UPDATE: June 17, 2021

Fl. Supreme Court rightly Rejects Chief Judge Masters Recommendation. 120 day extension of time requested to allow Masters to try again and recommend disbarment of this nasty lawyer.

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If impartiality is raised, a judge may have to disqualify themselves. The Code of Judicial Conduct for federal judges/ABA Model Rules of Judicial Conduct require a judge to disqualify themselves from a proceeding if the judge’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.” pic.twitter.com/HfqneSpyym

— LawsInTexas (@lawsintexasusa) June 12, 2021

Florida Lawyer Faces Suspension After Having Sex With and Impregnating Client

The lawyer is also a jail inmate, awaiting trial after allegedly being caught in a sting operation agreeing to pay $100 for sex with a 16-year-old.

DEC 17, 2020 | REPUBLISHED BY LIT: JUN 19, 2021

A Melbourne criminal defense attorney who admitted to having sex with and impregnating a client could end up receiving a one-year suspension.

That’s according to a recommendation from court-appointed referee Chief Judge Ellen S. Masters of the Tenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, who found attorney John Gillespie guilty of having a sexual relationship with a particularly vulnerable client.

The report, filed Monday, found that was a violation of six bar rules, governing misconduct, conflict of interest and bar admission.

Gillespie, 72, is also an Orange County jail inmate, awaiting trial after allegedly being caught in a sting operation agreeing to pay $100 for sex with a 16-year-old. He is accused of using his firm to run a prostitution ring, but has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Attorney John Gillespie’s Jailhouse Response to Florida Bar

The bar’s July complaint, however, involves allegations from an Osceola County resident who hired Gillespie to represent her adult daughter in two criminal cases.

Gillespie knew the daughter had a history of drug abuse, and even argued she was incompetent to stand trial and had a history of mental illness, according to the referee’s report.

Yet, a year later in March 2019, the client gave birth to Gillespie’s son, who took the attorney’s surname, according to the referee’s report.

Gillespie initially denied having sex with the client. His answer to the bar’s complaint argued, ”However, even if this child were mine and even if I had had some kind of physical contact with her daughter, that would not be a violation of the Attorney’s Code of Ethics unless it had adversely affected her daughter’s case.”

The attorney walked that back after a paternity test revealed he was the father, but he maintained the sexual relationship never impaired his ability to represent the client. The referee’s report said the Department of Children and Families removed that child from Gillespie’s home in March 2019.

Gillespie also admitted to spreading rumors that his client was a police informant to ward off drug dealers, testifying that, “when she would walk into a place, like a drug — some type of drug place, people would scatter like roaches,” according to the report.

Masters found the attorney later represented the woman in a Brevard County misdemeanor case, again alleging she was incompetent to go to trial, and he remained her lawyer until February 2020.

Pointing to case law featuring similar sexual misconduct by attorneys, the referee recommended a one-year suspension, requiring Gillespie to provide proof of rehabilitation and cover nearly $4,000 in bar costs.

One of the cases the referee relied upon involved an attorney who was suspended for a year over allegations he’d had sex with two clients and sent money to their jail commissary accounts. Another attorney with a prior history of disciplinary action received a year’s suspension and two years of probation for allegedly trading legal services for sex.

JJ TALBOTT filed a motion requesting $28K in attorney’s fees incurred in recovering $496 for his client. Fees paid for by CITIZENS (as Tax Payers).

JJ is a member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Fewer than 1% of U.S. lawyers are members. https://t.co/GKcu7M6dxs pic.twitter.com/V1VAjzOE6S

— LawsInTexas (@lawsintexasusa) May 30, 2021

The vulnerability of Gillespie’s victim worked against him in this instance, as did his pattern of misconduct and substantial experience since joining the bar in 1998. But Masters also considered some mitigating factors: that Gillespie has personal or emotional problems, a physical or mental disability or substance abuse disorder and no disciplinary history.

