessions down at the court," to call their attention to this issue.

"One of the wonderful things that happened is it served as a catalyst, really, and it let people say things that perhaps they wouldn't have said in another context. I heard lawyers around that table who lived in that community for generations talk about what some lawyers would say: `Well, we know when we hire a lawyer it's going to be part of the family, and therefore we have to be so absolutely certain that it will work out. Failure is not an option.'

"They would be throwing up obstacles to giving people a chance, an opportunity--a chance to fail, as well as to succeed. When I was hired, I was a risky proposition. But we had people actually say out loud at these sessions, `I remember when your firm would not hire a Jewish lawyer, and I know that was the official policy of your partners at the firm.'

"And that allowed people to be a great deal more honest. Before you knew it, they were all saying, `You know, that's right. A lot of law firms had that policy, and thank God, we don't have that policy today.'

"They talked it out at that level. Through that process, through the wonderful open-minded lawyers, through the very talented young lawyers who needed positions, it was only a matter of months that lawyers were being hired out of those offices. I'm a great believer that almost any problem we have in life and society, that you just start talking about it, and that is what is going to generate the solution. It's not that you have a perfect answer. It's just that once you talk about it, and listen to somebody else, you start realizing that, wait a minute, there are options."

Talking things out and reaching solutions will be put to the test in Anstead's two-year term as chief justice. History is dealing him a huge challenge--thanks to a constitutional amendment passed in 1998 mandating that by July 1, 2004, substantial funding of the courts will shift from the local to the state level.

"Clearly, these next two sessions of the legislature will determine the future of our trial courts," Anstead said.

The funding challenge comes at a time, as Russell put it, the "legislature is testing the limits of the separation of powers doctrine. In an ideal world, in days gone past, the court didn't have to worry about that. But it ain't that way anymore."

The times, Russell said, "will call upon any chief justice to be very attuned to the political processes, going over there to the legislature and trying to make the court as much a part of those processes as a co-equal branch of government."

Chief Justice Anstead, Russell is confident, is up to the task.

Antonacci agreed: "To me, he has the same skill set that (Justice) Jimmy Adkins had when Adkins had to bring the court back into public credibility after the scandals in the 1970s. You have to have someone who can deploy not only personal charm, but can also deal cooperatively with the other branches of government. I think he has the skill set to do that."

Bar President Tod Aronovitz also trusts that Anstead will get the job done: "As a man, he is genuine and sincere. As Chief, Floridians will see that he has a lifelong record of accomplishing his goals."

Senior Assistant Attorney General John Newton III, who worked on the Al Gore legal team when he was in private practice, said: "You have to acknowledge there will be people who are rabid political partisans who are going to be hostile to him and suspicious of him with regard to his opinion in the election case."

In a unanimous decision, the court extended a deadline in mid-November to give South Florida counties more time to hand count disputed ballots. Anstead was in the majority in a 4-3 ruling in early December to keep the recount going, only to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn that decision, and the election went to George W. Bush.

"One of the challenges Anstead faces is convincing the legislature that he believes in and is working for a fair and impartial court system," Newton said.

"Certainly, people look at his background and think he's a judicial activist. His interest, really, is as an advocate for the underdog and a believer in the court system as the people's protection. He truly has a passion for justice and a belief in the nobility of the judiciary. And if ever there was a time in history that Florida's courts need someone to stand up for the nobility of the courts, it is now."

Henry J. "Harry" Graham was Anstead's law clerk from 1996-98 and got so fired up at what he called "a vicious attack" leveled at Anstead during the election case, that he fired off his first letter to the editor in the local newspaper.

"Anybody who actually knows the man knows he is incredibly well-prepared, takes every case seriously, researches, thinks about them, follows where the law leads, and throws in his own common sense and experience. There is no doubt intellectually how he arrived at a decision. His opinions will lay out a perfect road map. And no one can accuse him of being intellectually dishonest or giving a knee-jerk reaction. If people knew this gentleman--no matter where they are on the political spectrum--he is precisely the one you want deciding these complex legal issues," Graham said.

