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Justice's Retirement Lets Crist Shape Court

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 18, 2008

Gov. Charlie Crist gets his chance to appoint two more justices to the Florida Supreme Court, with one justice making his retirement official Monday.

Justice Charles T. Wells notified Crist that he will retire effective the close of business March 3.

Conservative Justices Kenneth Bell and Raoul G. Cantero III resigned this year.

Wells' announcement was not unexpected. Judges are required by the Florida Constitution to retire when they turn 70. Under that provision, he and Justice Harry Lee Anstead must resign next year, according to The Associated Press.

"I think it's unprecedented that a governor would have the opportunity to appoint four justices, which would be a majority, within the scope of a year," Tallahassee lawyer Stephen Grimes told The Associated Press after Bell announced his retirement in May.

Wells, an appointee of the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, took office in 1994 and was chief justice during the 2000 presidential election.

According to The Tampa Tribune's Dec. 9, 2000, edition, when the court ordered by a 4-3 vote that an estimated 65,000 Florida ballots be recounted by hand, Wells wrote in a dissenting opinion:

"I have a deep and abiding concern that the prolonging of judicial process in this counting contest propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis ... that will do substantial damage to our country, our state and to this court as an institution."

He also criticized the lack of any uniform standards for determining what constitutes a legal vote under a hand recount and warned it could be struck down in federal courts.

Wells, an Orlando native, received bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Florida and practiced law in Orlando, except for a one-year stint with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington in 1969.

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