After Jury Cleared Him, Lawyer Regains Respectability
BY BUDDY NEVINS
A jury in March cleared Mitchell Kraft of corruption charges in just two hours, ending his five-year nightmare stemming from wife Stephanie Kraft’s role on the Broward School Board.
On Wednesday the Coral Springs Commission is expected to hand back respectability to Mitchell Kraft.
Kraft is one of four lawyers who the commission is scheduled to hire as code enforcement special magistrates. The others are long-time government lawyers Eugene Seinfeld, Richard Doody and Alan Gabriel.
Special magistrates preside over code enforcement hearings. They get $150-an-hour.
To some that might sound like a decent paycheck, but Kraft and the others aren’t getting rich from Coral Springs. The city has budgeted only $25,000 for the four special magistrates.
But for Kraft, it’s not the money. The real value to Kraft is reacceptance…especially because it is happening in his hometown. And it has been along time coming.
Once the Tamarac City Attorney, Mitchell Kraft’s life was left in ruins over a period of five years by prosecutors and carefully orchestrated leaks to the media. He was a code enforcement magistrate in six cities and lost all those jobs during the investigation.
Prosecutors alleged that Kraft used the influence of his School Board member wife Stephanie Kraft to bend the law for corrupt developers. Jurors found Kraft innocent in record time.
Those found innocent should be accepted back into society…in Kraft’s case, back into Broward’s city halls. That’s the American way.
So Kraft’s hiring is a good thing.
August 18th, 2015 at 7:35 pm
Bob Norman kept writing Mitch Kraft was a crook. Just another one he got wrong. I pray someday somebody ruins his life the way he has ruined others.
August 18th, 2015 at 9:09 pm
Bob Norman has done an awesome job at New Times as the Muckraker-In-Chief of Broward County. Sadly, Florida’s laws against corrupt behavior are much too weak, and Mike Satz’s Public Corruption Unit much too incompetent, to justify any reasonable expectation of successful prosecution of corrupt political figures in Broward County by anyone other than the feds.
Nobody can seriously contend that the near-zero rate of convictions produced by Satz’s gang of clowns reflects any kind of near-zero rate of corruption among Broward County politicians.
Shame on Buddy for failing to recognize the profound difference between respectability and not having a rap sheet. Bouquets to Bob Norman for working tirelessly to teach us that difference!
FROM BUDDY:
First of all, I didn’t make any comment about Bob Norman. A reader did.
Second of all, Norman is no longer at the New Times. He works for Channel 10. Some journalists and newsmakers contend Norman has made unproven allegations at Channel 10 that the station had to back off.
Third, Norman working for a free newspaper had to produce a lot of heat to gain attention for himself and the initially little-read New Times. (I worked at the Sun-Sentinel. I didn’t have to do that having a section front column in the largest media outlet in Broward. In addition, the journalistic ethics which governed the Sun-Sentinel at the time would have forbid many of the stories Norman produced due to their one-side nature and lack of documentation.) He succeeded enough to hook himself a television job.
Fourth, stories based on one-sided allegations from the prosecutors, who themselves heard the tales from convicted dirty developers, are worthless. The proof is in the courtroom and prosecutors have failed to prove to the satisfaction of a jury almost every allegation stemming from the investigation of the Chaits, the corrupt developers. This despite that various studies have found jurors are heavily inclined to vote with the prosecution.
Fifth, Norman’s New Times stories reminded me of the infamous coverage of the Sam Shepard case in Cleveland (The basis of the “Fugitive” TV and movie). The Supreme Court eventually overturned his conviction for killing his wife based on newspaper prejudice. Cited was The Cleveland Press, one of the largest Cleveland newspapers, which ran front-page banner headlines screaming “Quit Stalling – Bring him in” before Shepard’s arrest. The Cleveland Press appointed themselves judge and jury and I believe that many of Norman’s stories the New Times attempted to accomplish the same goal.
I’m not going to use Browardbeat.com to get into a debate about Bob Norman beyond this answer. I couldn’t care less about him. I’m retired, have other concerns in my life and have moved way beyond caring about anything Mr. Norman does or doesn’t do. I wish him luck.
August 19th, 2015 at 3:55 pm
why do you give Chaz Stevens so much coverage? Certainly there are more leaks in his accusations than any real journalist.
August 20th, 2015 at 10:20 am
Him and his wife(Kraft) got lucky. Its that simple. PS. those that are asking where I have been -its a rat race out there and I’m doing the best I can. I take my own advice hang in there, hold on, relax etc(yeah keep telling yourself that Robert…)