It's understandable to Graham why Anstead has consistently received the highest ratings in statewide polls, and he predicts Anstead will fare well again in November's merit retention ballot.

"He treats lawyers with absolute respect, and he gives everyone at least two opportunities to state their case. He asks questions as opportunities to let lawyers shine. He listens and looks at issues from both sides, and attorneys see that same demeanor when they meet him personally. He builds houses for Habitat for Humanity and has been involved in marches commemorating Martin Luther King's birthday. He's out in the community telling lawyers to be guardians ad litem because it's critically important that children's interests are looked after.

He's out practicing what he preaches."

Besides gaining a great legal education clerking for Anstead, Graham said, he learned by Anstead's example that family comes first. Anstead is devoted to his wife, Sue, and their five children: Chris, Laura, Michael, Jim, supervisor of an after-school program, and Amy, medical school student at the University of Miami.

"Whatever you do, really, the most important thing you can do is be a good husband and father, that how you treat your family is indicative of how you'll do in your professional life," Graham said. "He would say his family is his anchor and grounded him, his security blanket. You could see that. It was clear."

Not every family is so fortunate.

A key goal for Anstead's term as chief justice is elevating juvenile court to the importance it deserves as helping our most troubled children.

Reaching back to his childhood in the Brentwood housing project, he explains his passion for children's issues.

"We were all poor kids. But my view was that the community provided us with support, and, as a result of that, nobody really felt poor," Anstead said.

"I have continuously felt that this is an obligation of the community to ensure that all the children out there are all of our children. That's been one of the difficulties that we've had. Race has played a role. For too long, we say, on a racial basis, `Those aren't our children. It's those children that get in trouble.'

"I think that is just one of our fundamental responsibilities as a community. I also have a great belief that everything is local. It's going to take that community spirit and caring."

Tony Lawhon, one of Anstead's law clerks on the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 1992-94, came from Naples to Tallahassee for the chief justice's swearing-in ceremony and said he wouldn't have missed it for the world.

He heard Chief Justice Anstead's appeal that day: "I can assure you that during my term as chief justice, I will be calling on every judge, lawyer, and citizen in Florida to join me in accepting that responsibility of putting children first in our communities and in our courts."

Lawhon is ready to help.

"I will do anything for that man," Lawhon said. "If I was teleported back to 1992 and offered a job for half a million dollars a year at a private law firm or the opportunity to clerk for him for nothing, I would definitely work for him.

"It was the best learning experience. On those really difficult legal issues, he would gather two law clerks into his chambers and we would debate. I would take one side; another clerk would take the other side; and he would moderate. He'd ask questions. What do you think about this angle? He had such a pointed ability to see through legal issues and understand the complexity of a huge record," Lawhon said, adding that Anstead has an uncanny memory in recalling details of cases from years ago.

Cathy Williams, Anstead's former senior staff attorney, who worked with him from 1997-2001, calls him "a model justice, because he's fair, kind, compassionate, and above all, ethical."

A testament to his belief that the courts belong to the people, Williams said, is Anstead's initiative to turn the second floor rotunda into an art gallery, as well as his future vision of transforming the first floor rotunda into a display of the court's history. Anstead envisions interactive kiosks dispensing historical film clips of court ceremonies and monumental oral arguments, such as the contested presidential election case. Currently, as part of the educational project, he's working with two Florida Indian tribes--the Miccosukees and the Seminoles--to draw parallels between tribal justice and the restorative justice and mediation movement.

Anstead is passionate about the law, yet at first he thought he wanted to become an electrical engineer, until a professor did him a great favor by giving him a `D' in a course called Differential Equations.

"My wife says that bridges and buildings would be still falling down if I had gone on in engineering," Anstead said with a laugh.

After receiving his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Florida in 1960, he was recruited by the National Security Agency and moved to Washington, D.C.

Standing in the snow among a crowd of thousands, Anstead heard President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address.

"I remember being chilled well beyond the cold of the day by his words: `Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.' I think that the main important thing to come out of the Kennedy presidency was a sense of idealism that this country, that people, individuals, could accomplish anything, and that public service was a great thing. I was motivated by that."

