Evolution of Justice in Florida: Documents, Images and Books

The Supreme Court has met in four locations since 1845 including two spaces in the Old Capitol, in the Whitfield Building, and currently in the Supreme Court Building on South Duval Street in Tallahassee.

The circuit-riding judges of the 1800s succeeded in building a statewide system of public courts.

Morgan Bonaparte “Bone” Mizzell was so popular that although arrested in 1896 for rustling, Bone was treated as an honored guest when he arrived in the evening at the state prison.

Gwendolyn Hoyt v. State of Florida challenged a Florida statute that excluded women from serving on juries. Hoyt was convicted by an all-male jury of second degree murder in the death of her husband. Hoyt protested that she was not being tried by a jury drawn from a jury of her peers. That claim was denied by the trial judge, by the Florida Supreme Court in 1959 and, in 1961, by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1908, Justice Whitfield, writing for the Florida Supreme Court, declared in Montgomery v. State, that a black defendant “is entitled to have a jury selected and summoned without illegal discrimination of any character.”

The 46th justice of the court, Harold L. “Tom” Sebring, was appointed to the Nazi War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, by President Harry Truman and served from Oct. 1946 to Aug. 1947.

From his prison cell, Gideon penned his own petition for habeas corpus, first going to the Florida Supreme Court. The state's high court followed the law that existed at the time and held that Gideon was not entitled to a lawyer at government expense.

The first Florida East Coast Railway train rolled into Miami in mid-April 1896 and ushered in a new era in Florida law. Case after case came into the state courts on issues ranging from railroad injuries to land disputes to the power of the legislature to regulate rail companies.