https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4052380-how-trump-ended-up-with-judge-cannon/
How Trump ended up with Judge Cannon
by James D. Zirin, opinion contributor - 06/16/23 12:30 PM ET
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Smith weighed the options, and, mindful of the play clock, did not want to waste precious time with venue motions and possible appeals. Under Section 2.01.01 (a) of Internal Operating Procedures of the Florida court, criminal cases are supposed to be assigned by the clerk on a “blind random basis.” So he rolled the dice on Florida, calculating his one in 26 odds of drawing the dreaded Judge Cannon were pretty good. The problem is, as they said in “The Music Man,” he didn’t know the territory. The odds were really as short as three to one against drawing Cannon.
The catch is that the Southern District of Florida is administratively divided into five divisions: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Key West and Fort Pierce. This is supposed to be for the convenience of the parties and their lawyers, and has no other legal significance.
Cannon is the only judge sitting in Fort Pierce, which is in St. Lucie County, 68 miles north of Palm Beach and 128 miles north of Miami. But, for the purpose of assigning judges, Fort Pierce is treated as part of the neighboring Palm Beach Division. There are three federal district judges in Palm Beach, one of whom is a senior judge. What Smith did not know, or failed sufficiently to appreciate, is that the pool of judges administratively eligible to try the case was not 26 but four. (If you remove from consideration the senior judge, the eligible pool narrows to three.) The grand jury that returned the Trump indictment sat in Miami because the courthouse facilities were more accommodating than those in Palm Beach, but an administrative order deemed the investigation a Palm Beach inquiry.
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