A week later, he started law school at American University. But his outdoorsy nature nudged him to return to sunny, warm Gainesville to finish his law degree.

Sue Anstead laughs when she tells of the time she first met Harry in 1962.

"I was a freshman at UF and he was a third-year law student, and a bunch of frat brothers were talking to me outside the law library, and they all got together and persuaded me to go into the law library and get `shuffled.'

"There were only three women in law school at the time. And the guys would bang their books together and shuffle their feet, and it felt like the whole room was going to fall down. I was very embarrassed."

And Harry asked her out. Just before the last semester of law school, they married. Anstead took a job in West Palm Beach as a trial lawyer, what he calls "the fighter pilots of the courtroom."

Sue Anstead says she married a lawyer because she wanted to be one. The idea seemed too daunting in the early 1960s, when "a woman had to be perfect," she said. But in 1990, Sue Anstead made up for lost time, went to law school at Nova, and worked in juvenile court as a public defender and helped foster children through the legal aid office.

"She became the hero of the family," Anstead said proudly.

As Anstead walks into his chambers, First District Court of Appeal Judge Charles Miner is there to present a plaque that says: "Some things you do to help children may not work out despite your best efforts. But you won't know which ones or why if you don't try." The judges hug.

"He's a first-rate and up-front kind of guy," Miner said. "He doesn't have any hesitancy in calling you down. In a nice way, he'll say, `We might not want to talk about that. Put that in a letter.' He has a very well-honed sense of personal and professional integrity, not only as a judge and lawyer, but as a fine human being. He may differ in the way I see things in a number of cases, but he's on the Supreme Court and I'm not."

Anstead is fond of telling the story of another man named Minor, his namesake. About to graduate from high school, Anstead contemplated how he wanted his name to read on his diploma. He admitted to his mother he hated his name, complaining a jock should have a name like Jack or Bill.

"And my mother said to me, `Harry, I've heard just about enough about your name. Let me remind you of the origin of your name.'"

When Anstead was born and his father deserted the family, his mother was left to fend for herself.

"Where we were living at the time was extremely poor. We didn't have a pot, as the saying goes. But we had a neighbor who literally provided us with clothing and groceries and the essentials to survive. His name was Harry Lee Minor. I get choked up even now, in the humiliation of my mother reminding me where my name came from, my mother's recognition of what a wonderful thing this man did for our family.

"I consider my mother giving me that name a tangible way of instilling her values in me. It was the greatest gift my mother gave to me. And I've been Harry Lee ever since, trying to live up to that name."

Now, there's an impressive new title to put before that name: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida. Those who know Harry Lee Anstead have no doubt he will live up to that name, too--with sincerity, professionalism, and a passion for equal justice for all.

"Can Harry Come Out to Play?"

"Can Harry come out to play?" Sue Anstead, mother of five, laughs when she tells how neighborhood children would come to the door and ask for her husband, the fun-loving jock.

"Our front yard was the baseball field, football field, soccer field, volleyball field. The neighborhood kids were used to being there. And if Jimmy, Chris, Laura, Michael, and Amy weren't there, it was always: `Is Harry there?'"

The Anstead children have grown up and moved away. But their father, Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead, is still a kid at heart, ready to play ball.

He may be 64, but that doesn't stop him from going over to the gym at Tallahassee's First Baptist Church and shooting hoops with the guys during lunch hour.

"For an elderly gentleman, he's extraordinarily aggressive and straightahead," says Pete Antonacci, a Tallahassee lawyer and former deputy attorney general.

"We have a rule: As soon as you bleed, get the hell out of there. He's the best bleeder. I've seen him with cuts on his forehead, and he's still playing."

Anstead flings back playfully: "Pete's not the quickest guy on his feet, but he's a little stronger than I am, so he'll find a way to get in your way. Noontime basketball is great therapy and stress relief. I go over there and I don't think about serious stuff--other than trying to save my life!"

