Judge G. Richard Singeltary is retiring after decades on the bench
TAVARES – Circuit Judge G. Richard Singeltary has to be careful these days walking around his office. There are boxes everywhere, some filled, others waiting to be filled with bundles of papers and other things.
If those boxes could only talk!
Singeltary, 75, is hanging up his robe after five years as a Lake County judge and 33 as a circuit judge. “The statute made it an easy decision,” he laughed, referring to the mandatory retirement age.
Certainly, other judges will come along, but the 5th Judicial Circuit is losing an institution and someone who knows where the bodies are buried – literally.
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A prosecutor after law school
After earning his law degree from Stetson in 1973, he became the only full-time assistant state attorney in Lake under Gordon Oldham, who was the top prosecutor for more than 30 years. “He was good to work for,” he said.
Interesting, to say the least. Oldham kept a scrapbook of yellowed newspaper clippings with headlines like, “TRUNK KILLERS HUNTED,” “MISSING GIRLS IN FOREST,” and “BEAUTIFUL DREAM ENDS IN NIGHTMARE TRAGEDY.”
Some cases were ahead of Singeltary’s time, including when notorious Sheriff McCall was sheriff. Others, he modestly describes his role as “carrying Mr. Oldham’s briefcase.”
“History is one of my interests,” he said. His waiting room proves it. It is filled with historic photographs of when citrus was king, and everyone was working hard unless they hung a “gone fishin’” sign on the door.
He made history himself, handling some of the toughest cases from the bench.
Forget Hollywood stereotypes. He is a soft-spoken, gray-haired Southern gentleman, who makes sure everyone gets their say, and that he makes even-handed rulings based on the law. One of the things he enjoyed the most was going up and down the hall getting other judges’ take on things.
He laughs when he thinks about Circuit Judge Ernest C. “Buddy” Aulls Jr., who ruled the roost when he kept track of the new county judges in 1985: Mark Hill, William Law, Richard “Red” Boylston and Singeltary. He treasures a photo where all five are sitting at a conference table wearing white shirts and ties, hands folded, the newbies looking like boys in class.
Becoming a circuit judge
Singeltary was appointed a circuit judge by Gov. Bob Martinez in 1990. Hill and Law would become circuit judges, too.
A young Assistant Public Defender T. Michael Johnson, who would himself go on to become a circuit judge, was nervous when he had to come to Lake from Sumter to argue a case. He noticed that Judge Aulls was taking notes. “I must be doing OK,” he thought.
Later, the judge called him to the bench and showed him what he had been writing: a handwritten certificate for a haircut at a barber shop.
Women had to wear dresses, men wore jackets and ties. Defendants were warned not to show up wearing shorts. Behind the scenes, he was friendly, funny and unpretentious.
Some difficult cases
One of the hardest cases Singeltary presided over was for Fred Anderson Jr., who robbed a bank in Mount Dora in 1999.
“Please don’t shoot me!” one of the tellers screamed.
“Which one of you guys want to die first?” he replied.
Heather Young, 39, died at the scene. Marishia Scott, was badly wounded.
“He needed money to pay probation expenses?” Singeltary shook his head at the memory.
A paramedic on a helicopter had to break out a scalpel to insert a chest tube for her.
The key moment came in a hushed courtroom when the doors swung open and Scott, who was paralyzed, guided her motorized wheelchair silently toward the front of the courtroom to face the man who changed her life forever.
“Heartbreaking,” Singeltary said.
Sometimes the old cases become new to a judge. Such was the re-sentencing hearing for teen vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell, who murdered the parents of one of his members in Eustis.
Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett handled the trial in 1998, so the duty to review the case after a Supreme Court ruling fell to Singletary in 2019.
“You read from the transcripts and it just keeps getting worse and worse,” he said of the murders of Ruth Queen and Richard Wendorf.
“When you see it in person, it’s very real.”
Ferrell testified that he was a changed man.
“The pain will never go away,” Jennifer Wendorf cried. She said she feared for her life and her children and begged Singeltary to maintain his life sentence without parole. The judge agreed.
What's next for Judge Singeltary?
What’s he going to do in retirement?
“There’s my church," he said of St. James Episcopal in Leesburg. "I may go on a mission trip. I’ve made one excuse after another."
He also wants to spend time with his grandchildren.
He said he may also pick up where COVID dropped off. During the epidemic, there were 19 months without trials. “I read 15 books.”
He said he can also look back with pride at the professionalism between the State Attorney’s Office and Public Defender's Office.
"Sheriff Peyton Grinnell runs a good office, and the municipalities have greatly improved with training,” he said. “It’s about trust.”
Judge Singeltary's father was an attorney
“I grew up respecting lawyers,” he said.
His father, George, was an attorney who came to Leesburg in 1934. The tradition continues with the judge’s son, George, who cut his teeth with the Public Defender’s Office.
His last day and the deadline for all those boxes to be off the floor is April 25.
He is being replaced by Circuit Judge Jason Nimeth, who does a Citrus-Sumter County split.
Circuit Judge Kristie Healis in Marion County will take Nimeth’s rotation.
This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: After so many cases, Circuit Judge G. Richard Singeltary set to retire
