Circuit Judge Jeff Ashton, elected to the bench in 2018, is fending off challenges in the Aug. 20 election from Orlando attorney Alicia Peyton and Chris Mack, general counsel and director of legal administration in the Osceola County Clerk & Comptroller's Office, as he seeks a second term on the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Group 15.

The Ninth Judicial Circuit, one of Florida’s 20 circuit courts, covers Orange and Osceola counties and handles criminal cases as well as civil disputes that involve more than $50,000. Circuit court judges serve six years and earn $182,060 annually.

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The biggest difference between candidates in this race, Ashton told VoxPopuli in an interview, is experience. And perhaps money.

With 43 years of experience in law behind him, together with 300 trials as an attorney and aa judge, Ashton decided not to raise money from lawyers or run a traditional campaign.

“I've never taken money from lawyers as a judge. Last time I ran, I just funded it myself.”

Ashton’s campaign finances showed only one contribution, a $7,845 loan made by Ashton himself with the expenditure purpose listed as “Filing Fee.”

“My wife and I discussed [it]. I've spent 43 years working in this community,” Ashton said. “I think I've got a pretty good reputation. If it’s not enough, then fine, I’ll go do something else, but I really do think that judges need to be independent.”

During his time on the bench, Ashton said he’s learned how to deal with challenges that he wouldn’t have experienced even as an attorney, such as trying to keep courtroom proceedings moving efficiently with limited time.

“Having the responsibility of making sure things move along efficiently, but also making sure that everybody gets their say that … is something that you have to learn how to do,” Ashton said. “Judges can listen to things and quickly analyze what's important. And then you have to balance allowing people to tell you things that you may, in your analysis, say they're not that important, but you still want to have them have their say.”

For most cases, Ashton wants to ensure he provides the best outcome for everyone involved.

“The thing that always influences me for most cases is what is the least I need to do to this person to get them to stop committing crimes,” Ashton said. “For some people that’s a short period of probation or a fine … for some people who just don't seem to want to learn, they need incarceration … I think you have to balance the severity of the crime, the interest of the victim and their family as well as fairness to the defendant.”

Law before empathy

Ashton said his first level of consideration is always his legal analysis.

“You’ve got to determine what the law says that your discretion is,” Ashton said. “You’ve got to say Okay, these are my options. Then within those options is where empathy, sympathy, sense of justice, all those things then come into play.”

Though he believes in empathetic judging, he doesn’t believe in putting empathy above all else. “I often have some issues with people who talk about empathy as the first consideration,” Ashton said. “First consideration is, what is the law? What the law says, your area of discretion, and then within that, empathy is important.”

Refuse to recuse

Ashton, 66, grew up in the town of St. Petersburg, located in Pinellas County, and attended Boca Ciega High School before going to college. He lives now in Winter Park with his wife, Rita, and their three adopted children. Ashton has been married twice before, with two children from each marriage.

Ashton currently hears cases in the circuit court’s domestic violence division.

“I deal with couples where there’s high conflict and their marriages are falling apart,” Ashton told VoxPopuli in an interview. “I, often during those hearings, tell people, Look, I've been there, I've been divorced. I understand how hard this is, how emotional this is. And I think to some extent that helps people to realize that their experience is not isolated.”

However, until about six months ago, Aston was in the civil division. He requested a transfer out of civil in April after being asked to recuse himself from a case in which the plaintiff and her attorneys did not believe she received a fair trial. 

In the motion to disqualify Ashton from the case, obtained by VoxPopuli, the plaintiff and her attorneys accused Ashton of “signaling defense counsel when to object” and making “disapproving facial gestures (rolling of eyes, shaking of his head from left to right, over exacerbation of raising his shoulders and staring directly at Defense counsel until Defense counsel reacted) during the trial … in the presence of the jury only when Plaintiff’s lead counsel was questioning a witness or speaking to the jury.”

Ashton denied the request to recuse himself and accused the plaintiff’s attorneys of “ruthless forum shopping.” In his response he noted the addition of two attorneys to the plaintiff's team whose role he said he was “quite surprised to learn … was to watch the Courts (sic) every facial expression and eye movement in hopes of creating a reason for disqualification.”

While plaintiff’s attorneys had asked for recusal from this single case, Ashton wrote, “Voluntary recusal from all cases [emphasis added] with the firm would create an undue burden on the other Judges in the Civil Division. Therefore I have requested and been granted a transfer out of the civil division on a date to be determined in the near future.”

The attorneys for the plaintiff appealed to the Sixth District Court of Appeal to prevent Ashton from further presiding over the case because, as they stated in their appeal, no transfer order had been entered. The Sixth District granted their appeal. In that time, Ashton was transferred.

Highs and lows

Ashton, who last year was falsely accused and cleared last year of child molestation and abuse charges, worked in the state attorney’s office for more than 30 years and prosecuted a few notable cases before he came to sit on the Ninth Circuit bench. He was the lead prosecutor during the infamous Casey Anthony trial, in which Anthony was accused and acquitted of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008. He also helped prosecute the 1988 Tommie Lee Andrews case, resulting in the first U.S. conviction for rape using DNA evidence.

Ashton was elected state attorney in 2012. He lost his re-election bid to Aramis Ayala in 2016 after it was discovered that he’d accessed Ashley Madison, the hookup site for married people, when hackers dumped the site’s client data on the internet in 2015. Ashton said he never connected with anyone, apologized to his family and said he never used government equipment to access the site.

In 2016, Ashton was sued for employment discrimination by Annette Schultz, a former assistant state attorney  who claimed she received work accommodations for health issues related to her 2003 cancer diagnosis up until 2012, when Ashton was elected state attorney. She claimed her previous accommodations were no longer available and was moved to a different position where she said she was pressured to handle more trials. She was eventually terminated because she was “not a trial lawyer.” The case was dismissed in 2017. Schultz’s husband ran unsuccessfully against Ashton in 2018 for circuit judge.

A bulwark against special interests

Ashton sees the judiciary under assault by special interests trying to curry favor. “The independence of the judiciary as a separate but equal branch of government is under attack from a number of different sides,” Ashton said. “There are many special interests trying to impose their interests on judges.”

Special interests can manifest within the judiciary in different ways, Ashton said.

“Some of that comes from the way judges are selected by the judicial nominating process, and some of that comes from funding of judicial campaigns,” Ashton said. “So it's just really important for people to understand that having judges that are strong enough to rule in whatever direction the law says is, I think something that isn't isn't singled out enough.”

Ashton seems to believe himself to be one of the few judges able to remain steadfast in upholding the written law, however.

“I've always been very much a believer in staying in my lane,” Ashton said. “And as much as I may disagree with a legislative decision or pronouncement, my job is to interpret it. And if it is constitutional, then it is the law and the will of the people.”