10/07/2026
⚖️ LET’S TALK ABOUT REPRESENTATION IN MIAMI-DADE’S COURTS
Recently, a well-known attorney Roderick Vereen who has practiced criminal law in Miami-Dade for decades brought something to my attention that made me stop and do some research of my own: Black male representation on our Criminal Circuit Court bench.
Here are some facts worth knowing:
⚖️ The Eleventh Judicial Circuit, which serves Miami-Dade County, currently has 123 Circuit and County Court judges — 80 Circuit judges and 43 County judges.
⚖️ A comprehensive demographic analysis of the Miami-Dade judiciary found that, among the 121 judges studied:
• 55.4% were Hispanic
• 35.5% were White
• 9.1% were Black
When race and gender were combined, Black men represented only 4.1% of the judiciary — compared with 8.6% of Miami-Dade’s general population in that study.
Now consider who comes through our criminal justice system as Rod pointed out to me.
A major ACLU of Florida study examining approximately 200,000 Miami-Dade criminal defendants found:
• 38% Black, non-Hispanic
• 8% Black, Hispanic
• 35% White, Hispanic
• 19% White, non-Hispanic
In other words, Black and Hispanic defendants make up a substantial share of the people moving through Miami-Dade’s criminal justice system.
And this is important:
The current Eleventh Judicial Circuit directory identifies judges and their court assignments, but it does not identify judges by race or ethnicity.
Therefore, although an experienced attorney familiar with the bench has raised the absence of a Black male judge in the Criminal Circuit Division,
I am continuing to seek official confirmation before presenting “zero” as an official court statistic.
This conversation is not about suggesting that a judge must be the same race as the person standing before them.
It is about asking whether an institution as important as our justice system should reflect the diversity of the community it serves.
Arthur Marty McNeil for Judge candidacy has caused me to look much more closely at this issue.
Marty has spent years inside our criminal court system as a Miami-Dade Assistant Public Defender — trying cases, representing people who could not afford private counsel, training attorneys and supervising lawyers.
Whatever your perspective, judicial representation is a conversation worth having.
⚖️ Knowledge matters. Representation matters. Justice matters.