A strong competitive streak runs through Anstead, honed on the ball fields of Jacksonville as a boy. When he was 14, he was proud to receive a medal for winning the city basketball championship for the Brentwood team, boys who lived in the Jacksonville housing project.

Each year, he'd also compete in the Golden Gloves boxing matches.

"I'd go out and get my clock cleaned and never make it past the first round, but at least I went out," Anstead says.

Since living in Tallahassee, Anstead happily drives to Jacksonville each year to give a pep talk to the students at his alma mater, Andrew Jackson High, now, Anstead says, "really in a ghetto area of Jacksonville." The school almost closed down.

"It's been a great privilege for me to see this high school rise again. They spent some money on landscaping and introduced a couple of magnet programs over there, so I feel that I have been a part of that, to go back every year to remind the children that they are not the first poor children that had to struggle with their education. It's just been a great boost to me."

Best of all, they let Anstead play basketball on the Andrew Jackson High alumni team.

"There I am in the center of the picture on the basketball team," he says with a grin. "At least they let the old man play. I can still run up and down that court."

Back in his college days at the University of Florida, freshman year, Anstead was a walk-on on the football team, along with Roland Gomez, now a Miami lawyer.

"We were cannon fodder for the varsity team," laughs Gomez. "We only played in three games: Tulane, Auburn and University of Miami, and we lost to Miami."

"When the announcement came out that he was becoming chief justice, I sent him a note: `If I ever hit you after the whistle or clipped you, I apologize.'"

Gomez remembers Anstead was not that big--probably weighing only 165--but he was tough.

"Joe Brodsky was the starting full-back for the Gators and he was huge, like 6-foot-2,215 pounds. One day at practice, Anstead, this little pipsqueak from Jacksonville, was tackling Brodsky, one-on-one. He took down the No. 1 fullback and everyone just stood around and went: `oooohhhhh.'"

Another University of Florida pal is retired Judge Frank Orlando, director of the Center for the Study of Youth Policy at the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University.

"He put me in the infirmary once! We were playing flag football, and he was so competitive he ran into me so hard he knocked me down. But he was so compassionate, he put me in his car and took me to the infirmary," Judge Orlando recalls.

Working his way through law school, Anstead had the graveyard shift at a telephone answering service.

"He was the epitome of perseverance, and that's how he did sports, too," Gomez says.

Perseverance paid off for Anstead in a 5K race for judges, an event at The Florida Bar's annual meetings.

Though he was a veteran racer-competing in marathons in Boston and New York--he could never win the Bar race.

"I would think this is a piece of cake, and every time, just before I would cross the finish line, this skinny judge from North Florida would run past me" Anstead says.

He had to beat that guy, so he enlisted a Fourth District Court of Appeal staff lawyer, who had been an All-American track runner in college, to help boost his speed.

"He just about killed me, taking me on the waterfront in West Palm Beach and running me into the ground," Anstead says.

The next summer, at the Bar convention in Orlando, on a wet golf course running the 5K, Anstead looked back and saw that skinny judge coming right up behind him. Anstead held on, kept pumping those legs, and beat him across the finish line.

"That was Judge Jimmy Joanos from the First DCA, and I still kid him that it was my greatest victory," Anstead chuckles.

Daughter Laura Anstead savors memories of her dad waking her up at dawn on Saturday mornings to compete in races sponsored by the Palm Beach Road Runners Club.

"Believe it or not, there was a day when I beat my dad at one of these road races--and I only mean one time--which could not happen again. We entered a 10K race, and as I caught up to him during the race, as always, I heard him cheer me on: `Go Laura!'

"This is classic for my dad. He is our biggest cheerleader. At both high school track and cross-country meets, I could always hear his booming voice--`Go Laura!'--from the stands. And I have received that same encouragement all throughout my life."

"A Perfect Road Map"

Harry Lee Anstead said he was proud to serve on the Florida Supreme Court on May 25, 1999, when Chief Justice Major B. Harding gathered the family of Virgil Hawkins for a ceremony to apologize for decisions rendered in the 1950s and 1960s that excluded Hawkins and other minorities from law schools.

