Courthouses where I have tried cases

• Miami State Main
• Miami Federal Dyer Building
• Miami Federal Atkins Building
• Miami Federal King Building
• Miami Bankruptcy Pepper Building
• Miami Federal Ferguson Building
• Fort Lauderdale State
• Fort Lauderdale Federal
• West Palm Beach State Old
• West Palm Beach State New
• West Palm Beach Federal Rogers
• Sarasota State Old
• Tampa Federal Old
• Tampa Federal New
• Orlando Federal Old
• Orlando Federal New
• Taverns State Circuit
• Veto Beach State Old

Courthouses are all different. The list above reflects courthouses where I have actual tried cases. I have been in many others usually for hearings, but sometimes a deposition in a small town will be taken in a courthouse and even in a courtroom. 

The courtrooms withIn courthouses varry from the grand, like the Central courtroom in the Dyer Building in the Soutern District of Florida to the musty like the North courtoom in the same courthouse to the godaful like the elipical courtrooms in the Atkins Building next door. The worst elipical courtroom has been closed. On the third floor of the Broward County Courthouse was a place so perfectly geometrical where whispered conferences at counsel tables might be projected and dropped into the jury box. 

There are four named courthouses in The Miami Division of the Southern District, named respectively for Judges David Dyer, C. Clyde Atkins, James Lawrence King, and Wilkie Ferguson. I knew each of these judges and tried cases before the last three. judge Dyer was on the Court of Appeals by he time I was admitted to the bar, but I argued before him in both the old Fifth Circuit and our present Eleventh Circuit. 

The Wilkie Ferguson courthouse is decent and new. The best courtrooms are in the King Buiding. Full of rich mahogany, I feel like Perry Mason in those courtrooms. 

I worked in the Dyer Building in 1976 and 1977. It's full of mold and asbestos. It's still one of my favorite courthouses. We used to find slaughtered goats around the building when we came to work. Family members on the outside would leave these sacrifices to ward of evil spirits on sentencing day. 

An enhanced picture of the Dyer building.