History comes alive: those who were there debate troubling times at the '70s era Supreme Court.

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A living-history moment spontaneously broke out at the Chester Bedell Memorial Foundation and Selig I. Goldin Memorial Award Joint Luncheon at the Annual Convention.

Martin A. Dyckman, a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times, had just concluded his speech about how "independent and competitive journalism" had "salvaged the independence of the Florida judiciary" by fearlessly reporting the corruption and cronyism in the Florida Supreme Court in the early '70s, as detailed in his book, A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in the Florida Judiciary.

After the announcement that Dyckman would take questions from the audience, Robert Ervin, president of The Florida Bar in 1965, rose from his seat to defend his former client and now deceased friend, Hal Dekle.

Dyckman's book details how, during secret proceedings, the Judicial Qualifications Commission had found Justice Dekle to be unethical but couldn't agree on discipline. The JQC then reopened the case against Dekle and urged the court to remove him. In 1975, Dekle resigned from the Supreme Court during a Florida House of Representatives impeachment investigation.

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But Dekle, Ervin defended, "was not convicted of anything. He resigned because of the leaks that came out from the Judicial Qualifications Commission," adding that Dekle's wife was crying during the long ordeal.

"Dekle said, 'I am not going to run. I can't be re-elected because of the publicity I've gotten'.... Mr. Dyckman is an exciting author and writer. He gives a wonderful story on one side of it," said Ervin, who complained he was not interviewed for the book. "He didn't get into why he was getting information from Dick Earle, the chairman of the Judicial Qualifications Commission.... He didn't give a report on why the clerks of the Supreme Court, who were running around and thought they were justices themselves, would tell him all sorts of things of their imagination. There's just a world of other things. I wish Mr. Dyckman, in making future speeches, would use both sides of it."

Moments later, Ervin added that Dekle "was honest enough to pay my fee and he had to borrow the money to do it!"

Then Dexter Douglass, who represented Justice Joe Boyd before the JQC and impeachment hearings, rose from his chair, and said, "I'm going to give a rebuttal. And Bob's got to ride home with me to Tallahassee, too....

"I have no problem whatsoever with Martin's views. I don't...

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