In similar spirit, Anstead said he was proud to author the opinion in Powell v. Allstate Insurance Co., 652 So. 2d 354, 358 (Fla. 1995), that granted a new trial because white jurors made racial jokes in the jury room about the black plaintiffs.

"Here we are still fighting that battle in the beginning of the 21st century," Anstead said. "But how important that is to be able to say that in a court opinion that contrasts sharply with some of those opinions we had to apologize for in the late 1950s and 1960s. What an incredible privilege of this court to have that opportunity."

In Powell v. Allstate, an all-white jury awarded a black couple damages--$29,320 to Derrick Powell and nothing to his wife, Eugenia Powell, for injuries sustained in a car crash. They had asked for $200,000. After the verdict, one of the jurors brought to the court's attention that various jurors had made racial remarks and jokes during the trial, and she believed the verdict was the result of racial bias. Among many racial slurs and jokes was this one told by the jury foreman: "There's a saying in North Carolina, `Hit a n--and get 10 points, hit him when he's moving, get 15.'" An alternate female juror supposed that because the Powells had their grandchildren living with them, their children were probably drug dealers, and the other jurors laughed.

In remanding the case back to the trial court, Anstead wrote:

"The founding principle upon which this nation was established is that all persons were initially created equal and are entitled to have their individual human dignity respected. This guarantee of equal treatment has been carried forward in explicit provisions of our federal and state constitutions. It is not by chance that the words `Equal Justice Under Law' have been placed for all to see above the entrance to this nation's highest court. If we are to expect our citizens to treat one another with equal dignity and respect, the justice system must serve as the great example of maintaining that standard. And while we have been far from perfect in implementing this founding principle, our initial declaration and our imperfect struggle and efforts have served as a beacon for people around the world.

"It is with great dismay then that we must acknowledge, more than 200 years after declaring this truth to the world, that there are still those among us who would deny equal human dignity to their brothers and sisters of a different color, religion or ethnic origin. The justice system, and the courts especially, must jealously guard our sacred trust to assure equal treatment before the law. We attempt to hold that trust today."

In a special concurring opinion in State of Florida v. Keith Bernard Brown, 655 So. 2d 82 (Fla. 1995), Anstead humbly acknowledged that the courts are human, too, and make mistakes, and should not be overly concerned to correct its mistakes. The tone of his opinion garnered much feedback from appreciative attorneys.

Brown had appealed his life sentence for second-degree murder and armed robbery, on the grounds that sentencing guidelines had recommended 22 to 27 years, and the trial court failed to provide written reasons for the departure at the time of sentencing.

The First District Court of Appeal reversed and remanded for resentencing based on subsequent case law. Because of confusion over the application of the case law to collateral cases involving the contemporaneous writing requirement, the district court certified the case to the Supreme Court.

While Brown's sentence was being appealed, the Supreme Court had decided in Ree v. State, 565 So. 2d 1329 (Fla. 1990) that reasons for departing from sentencing guidelines must be issued at the time of sentencing and held that requirement "shall only be applied prospectively."

In Brown's case, the Supreme Court approved the decision of the First DCA and remanded it to the trial court to impose a guideline sentence on the grounds of fairness.

In his concurring opinion, Anstead wrote: "Once in a while the courts, like other institutions composed of human beings, make mistakes. Further, because judicial procedures are not always easily understood by all, and the system uses a technical vocabulary, our mistakes are sometimes compounded when we try to correct and explain them. As a result, we certainly get our share of criticism, some good-natured and some more pointed. Our treatment of the issue involved herein is a good example.

"Mr. Brown came along after Mr. Ree and made the same claim that Mr. Ree made, carefully preserving his claim at each stage of the legal proceedings. In fact, even before Mr. Brown's case moved within the appellate pipeline to this court, Mr. Ree essentially `won' Mr. Brown's case for him by getting this court to agree with the position advocated by Brown. You would think that Brown, following Mr. Ree, would not even have to advance his case to this court, since the issue was resolved with the answer Brown had advocated all along.

