Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday closed the book on a drawn out legal saga pitting the Florida Supreme Court against an errant circuit judge.
On Thursday, Scott appointed assistant state attorney Wayne Wooten to become a circuit judge in the Ninth Circuit, which encompasses Orange and Osceola counties.
“For the past 17 years, Wayne has focused on serving the people of the Ninth Circuit with integrity, and I am confident he will continue to do so from the bench,” Governor Scott said in a statement. “He has demonstrated a commitment to upholding the law and refraining from allowing his personal beliefs and preferences to influence his legal judgment.”
Scott’s appointment was not overly unusual, except for the reason why he had to appoint a judge in the first place.
Wooten replaces Judge N. James Turner, who lost his $142,000 a year job last fall after the state’s highest court removed the then 65-year-old jurist from the bench. The court ruled that Turner had violated several judicial canons, including serving as his mother’s lawyer and making unwanted advances to a judicial assistant who wound up trying to hide from him in the Osceola County Courthouse.
The panel called into review the case found nothing romantic or sexual in Turner’s advances, saying they were instead the actions of a lonely man.
