Democrat Dan Gelbers eight-year career as a federal prosecutor ran the gamut. He brought charges against Cuban parrot smugglers and successfully prosecuted police officers for lying about the brutal beating death of a Puerto Rican drug dealer.
It was the officers convictions won by Gelber, the Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, which brought national attention after a failed trial by another prosecutor and riots in Miami over police treatment of the victim, Leonardo Mercado.
The campaign website for Gelber, endorsed in early September by the Police Benevolent Association, contains no mention of the Mercado case won in Gelbers final year as assistant U.S. attorney in 1994.
He said its not because a police endorsement makes highlighting a police prosecution politically difficult. Ive just never been one to pop a cork, said Gelber, who claims its not his style as an attorney. Prosecutors are supposed to be thoughtful in how you administer (power.)
Instead, Gelbers campaign focuses on a family tradition of service." His father, Seymour, was a prosecutor as is his wife, Joan. It also features his work helping to convict public officials, and later his role with an investigations subcommittee in the U.S. Senate.
Until the Mercado case, the young prosecutor 26 when he started in the U.S. Attorneys Office and 34 when the four officers were convicted had handled mostly lower profile cases.
Gelber, who will remain the state senator representing the Miami Beach area until after Nov. 2, said the conviction of Pablo Camacho and other officers wound up on CBS 60 Minutes. At the time, he told reporters he hoped the conviction would help heal some of Miamis wounds following looting and riots that included the burning of buildings. The verdict, he said then, demonstrated an intolerance to dishonesty in the law-enforcement community.
Milton Hirsch, who represented Camacho, said recently Gelber handled the case admirably. He was a serious prosecutor, Hirsch said.
DanGelber.com shows newspaper articles highlighting Gelbers work in the trial of people accused of trying to smuggle Cuban parrots into the U.S. Another featured case is about Gelbers successful handling of a civil rights trial that involved a man who directed racist remarks at a black woman shopping for a home in the mans neighborhood.
Gelber said he is proud of that case because it was the first time a little-known provision of the U.S. Fair Housing Act had been used in a criminal case.
I was surprised he was found guilty, said lawyer Ron L. Baum, who defended James Tribble of Hollywood in the 1991 civil rights case. Baum said he still thinks Tribbles remarks were an isolated incident and didnt warrant a criminal conviction, for which Tribble received three months in a community correctional center.
Gelber said he may be the most proud of his successful prosecution of a Texas developer, a Nebraska lawyer and a high-level U.S. Housing and Urban Development official charged with bribery and brought to trial in 1992. He also prosecuted members of a street gang in South Florida known as the Untouchables.
A fact sheet provided by Gelber lists a total of eight cases on which he served as lead federal prosecutor, including the Tribble as well as the Mercado/Camacho cases. Asked whether he thought further highlighting the Mercado/Camacho case in his campaign would negatively affect his support by the police association, he said: Ive never talked about it.
Soon after the Camacho verdict in the Mercado case, Gelber was appointed staff director and chief counsel of the U.S. Senates Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, with the help of U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who chaired the important subcommittee.
His work in the U.S. Attorneys Office and with the subcommittee involved administering cases and supervising staff and other lawyers. He oversaw as many as 300 other lawyers as senior counsel to the U.S. attorney, he said.
Gelbers campaign website says he spent nearly a decade prosecuting hundreds of corrupt public officials, drug dealers, scam artists and violent street gangs in the U.S. Attorneys Office. It describes his role with the subcommittee -- "where Bobby Kennedy also served as chief counsel" as one where he helped to expose fraud, waste in government and security threats posed by the Internet.
Gelber testified before the committee in 1996, warning that businesses vulnerable to hackers are hiring private security firms rather than involving the law because of concern over negative publicity. Gelber said he performed investigations and administered those of the subcommittee. I was in charge of the committee, he said. So I did both.
He left Washington, D.C. and entered private practice with the Miami law firm of Holland and Knight in 1996. He practiced there until 2000; at Zuckerman Spaeder from 2001-2005; and at Akerman Senterfitt until recently.
It was as an assistant U.S. attorney that Gelber said he received most of his prosecutorial experience that will help him in his role as Florida attorney general, the states chief legal officer whose agency handles everything from consumer protection to Medicaid fraud.
He said his experience managing cases also will be important if he is elected to lead what is essentially the largest law firm in the state, with about 475 lawyers.
I think the skill set that I bring as a prosecutor and as an investigator is vital, said Gelber, who said his experience prioritizing cases as an administrator is important, too. Making these weighty decisions is what I do.
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Doug Filaroski, a journalist who makes his home in Jacksonville, wrote this story "special to Sunshine State News."
