It isn’t a surprise: Circuit Judge Terence Perkins had said openly during a hearing recess in 2022 that he would be retiring in 2024. He’d even started a 600-day countdown clock. It must’ve lost power a few times, because it had been set for last January, raising some hopes that the judge had–as many around him wished–changed his mind.
But today, the inevitable was made official, dashing hopes and deflating spirits across the Seventh Judicial Circuit: the 68-year-old judge will retire on Sept. 30, six years after taking over a bench that couldn’t keep a judge for more than a couple of years. He’d been the sixth judge serving on Flagler’s felony bench in eight years. Always a workhorse, he added the civil docket to his duties. And he made a pledge at the time. He said he intended to serve in Flagler until his retirement.
He stuck to the pledge, and became the longest-serving judge in that spot since the retirement of Kim Hammond, the late judge for whom the courthouse is named. Perkins had followed Judges Hammond, Raul Zambrano, J. David Walsh, Matthew Foxman and Dennis Craig. But for the carving in the granit facade of the building along State Road 100 in Bunnell, it had become Perkins’s courthouse: becalmed and respected after a brief period of turmoil just before Perkins’s arrival, largely due to a civil court judge who was eventually ousted by the Supreme Court for misconduct.
Flagler’s bench hasn’t lacked for forceful, distinctive and increasingly distinguished judges: Circuit Judge Chris France presides over family court and part of the rest of the civil docket. Judges Melissa Distler and Andrea Totten preside over County Court.
Their reaction to the retirement would likely find an echo in State Attorney R.J. Larizza’s. “I worked closely with Judge Perkins when he was the Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit,” Larizza said today. “I found him to be generous, honest and gracious. We became friends. Judge Perkins epitomizes the highest qualities and character of our best and brightest Jurists. He is kind, considerate and caring. He dignifies the bench with humility and grace. While he is intellectually gifted, he is never condescending or smug. He has the ability to communicate and connect personally with all the folks who appear in his Courtroom. He is a rare gem amongst a formidable group and I will miss him greatly.”
Perkins has a judicial temperament from central casting, a sparkling intelligence free of presumption and–often to lawyer’s relief or exasperation–a trenchant ability to synthesize legal precedents and concepts. Lawyers arguing before him quickly learn the futility of attempting to outsmart him, though he prizes sound challenges and well-prepared arguments. They also know that they can depend on one of the most learned and punctilious minds in the circuit: he is an obsessive note-taker and researcher.
Beyond all that, he’s had a knack for innovations–the paperless system he ushered in as chief judge, and in Flagler, one of the most advanced and continuing live-video systems in the state, enabling broader access to the court. He advocated for modernization as a member of the Florida Court Technology Commission. As the senior judge in Flagler, he applies a light hand, prizing decorum and civility but not rules for the sake of rules. His bailiffs learned to reflect his temperament, and families and friends of victims or the accused are always treated with equal respect and understanding, if also with Perkins’s understated ability to control his courtroom: before or during tense trials, he would typically approach the families and gently, forcefully caution them, with deft pre-emptive skill, that they were not attending a contest, and that there never are winners and losers in these proceedings.
There was the occasional rebel. One defendant given permission to have his sentencing delayed so he could get his affairs in order, on bail, still left the courtroom last fall in a huff and spat in the elevator, unaware that video surveillance was on. Perkins was not pleased, especially since the defendant followed that up with new crimes and a new arrest on 12 additional charges. What had been a negotiated 30-month prison sentence turned into a 10-year sentence. (See: “It’s Not a Good Idea to Spit at the Court Ahead of Your Sentencing. Dacotah Clarke Now Faces Up to 17.5 Years.”)
“We’re all wondering what our work lives will be like without having him around to share his insights and wisdom,” Leah Case, Chief Judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit was quoted as saying in a release issued by the circuit this afternoon. “I know he has a variety of personal pursuits on which he can now focus his attention, but we’ll all miss him a great deal. The Seventh Judicial Circuit and its citizens are losing a dedicated jurist who gave each case the individual attention it deserved and was always willing to take time to advise and counsel his fellow judges. I hope he’ll consider returning as a senior judge.”
It will be up to the chief judge to name a replacement to the Flagler bench from within the judges in the Seventh Judicial Circuit, which includes Flagler, St. Johns, Volusia and Putnam. It could be France. It could be someone else. There are 27 circuit judges, any of whom could be rotated into any court in the district, and 17 county judges.
But the vacancy the retirement creates in the circuit will be filled by gubernatorial appointment, following the nominating process conducted by the circuit’s Judicial Nominating Commission–a more rigorously political than analytical process since the commissions were stripped of their independence by former Gov. Jeb Bush and turned into little more than gubernatorial vassals.
The release from the circuit summarized Perkins’s history: An undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida, admittance to the Florida Bar in 1981, and a 30-year career in private practice with Monaco, Smith, Hood, Perkins, Orfinger, and Stout before a gubernatorial appointment as Circuit Judge in 2010. (The release doesn’t name the governor: Charlie Crist.) He was subsequently elected in 2012 and reelected in 2018 without opposition. Perkins served in the Civil and Felony divisions in Volusia before moving to Flagler, where he has also been presiding over Drug Court every Thursday morning. His peers elected him Chief Judge in the circuit from 2013 to 2017.
