Judging Ana

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.

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.

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."

Later that day, well-known defense attorney Fred Haddad, a longtime friend of Cotrone's, contacted New Times in an attempt to dissuade the newspaper from publishing the story. He claimed he was calling of his own volition. "She's one of the good ones," he said of Gardiner. "This is going to cause [Judicial Qualifying Commission] investigations, and nobody needs that."

He didn't deny that his friend was involved in a romance with the judge. Instead, he argued that judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys have been drinking together and having sex with one another for years in Broward County.

"What's the big deal so long as it doesn't affect their decisions?" he asked.

An answer to Haddad's rhetorical question comes in judicial rules, which dictate that judges strictly avoid so much as an appearance that their decisions on the bench might be influenced by personal matters. Judges around the country have resigned, faced investigation, and been publicly reprimanded for as much.

For example, after it was discovered recently that Lee County Judge James R. Adams was romancing a defense attorney who had appeared before him, the state's Supreme Court found that he'd demeaned his office.

"A judge who enters into a romantic relationship with a lawyer who practices before the judge, and then continues to preside over matters in which the lawyer appears as counsel transgresses the Code of Judicial Conduct in both letter and spirit," the court wrote in 2006.

The allegations regarding Cotrone go a step further, however, since taxpayers' money is involved. Gardiner appointed him to many cases prior to 2004, when the state legislature ended the often corrupt practice of judges personally appointing attorneys to represent indigent defendants.

Gardiner has also refused to answer the allegations involving Cotrone, Scheinberg, and Patanzo. But she clearly understands their gravity. After a reporter questioned her about those relationships in her courtroom on April 11, Gardiner hired Bogenschutz to represent her.

Bogenschutz, who defended Gardiner's old friend Ken Jenne in his federal criminal case and dozens of other public officials entangled in the criminal justice system, wrote a letter the same day to New Times, demanding that the newspaper stop asking questions that had caused Gardiner to "retain counsel, expend funds, and to be personally insulted and embarrassed."

The Bogenschutz letter, which was signed by his partner Michael Dutko, also demanded that the newspaper "cease and desist" from contacting the judge.

And Judge Gardiner has remained publicly silent on the issue.