Gillespie is representing himself in the discipline case and signed a conditional guilty plea agreeing to the suspension.

His criminal defense attorney Dean Mosley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Florida Supreme Court has the final say on attorney discipline and is yet to rule.

Judge Masters wins Jurist of the Year

MAR 26, 2021 | REPUBLISHED BY LIT: JUN 19, 2021

Chief Judge Ellen S. Masters was presented with the Jurist of the Year 2020-21 Award by the Polk Association of Women Lawyers at its third annual Women’s History Luncheon on March 12.

Masters was re-elected to serve a second term as the Chief Judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit. Her second term will begin July 5

On July 1, 2019, Judge Ellen Sly Masters became Chief Judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit, Florida, having been unanimously elected to the position by the judges serving in Hardee, Highlands, and Polk counties.

Judge Masters received her J.D. from Stetson University College of Law Cum Laude in 1989.

New post: There’s a Cancer in Southern District Court in Florida and a Noticeable Recusal in Stone’s Tax Case https://t.co/CPqYdG9XTN

— LawsInTexas (@lawsintexasusa) June 17, 2021

Melbourne defense attorney accused of using firm as prostitution front hit with more human trafficking charges

MAY 21, 2020 | REPUBLISHED BY LIT: JUN 19, 2021

A Melbourne criminal defense attorney accused of using his law firm as a prostitution front is facing more human trafficking charges, based on allegations that he had sex with an underage girl in exchange for legal services he provided to her pimp.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s Office of Statewide Prosecution confirmed Wednesday that John Gillespie, 71, is facing additional counts of trafficking a juvenile for commercial sex and trafficking an adult for commercial sex.

The 15-year-old girl first made the allegations against Gillespie in an interview she did with an investigator in December 2014.

In a second interview April 23 with agents from the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, the now-adult victim said she met the attorney in 2013, about two months after an Orlando man named Montavius Postell began trafficking her, according to redacted MBI records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

Without her knowledge, Postell arranged for the girl to have sex with Gillespie, who was Postell’s attorney, multiple times in exchange for legal fees.

The victim told investigators she was chosen because “everybody’s dream girl is blond hair and blue eyes, so I was everybody’s dream girl.”

After telling her to “dress nice,” Postell drove the teenager to Gillespie’s office, where he gave her a condom and told her to have sex with his lawyer, according to the report.

The victim began crying when she told investigators Gillespie didn’t ask her age. She said she didn’t speak to him as they had sex “because it was nasty.”

After she left the attorney’s office, the victim said she overheard Gillespie complaining to Postell that she was inexperienced, adding that he wanted another “blond with blue eyes,” the documents said.

“You better find somebody else better or pay,” Gillespie told his client, according to the victim.

Postell was angry after the girl didn’t satisfy Gillespie, telling her she had to “do better” if she wanted to stay, the victim told investigators. Although she wanted to leave, the victim said she could not tell Postell that or he would beat her.

The victim said Postell took other women to meet Gillespie at the lawyer’s office and a courthouse for sex multiple times, but she was never forced to have intercourse with the attorney again, the report said.

Postell and an accomplice were accused of physically and sexually abusing, drugging and prostituting a 15-year-old girl in 2013. He pleaded guilty to trafficking a minor and lewd or lascivious battery. Orange County court records show he was represented by Gillespie in a 2012 criminal traffic case.

MBI agents also interviewed another woman April 29 who told them Gillespie supplied her with drugs and let her live in his home in exchange for her prostituting herself and cleaning his house.

The woman said Gillespie promised her he would get her custody of her children and described him as “a monster, someone who takes advantage of any women in a bad situation,” according to the records.

Gillespie pleaded not guilty to the previous charges filed against him, including racketeering and human trafficking for commercial sexual activity with a child under 18, court records show.

Investigators say the attorney agreed to pay an undercover agent posing as an underage girl $100 for sex and used his law firm to recruit women into prostitution.

Gillespie’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.