"While Mr. Brown was celebrating Mr. Ree's victory, however, this court was trying to figure out whether the Ree holding had been law all along, or whether it was some new law that should only be applied `prospectively,' a word of legal art that may have more than one meaning, and sometimes requires explanation. But would not one thing at least be certain, that Mr. Brown, having preserved the same issue and waiting in the wings after Mr. Ree, should at least be treated like Mr. Ree? After all, if Mr. Ree had dropped the ball and somehow failed to get the issue to this court, would not Mr. Brown have been right here asking for the same ruling, having `properly preserved the issue' just like Ree? However, notwithstanding Mr. Ree's success, both the district court and this court denied Brown's appeals.

"In the meantime, in a series of unclear rulings, initially and in opinions on rehearing, the air was `finally cleared' when we held in Smith [Smith v. State, 598 So. 2d 1063 (Fla. 1992)] that Ree `shall apply to all cases not yet final when mandate issued after rehearing in Ree.'

"We are now holding, in essence, that Brown was right all along, since he, like Ree, did everything he could to preserve the issue, and his appeal was still pending when the mandate issued in Ree.

"In this case at least, justice delayed may not be justice denied."

The gravity of death penalty cases--six percent of the cases taking up half of justices' time--weigh heavily upon Anstead.

When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Florida's electric chair in Leo Alexander Jones v. Robert Butterworth in 1997, Anstead joined Justices Gerald Kogan and Leander Shaw in dissenting.

In his dissent, Anstead pulled no punches: "Unfortunately, the outcome is this case was essentially determined months ago when a majority of this court refused to permit a full hearing in the trial court on the issue of the constitutionality of electrocution as a means of execution under contemporary circumstances. Instead, the majority opted to limit any inquiry to the question of whether state officials could avoid a repeat of the botched Pedro Medina execution, an issue that serves as only a small part of the larger constitutional puzzle as to the continuing constitutional validity of electrocution. The limitation on the trial court hearing virtually assured the outcome announced by the majority today.... "

"Finally, of course, it is worth acknowledging in a positive way that, indeed, almost every jurisdiction that once embraced the electric chair has since abandoned it, and there is every reason to believe, as evidenced by the work of the Corrections Commission, that this tiny step to advance civilization will also be taken in Florida. Surely, our evolving standards of decency should compel us to join with those states that have rejected the use of the now antiquated electric chair."

In a special legislative session in January 2000, Florida did just that, replacing the electric chair with lethal injection.

Several cases written by Anstead exemplify his scholarship and intelligence in creating a clear road map of how he reaches his opinions, woven with a detailed historical perspective:

Haines City Community Development v. Heggs, 658 So. 2d 523 (Fla. 1995), is an often cited decision that provides a historical perspective on the use of the common law writ of certiorari in Florida, defining the cert standard that district courts of appeal and circuit courts of appeal must follow and rely on in exercising their power to review writs.

In his Fourth DCA opinion approved by the Supreme Court, Anstead untangled a web of conflicting sentencing statutes--the discretion of a trial judge to suspend a sentence and spare a defendant a criminal record, the sentencing guidelines, and minimum mandatory sentences--in State of Florida v. John McKendry, 614 So. 2d 1158 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993).

Anstead's opinion: The mandatory minimum sentence, provided for in the sentencing guidelines, must trump a judge's discretion, even if it doesn't seem fair in a particular case.

"While we sympathize with the plight of a trial judge who believes the mandatory sentence to be too harsh under the circumstances of a particular case, we are constitutionally bound to apply the punishment philosophy adopted by the legislature regardless of our opinion as to whether it makes good sense," Anstead wrote.

Clashing sentencing statutes created such a conundrum that Anstead certified this as a question of great public importance to the Supreme Court: "Do the provisions of Section 948.01, Florida Statutes (1989), authorize the imposition of a sentence other than as provided in section 790.221 (2), Florida Statutes (1989)?"

In McKendry v. State of Florida, 641 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 1994), the Supreme Court answered in the negative, approved Anstead's 4th DCA decision, and agreed that the legislature acted within its constitutional authority.

