Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 Source: Tampa Tribune (FL) Copyright: 2003, The Tribune Co. Contact: http://tampatrib.com/opinion/lettertotheeditor.htm Website: http://www.tampatrib.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/446 Note: Limit LTEs to 150 words Author: Joshua B. Good Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts) JUDGE'S CASES OF COMPASSION TOUCHED MANY TAMPA -- Once on a deep-sea fishing trip, Don Evans smoked marijuana with some friends. That was years before Evans became the drug court judge in Hillsborough County. Just retired, Evans, 63, jokes that unlike former President Clinton, he admits he inhaled. He quickly adds that he was in international waters during his one-time marijuana experiment. It's a telling revelation from the judge who successfully ran the drug division in Hillsborough Circuit Court for eight years before retiring January 13. Evans wasn't known as a holier-than-thou type of judge during his nearly 21 years on the bench, where he handled civil, family, and criminal cases before establishing the drug court and its focus on rehabilitation. Evans said the drug court was the highlight of his legal career. Before he graduated from the University of Florida law school, Evans was a probation officer. Some of the training and experience , notably understanding that even good people make mistakes, later helped him in drug court. "There are a lot of decent people who become addicts. They're not necessarily dangerous people. Their criminal behavior is related to their addiction," Evans said. "It would be wrong not to give them an opportunity." Evans also offered repeated opportunities to Michael L. Jones, a former criminal defense lawyer who lost his job, his family and his home because of cocaine use. Evans also offered repeated opportunities to Raymond Scott Norman, a serial bank robber nicknamed the "Crowbar Bandit." Jones and Norman illustrate in the extreme the effects of Evans' leniency. Jones was a successful Tampa criminal defense lawyer who gained local fame in the 1980s. In 1985, he persuaded Evans to drop a second-degree murder conviction for Tyrone Oliver, who was 15 at the time and convicted with two adult men for an Ybor City robbery and murder. Oliver wasn't present during the slaying of the victim, Orlando Arbalaez. After Evans dismissed Oliver's conviction, Jones continued his practice, but at some point slipped into a cocaine habit. In 1993, because of problems related to his drug use, he quit his $100,00-a-year practice and resigned from the Florida Bar Association. In 1995, he stood before Evans again, this time as a defendant for cocaine possession. Jones said he didn't believe he had a problem. He said "Yes, sir," during appropriate moments when the judge lectured, then did what he wanted outside the courtroom. Jones returned to Evans' courtroom as a defendant numerous times, many for violating his probation. But Evans stuck by Jones, including the time he sentenced Jones to three months in jail for violating probation. It was the beginning of Jones' recovery. When he got out, he spent five months in the Drug Abuse Comprehensive Coordination Office, then another six months at the Center for Rational Living, both Tampa drug rehabilitation centers Jones is married now and attends Alcohol Anonymous meetings three times a week. He works as a legal researcher for a Tampa law firm. Since October 2001, he has been taking random drug tests and all have been clean, Jones said. He recently retook and passed the Bar exam and hopes to become a lawyer again soon. Evans "did more than help me turn my life around. He saved my life," Jones said. In 2001, Norman came before Evans on a cocaine possession charge. Like Jones, Evans gave Norman a break. But Norman was a first-rate con man. He had conned his family, girlfriend and authorities into believing he ran a roofing company. In reality, his full-time job was casing and robbing banks. In three years, he robbed 30 banks and spent the estimated $500,000 he netted in the heists on drugs, booze and bills. On the day he was arrested for the bank robberies last year, he was supposed to appear before Evans in one of many routine follow-up court hearings about Norman's drug use. Prosecutors had pushed for prison time on Norman's cocaine possession charge, but Evans believed Norman would respond to drug treatment and ordered Norman to enter the Center for Rational Living, said Darrell Dirks, who supervises prosecutions in Hillsborough's drug court. Dirks said Evans didn't know anything about Norman's secret life as a bank robber, and no one else knew until Norman was arrested at his final bank robbery and confessed to police and media. Still, Norman's case was one of many in which Evans believed in rehabilitation when prosecutors believed prison was the only option. Still, Dirks said he respected how dedicated Evans was to the drug court, which sometimes started at 7:30 a.m. and recessed 12 hours later. Today, Evans works part time for the Florida Mental Health Institute at the University of South Florida and plans to do legal mediation work. When he is not at his new job, he and his wife, Bab, enjoy time at their cabin in North Carolina. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager