Judging Ana

Alu says that she even told the prosecutor later on the night of the ex parte discussion that she was appalled he would talk about an active case with the judge.

"He told me that if I had a problem with it that it was my obligation to go to the Florida Bar with the complaint," she said.

Alu wasn't a lawyer yet, so she had no such obligation. And she knew how vindictive the power gaggle at the courthouse — of which Gardiner is firmly a part — could be.

For months, she did nothing. But the commissioner says it has bothered her ever since. She only went on record about it with New Times recently, and then only very reluctantly.

"I still believe in the process and the right to a fair trial," she says. "The defendant has a right to know, and the public has a right to know."

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Judge Gardiner's career in Broward politics blossomed in part thanks to her close ties to a titan in the county's justice system: State Attorney Michael Satz.

Satz is a longtime friend of Gardiner's dating back to the days when she was married to William Gardiner, with whom she had a Fort Lauderdale law practice in the early 1990s.

When a slot came open on the highly political North Broward Hospital District in 1993, Satz wrote a recommendation letter on Gardiner's behalf to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles, who appointed her to the post, jump-starting her career in public office.

While serving on that board, Gardiner formed a political alliance with since-disgraced Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne, then a state senator and chief counsel for the public health system.

Both Jenne and Satz, two powerful friends, supported her appointment to the bench in 1998, which was also made by the late Chiles. Jenne, who is now serving prison time on federal corruption charges, participated in her robing ceremony. Born Ana Villaescuesa in Cuba, Gardiner was the first Hispanic female circuit judge in Broward County history. She was 36.

Six months after that appointment, Gardiner, who has two children, divorced her husband and soon became a footnote in one of the more sordid public scandals to hit the courthouse.

Gardiner had long been good friends with fellow Broward Circuit Judge Joyce Julian; both reportedly enjoyed the nightlife. In 2001, the pair flew together to a state judicial convention at a resort on north Florida's Amelia Island, where they shared a room. By 3 a.m. Julian was naked from the waist down in the hotel, trying to thwart security guards and police. Julian told police she had been sexually assaulted by a man in a black leather coat — a story investigators determined was fabricated.

Julian was charged with public intoxication, but the case was dropped after she entered alcohol rehabilitation. Voters turned her out of office in the next election.

Gardiner largely escaped public attention during the scandal, and Julian says she had no role in it. About that same time, a young prosecutor named Peter Patanzo was assigned to her courtroom. And it wasn't long before fellow attorneys were talking about how close they seemed.

"People said you could feel it in the courtroom," says Public Defender Finkelstein. "They said you could tell there was a relationship, but it was nothing articulable."

Finkelstein said he heard complaints from public defenders about it, but because there was no proof of an improper relationship, no action was taken. Patanzo left the State Attorney's Office in 2004, writing to Satz at the time that "due to certain circumstances I have accepted a position in private practice." He now works as a defense attorney in Fort Lauderdale and didn't respond to several detailed attempts to interview him by phone.

It wasn't until 2006 that an assistant public defender, Vivian Gariboldi, tried to file a motion to recuse Gardiner from a case because of the perceived relationship, according to records obtained from the Public Defender's Office.

Gariboldi, who didn't respond to interview requests, had a source with knowledge of a romance between Gardiner and Patanzo, according to internal e-mails at the agency. On November 2, 2006, Finkelstein e-mailed his chief assistants, Diane Cuddihy and Catherine Keuthan, to find out about the status of the affidavit.

"I spoke to Viviane [sic] last week and told her that with simply rumor there was not enough to go forward on this motion," Keuthan wrote back to Finkelstein, "and that even with substantiation there still might not be enough to recuse, so that first she needed to see if she could prove this affair. Therefore, nothing should have been filed at this time."

The episode vividly reveals how the mere perception of a relationship affected Gardiner's courtroom. And that perception can be traced at least back to 2002, when Gardiner made some questionable rulings in Patanzo's favor.

One example is the case of Dario Thomas, an 18-year-old charged in 2001 with two counts of armed robbery in Broward County. Thomas' prosecutor was Patanzo and his defense attorney, ironically, was Cotrone, who was appointed to the case by Gardiner. A source says that at the time Gardiner was dating Patanzo and that Cotrone was aware of it and spoke of it.

When the case went to trial in Gardiner's courtroom in 2003, Patanzo tried to expel a Florida International University professor named Javier Gasana from the jury pool on the grounds that he sat silently in the courtroom through the selection process.

Because Gasana, like the defendant, was black, Cotrone argued that Patanzo was wrongfully trying to exclude an African-American from the jury because he was "silent."

"I don't think that is a race-neutral reason at all," Cotrone remarked at trial. "I mean if you asked him questions, he answered them. I asked him a question, he answered my question. It's not his fault that nobody asked him anything."

Despite that argument, Gardiner ruled in the prosecution's favor, saying that she didn't believe Patanzo's "personal feeling" about Gasana had anything to do with race.

"Based on the court's observation of Gasana's demeanor and based on the fact that it has not been a systematic striking of minorities in the panel by Mr. Patanzo, I do not find it to be a pretext and find it to be a race-neutral reason," she ruled.

Gardiner also allowed Patanzo to admit into evidence six previous robberies allegedly committed the same night in Miami-Dade County. The teenager was convicted of both counts, and Gardiner handed down what seems a particularly harsh sentence: 30 years in state prison.

It didn't stick. The Fourth District Court of Appeals reviewed trial records and found that Gardiner had ruled in Patanzo's favor improperly on both issues. The appellate judges determined that Gasana wasn't silent; on the contrary he answered all questions asked of him.

The court also found that Gardiner improperly admitted the six previous robberies into evidence. The conviction was reversed, and Thomas pleaded the case down to a ten-year sentence, saving him 20 years. He's scheduled to be released in 2010.

Though Gardiner's work in the courtroom had its ups and downs, she managed to keep her personal life out of the news after the Julian incident. Until this past Super Bowl Sunday.

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It happened in a flash. Judge Gardiner's BMW plowed into the back of a new Mercedes Benz on NE 25th Way and sped off.

The accident occurred during a Super Bowl block party in an upscale Fort Lauderdale neighborhood on the Intracoastal. By the time the Mercedes' owner, a woman named My Warhaftig, got to her car, Gardiner had returned to the scene and was sitting silently in her BMW.

It was just before halftime in the Giants-Patriots game on February 3. While Gardiner stayed holed up in her car, a friend of hers, fellow lawyer Howard Friedman, showed up. He lived across the street from where the accident occurred, and Warhaftig says she heard Friedman's explanation of what had likely happened from neighbors.

A former boyfriend of Gardiner's was visiting Friedman's house, she was told, and Gardiner had likely driven by to check up on him. When the boyfriend came out of the house, she likely sped off so as not to be seen, which caused her to collide with Warhaftig's Mercedes.

Fort Lauderdale police charged Gardiner with failure to use due care. The incident was reported in this newspaper and other media outlets, but Gardiner refused to speak publicly about it with anyone, a policy she has maintained with this story.

As has Cotrone.

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When John Cotrone left Gardiner's courtroom on April 11, he was asked about his relationship with the judge. Instead of addressing the issue, he repeatedly warded off the questioner.

"I don't talk to the press," said Cotrone, who was in Gardiner's courtroom that day representing a man named Eric Lucas, who is facing charges of burglary and aggravated battery. "I don't talk about cases and I don't talk about personal matters."