McKendry, who had never been in serious trouble, testified he didn't know it was against the law when he cut off the barrel of his father's shotgun because it was bent, and fired it in his own backyard. He was tried and convicted of possession of a short-barreled shotgun, a second-degree felony. The recommended guidelines sentence ranged from community control or 12 to 30 months in prison. However, section 790.221 (2), Florida Statutes calls for a five-year minimum mandatory sentence.

Adding to the confusion, section 948.01, on the books in one form or another since 1941, gives discretion to trial judges to withhold sentencing, and place a defendant on probation to spare him a criminal record.

Because the defendant's record and facts of the case didn't justify prison, the trial court suspended McKendry's sentence with credit for time served and ordered that he be placed on community control for one year followed by three years' probation.

The state appealed.

In his opinion, Anstead concluded: "There is a clearly a tension, if not a conflict between section 948.01 and sentencing guidelines, as well as the provisions for minimum mandatory sentences contained in various other statutes. The discretionary application of section 948.01, in all cases, without consideration of the guidelines, would negate the complex and comprehensive provisions of the sentencing guidelines and their underlying policy to standardize sentencing throughout the state.... "

"We conclude that the only way that section 948.01 can be reconciled with the sentencing guidelines is to limit application to those situations where the guidelines themselves permit a suspended sentence."

Anstead also noted that the guidelines specifically provide in Rule 3.701(d)(9) for the enforcement of minimum mandatory sentences.

When the case hit the high court, it sparked debate about the wisdom of replacing judicial discretion with mandatory sentences.

Another example of one of many of Anstead's opinions while serving on the Fourth District Court of Appeal later adopted by the Florida Supreme Court is Mozo v. State, 632 So. 2d 623 (Fla. 4th DCA 1994).

Plantation Police Department officers had purchased an electronic scanning device from Radio Shack and were randomly monitoring telephone calls at an apartment complex, hoping to come across illegal activity.

Without a warrant, they intercepted drug-dealing conversations.

The issue was a new one for the court and had not been addressed by either the U.S. Supreme Court or the Florida Supreme Court: Should privacy protections accorded traditional telephones be extended to cordless telephones used in the privacy of one's home?

Anstead reversed the convictions and remanded the case back to the trial court, saying the officers' conduct violated Article 1, Sections 12 and 23 of the Florida Constitution.

"Florida has chosen to explicitly protect the private communication of its citizens from unreasonable government intrusion by not one, but two, express and forceful provisions in its constitution. We apply those provisions today to private telephone conversations in the home, whether they be wire or cordless," Anstead wrote.

The Florida Supreme Court approved that decision at 655 So. 2d 1115 (Fla. 1995). But Justice Charles Wells wrote in the opinion that such wireless phone conversations are also protected under Florida's Security and Communications Act, ES. Ch. 934 (1989).

Finally, in a more recent case, Gary Herzfeld v. Frank Herzfeld, 781 So. 2d 1070 (Fla. 2001), Anstead held that the parental immunity doctrine did not apply to intentional sexual abuse.

A 16-year-old son, a former foster child, sued his adoptive father for intentional torts stemming from sexual abuse. The trial court dismissed the first three counts, on the ground that intentional tort claims are barred by parental immunity. After finding out the father's insurance policy did not cover the fourth count--a negligence claim--the trial judge granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment on that count, too.

"We agree with the district court that the fear of disrupting the fabric and nucleus of families by allowing actions based upon intentional sexual abuse simply appears to be without merit," Anstead wrote.

"If indeed the principal reason for the parental immunity doctrine is to preserve family harmony, then it appears that the immunity can have no justification in such cases of intentional and malicious sexual abuse, for in those cases the inescapable conclusion is that the family fabric has already been tragically disrupted by the serious misconduct alleged.

"We agree that the mere additional stress of a lawsuit in such circumstances is insufficient reason by itself to bar a claim for that misconduct."

Jan Pudlow is an associate editor with The Florida Bar News.