****At the time he agreed to represent Joe Blake in his case against Public Storage, George Garcia himself had already shot and killed a man. During a home-invasion robbery of his uncle's house in 1994, Garcia shot two intruders, killing one of them. Miami police deemed the shooting justified, and no charges were filed against Garcia.
The cranky old lawyer-hater and the attorney unafraid to defend himself with lethal force quickly found themselves at loggerheads. After a particularly frustrating court date on January 23, 1996, Blake hopped in his beat-up 1986 Cadillac Cimarron and followed Garcia back to his office. When he got there, he says, he told Garcia he was firing him and demanded that Garcia return his case file.
Garcia's office is a tiny, two-room affair, including a small reception area. Blake says he hovered over Garcia for some 40 minutes, moving between the two rooms as Garcia worked on other things without giving Blake the file. Finally, Blake says, he confronted the younger man in his office. Garcia was behind his desk, Blake in front of it. "I pounded the desk and said, 'Damn it, George, I want my goddamn file and I want it now.'"
Garcia then reached into his desk drawer and pulled out not Blake's file but the Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol for which he had a concealed-weapon permit. It was loaded. Glocks do not have a safety.
Blake claims Garcia pointed the gun at him and ordered him out of the office. "I said, 'Go ahead and shoot, George, but I'm not leaving without my file,'" Blake recalls. Garcia then put the gun back in the drawer, gathered up Blake's file, and gave it to him. Blake says he went to a nearby gas station, took a good twenty minutes to calm himself down, then called Miami police.
Two patrol officers accompanied Blake back to Garcia's office and called for a detective. According to the cops' sworn depositions in the case, Garcia admitted pulling out the gun and said he felt threatened by Blake. "No matter how nasty he can get, you can see [Blake] is a feeble old man who has a lot of health problems," patrolman Brendan Monroe stated in his deposition. "There's no way a young, vital male is going to be threatened by him."
Garcia also denied pointing the gun directly at Blake. Even so, the officers and the detective (ironically, a detective who had worked on the home-invasion homicide case in which Garcia had been cleared a year before) reached the same conclusion: It still sounded like aggravated assault. They arrested Garcia. Blake has not seen his former attorney since that day. But two months after the aggravated assault charge was filed, the case took a turn for the weird.
During those two months, Garcia's attorney worked feverishly to get the charges dropped, or at least reduced to a misdemeanor. By March 1996 it was clear that the State Attorney's Office was ready to proceed.
On March 25 Garcia called police to complain that a client of his, a homeless crack addict named Rafael Hernandez Palacios, had assaulted him in his office and was trying to extort money from him. He told police where to find Hernandez.
Hernandez told police a different story: Garcia had given him $400, telling him to hire someone to kill "the old man." In a 330-page deposition, Hernandez said the same thing, that Garcia had talked to him about the aggravated assault charge Blake had filed. "If his case was not dropped, something must be done to that man," Hernandez stated. "He began to tell me it was an elderly person, that he was about 80 years old, and that person had charged him with something, and that he did not want to lose his license [to practice law]."
Hernandez goes on to say that Garcia was hoping the assault charge would go away because of Blake's criminal record: "But if the case were not dropped, he needed my help. I asked him what kind of help. He said, 'Any kind of help. I don't care if I have to kill him, as long as I do not lose my license.'"
Police looked up the pending assault charge against Garcia. Particularly telling was that Hernandez, who lived on the streets of downtown Miami, knew where Blake lived in North Miami -- though he didn't know Blake's name. (Garcia later told police that Hernandez must have seen Blake's case file in his office.) In his deposition, Hernandez maintains that he never intended to kill "the old man" or to hire anyone to do it. He just pocketed the money Garcia gave him and spent it, mostly on crack.
The police found Hernandez's statements convincing enough to arrest Garcia for solicitation of first-degree murder. The State Attorney's Office is still pressing that charge, along with the aggravated assault. Because the alleged assault involved a firearm, that charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of three years in prison. The maximum sentence for the solicitation charge is also three years. ***
miaminewtimes.com
This lawyer was truly brain dead. BTW, he ended up getting 7 years probation with adjudication withheld. The judge that presided over the case was also brain dead. Anyway, yes there are strippers who are as dumb as ROCKS. And, there are lawyers that are as dumb as ROCKS.
The sentenced lawyer was complaining to his defense lawyer about being "forced" to give $1,500 to some disabled childrens charity. That $1,500 "donation" was repeatedly praised to high heaven by the presiding judge, which was the whole point of the "donation." Also, though the New Times doesn't mention it, I believe the sentenced lawyer also killed--gunned down--a second man in Ohio a few years before he killing--gunning down--a man in Coral Gables . . .