Broward County senior Judge Joel Lazarus was recently dismissed from cases he was judge on after a Hot Mic caught him saying “I’ll double the bond to those that take place in my neighborhood.” This came a day after he made his choice on Kodak Black’s case and Yes Kodak does live in the judges neighborhood.
Thats not the only thing the Hot mic caught. It also caught him saying “Closer to my house, the higher the bond. That was always Lazarus’ rule.” The prosecutor replied: “I have no problem with that.”
All this was caught on a Live-stream from the courtroom and it caused a up roar comments. Leading Broward County public defender Howard Finkelstein wrote a letter to Chief Judge Jack Tuter asking that Lazarus be banned from all criminal court matters– Tuter acted on it, saying that the comments were “clearly inappropriate.”
Judge Lazarus has since responded to the comments and does regret them by saying “It was unfortunate. I shouldn’t have said it…There was no action taken on it.”
Hopefully this means free Kodak Black is going to be a real thing real soon!
