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The Honorable Donald W. Hafele As previous mentioned, our investigation of The Malicious Prosecution of David Johnson gave us reasonable suspicion that Judge Hafele might be a case-fixer. We shall elaborate our reasoning in detail in our next article, and entertain the notion that perhaps the judge was simply deceived by a master of deception, purportedly a member of the legal mafia, an ex-con who managed to get his conviction transformed into a virtual acquittal as if it never existed. For now we shall attend to the Internet gossip about Judge Hafele, which is very limited but for a burst of chatter in 2009we would expect to find a lot more if he were a corrupt or incompetent judge. Donald W. Hafele received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Miami in 1979, where he received his law degree in 1982. He then began practicing law with West Palm Beach law firm Wicker Smith. He became a partner at Reid, Price, Hafele & Cameron in 1993, and started his own practice in 1994. He was appointed by Governor Bush to the Palm Beach County Court bench, where he served from 1999 to 2008, when he was appointed to the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court bench by Governor Crist to fill a vacancy due to death. Judge Hafele was a controversial judge in Governor Christs ambitious $2 billion plan presented in 2008 to restore the Everglades missing link by buying all of U.S. Sugars agricultural land there so it could be returned to a more or less pristine state in order to allow water to flow naturally, south from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades. The plan was ultimately whittled down to a $197 million deal with U.S. Sugar in 2010, with an option to buy the remaining acreage. Environmentalists liked the deal, but Tea Party activists described it as a government bailout and sweetheart deal for U.S. Sugar. Gossip referred to the judge as the governors Big Fixer, presumably appointed to the Palm Beach Circuit Court in 2008 by for the express purpose of hearing litigation over the grandiose plan, which was objected to by the Miccosukee Tribe and Florida Chrystals Corporation, U.S. Sugars competitor, because the plan was allegedly conceived to unfairly enrich U.S. Sugar and take funding away from prior restoration plans. Judge Hafele, presiding over a 2009 courtroom examination of Carol Wehle, the South Florida Water Boards executive director, by Florida Crystals attorney Joe Klock, threatened to cite Mr. Klock for contempt if he continued interrupting the witness, who was evasively answering his questions about the estimated value of the land. Courtroom observers figured she of all persons
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