Opposing attorneys fifile contempt motions in jailhouse snitch case
WEST PALM BEACH — A legal battle that had pitted The Palm Beach Post’s First Amendment rights against a jail inmate’s right to privacy has morphed into a fifight between two defense attorneys who each argue that the other should be jailed — or at least sanctioned — on contempt charges.
Attorney Valerie Masters, who represents notorious jail- house snitch Frederick Cobia, asked Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox on Friday to hold Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey in contempt for allegedly violating his Dec. 1 order that prevented The Post or anyone else from publishing transcripts of phone conversations her client had while in jail.
Meanwhile, Ramsey, who represents murder suspect Jamal Smith and is trying to keep Cobia from testifying against her client, has asked Cox to hold Masters and Assistant State Attorney Andrew
Slater in contempt, claiming they let Cobia lie when she interviewed the career criminal in preparation for Smith’s upcoming trial.
Cox has not scheduled a hearing on either request.
The judge on Monday did deny Ramsey’s request to recuse himself from Smith’s case. In his order banning the publication of Cobia’s phonecall transcripts, Ramsey had claimed Cox made disparaging comments about her. The remarks make it unlikely that Smith will get a fair trial if he presides over the case, Ramsey had claimed.
The dueling contempt motions come as The Post, joined by Ramsey’s boss, Public Defender Carey Haughwout, are awaiting a decision from the 4th District Court of Appeal. Both have asked the West Palm Beach-based appeals court to overturn Cox’s Dec. 1 decision. Newspaper attorneys call it an unprecedented attack on press freedoms.
Masters persuaded Cox to force The Post to remove the transcripts of Cobia’s conversations from its website and to excise quotes that were used in a story published in October. Siding with her, he ruled that the publishing of the transcripts of Cobia’s phone calls vio- Read Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey’s motion, lated Cobia’s right to privacy. As part of that order, Cox also prohibited anyone from publishing the transcripts and ordered copies that Ramsey had put in Smith’s court file to be sealed from public view.
In her motion Friday, Masters claims Ramsey violated that order by filing a transcript of a deposition she took of Cobia on Oct. 5. In that deposition, Masters claims, are references to transcripts of the recorded phone calls.
“Ms. Ramsey violated the court’s order by filing this pleading in the court file without taking the necessary steps to protect this pleading as required by the Florida Rule of Judicial Administration ... and this court’s order,” she wrote. While Masters claims the deposition is “available to the public for viewing,” a check of the records by The Post found them sealed in accordance with Cox’s order.
For her part, Ramsey claims Masters and Slater repeatedly allowed Cobia to lie when she deposed him. She is asking that both “be sanctioned with contempt citations and ordered to bear the cost of the Public Defender’s investigation.” She claims both knew that the correct information was critical to her efforts to destroy Cobia’s credibility when he testifies against Smith, and that they were obligated to provide it to her.
The convoluted case began when Masters learned The Post was going to publish a story about the State Attorney’s Office’s repeated reliance on Cobia’s testimony in murder cases and allegations that he has gotten special treatment in return. Once listed as a prosecution witness in 23 cases, he has testified in two murder trials and is scheduled to testify in three more, including Smith’s.
Originally charged with first-degree murder and facing the death penalty for the 2009 shooting death of 57-year-old South Bay resident Desmond Dunkley, Cobia was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder. In jailhouse conversations, he has bragged that he has provided detectives with information on more than 60 cases. He claims he is kept in a private cell with a flat-screen TV, and he expects to get far less than the 25-year sentence he faces for Dunkley’s murder.