The Florida Keys legal community got fired up on Friday, when local attorneys learned Joseph Mansfield, a prosecutor in the Monroe County State Attorney’s Office, was listed as, “ineligible to practice law in Florida,” on The Florida Bar’s website.
The site showed that Mansfield was “delinquent” in completing a test that is part of the state’s continuing education requirements for all Florida lawyers.
The Keys Weekly contacted State Attorney Dennis Ward and asked if that ineligibility could impact any court filings or motions that Mansfield had filed while he was ineligible.
“People could challenge them, but I don’t think those challenges would go anywhere,” said Ward, who called the Keys Weekly back a short time later to report that Mansfield had requested and received a six-month deferment for the education requirement, and the situation had been cleared up.
“It’s been resolved. He got a six-month deferment. It’s not going to have an impact on anything,” Ward said, adding that Mansfield had been a judge in Florida until two or three years ago. “When he left the bench and reentered The Florida Bar to practice law again, he had to retake that skills test.”
A phone call to The Florida Bar on Friday, Aug. 18 confirmed that Mansfield had “gone delinquent” on Aug. 15 and thus was “ineligible to practice law in Florida” from Aug. 15 to Aug. 18.
An hour later, on Friday afternoon, Mansfield’s status had been updated to “member in good standing,” according to The Florida Bar’s website.
That short time frame of ineligibility came as a relief to many in the Key West and Lower Keys community, who have been closely following a murder case that Mansfield is prosecuting.
Lloyd Preston Brewer faces felony murder charges after he fatally shot 21-year-old Key Wester Garrett Hughes on Feb. 13 in the parking lot of a local bar.
That trial is currently scheduled to start Nov. 6, but Ward told the Keys Weekly on Friday that it will almost certainly be delayed.
The temporary delinquency also comes at a time when the Florida Legislature has empaneled a committee of judicial experts to explore the possibility of consolidating the state’s judicial circuits. Monroe County attorneys oppose consolidation that could combine the Florida Keys’ 16th Judicial Circuit with Miami’s much larger 11th Judicial Circuit.
