Judge Jeri B. Cohen: Love Child of Janet Reno and Doris Meissner

We know she doesn't play by the rules. We know that she doesn't measure her words. We know she can be vitriolic. We know she has a penchant for making outrageous statements that shock people not by their candor but their lack of candor. We know that she is auditioning every day for Judge Judy's job. We know that she is an inveterate racist who doesn't even attempt to hide her bias but showcases it in her courtroom every day, taking the gamble that those who disagree with her will not notice and those who agree will. We know that her racism is not casual and reflexive but calculated and calculating. We know that she has higher aspirations and would mow down anyone who might stand in her way, including a helpless child whose life is at her mercy. We know her because we know her type and we have seen what her type can do in Janet Reno and Doris Meissner. We know her, finally, by her words and her actions. We know all there is to know about Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen and never had any doubt of her intentions in respect to the 4-year-old refugee girls whose wretched father, acting as proxy for the Castro regime, wishes her returned to the tender mercies of that system to be raised as an automaton and plaything of its capos.

What does surprise us, however, is that she would reveal her verdict before the conclusion of the trial. That is a special flavor of jurisprudence, a flavor not often encountered but more common than is supposed. Many, if not most, judges make up their minds about a case before it is ever heard: the defense or prosecution has a chance to sway the judge to their side, granted, but not much of a chance. Judges, the least accountable of public officials and the ones held in highest public esteem, usually labor under the apprehension that their judgment is infallible and preen themselves on being able to arrive at it with all deliberate speed, almost instinctively. The trial is just an afterthought which most would agree could be dispensed with except for the appearance of injustice that doing so would create. The thing itself, justice itself, has already been dispensed with it. Only the play remains. Most judges are content to read their lines and hit all the marks on the stage. Not Judge Cohen. In a previous case of judicial malfeasance she told a Cuban defendant, in the middle of his trial, that if all Cubans (not Cuban criminals, but Cubans) were deported back to the island there would be no crime in this country. Imagine if she had directed her comments at blacks or any other minority in this country (except possibly Arabs) what the reaction would have been. But since it was Cubans that she was impugning, it was OK. Having learned nothing from her past misconduct -- and why should she have learned, since she was not removed, sanctioned or even reproved for it? -- she has seen fit to repeat it again.

The Miami Herald has revealed that Judge Cohen has already announced her verdict to the Department of Children and Families and the child's guardian ad litem. Short of a miracle (that is, of the possibility of changing her mind), she is determined to give custody to the father. No matter that the biological father abandoned the child in Cuba. No matter that by doing so he was complicit in the insane mother's abuse of her. No matter that the father signed a document relinquishing his parental rights before allowing the mother to take the child to the U.S., knowing that the pattern of abuse established in Cuba would likely be continued here, and, frankly, not caring one bit. No matter that this father never attempted to help his daughter in any way. No matter that he never sent her a birthday card or even wrote a letter inquiring about her. No matter that his interest in the child was only awakened when the Castro regime ordered him to claim his parental rights in the United States, rights which, incidentally, don't exist in Castro's Cuba, where the State is the sole legal guardian of every child and its authority cannot be challenged by the parents.

What Judge Cohen intends to do to this nameless child is separate her from the only real family she has ever known and assign her custody to a stranger and his even stranger handlers in Cuba. The Coral Gables family that has already adopted her 12-year half-brother and has been taking care of her since she was removed from the abusive custody of her mother is her only family. To deprive her of their love and protection would be a crime against Nature which no biological fact could justify.

The Department of Children and Families announced last week that it was considering calling her 13-year-old brother to testify at her custody trial. Why do they even have to consider it? This boy has been his sister's protector from the day she was born, who shielded her from the mother's abuse and took the place of her absent father. His testimony is the only relevant first-hand testimony in this case besides the girl's, whose opinion is discounted because of her age, as if a child could be old enough to be lashed but not old enough to have an opinion about it.

This case, in Judge Cohen's opinion, has reached a "crisis situation." Why? In her own words: "This child is extremely bonded [with her foster family]. She is digging in. She says, 'I am not going.' She says [to her father], 'You are my friend, but you are not my father.'" In other words, at age 4, this child already has the cognitive abilities which the judge deciding her case doesn't.

With a well-meaning but highly incompetent state agency championing her cause and a none-too-well-meaning judge to decide it, the child's only hope is in a future reversal by an Appellate Court of Judge Jeri B. Cohen's forthcoming prepackaged decision.