Extraordinary moment: Judge Mindy Glazer and Arthur Booth had not met in more than three decades when he appeared in her courtroom for a bail hearing last year. He is charged with burglary and fleeing police
'I'm sorry to see you and I always wondered what happened to you,' Glazer told Booth.
She told the court: 'This was the nicest kid in middle school. He was the best kid in middle school. I used to play football with him. Look what has happened.'
The old classmates met once again after Booth was released from jail on a court program.
His family and the judge stood by waiting to greet him as he walked out of jail after serving 10 months, CBS Miami reported.
'Take care of your family. Try to get a job. Stay clean,' Glazer told Booth. 'You're going to do something good for somebody else.'
'You better believe it. You better believe it,' Booth replied.
He shared that his old classmate is a huge inspiration to him.
'She's an inspiration and a motivation to me right now. Mindy is incredible,' Booth told CBS Miami.
'Cause I know where I could've been, but I'm not giving up on life. It's just a new lease on life for me right now.'
'He had a good judge who wanted to give him a chance,' Glazer stated. 'This is a group effort to see you succeed. Don't let us down.'
'I won't. I promise not to,' he replied.
In addition, Booth told CBS Miami that he owes a lot to both his lawyer and the prosecutor as well.
History of Booth
His mother Hilda and step-father Fresswell were delighted their son, the eldest of three children, had been picked to go what in the late 1970s was considered one of the best schools in Miami.
Family members said Arthur had self taught himself Spanish and excelled at math and science.
'We always knew Arthur was something special as he was born with six fingers on his right hand,' said his aunt Betty Knight.
'He was such a lovely boy. So tenacious and always wanting to learn. He really was very bright and his parents were thrilled when he was chosen to go to Nautilus.'
Arthur would take a 30-minute bus trip to the school in Miami Beach from his home in North Miami and according to family members achieved outstanding grades. An honor roll student he seemed destined for college and a successful career.
It was at Nautilus that Booth first met Mindy Glazer, who lived with her parents and her brother, Stephen, in Biscayne Bay
She too was bright and ambitious, at first wanting to be a veterinarian, then - after she visited her married cousin and her husband in New York, where he was a defense attorney.
Court records show that at the age 18 he was jailed for grand theft. In the 1980s, out of prison and out of work, he became addicted to crack cocaine.
Booth was in the grip of the drug and spent months in prison after being arrested at least three times for possession.
'It just took over his life. He didn't have a job so the only way to get money was to steal. He would break into warehouses or empty homes. He was never violent to anyone. He just needed money quick and that was how he got it.'
'Arthur didn't want to help himself and turned away from those who loved him the most,' said a family member who asked not to be named.
'People tried to get him help but it was a downward spiral. He needed money to pay for drugs and he could only get that from dealing or stealing.
'Nothing anyone said to him made a difference. It was a desperate time back in the 1980s when so many people were on crack.'
In 1988, at the age of 22 Booth was jailed for 20 years on burglary and theft charges. According to his cousin Melissa he spent 10 years behind bars before being released on parole.
That year Glazer passed her own personal milestone: she graduated from the University of Miami with a BA in Arts.
She then studied law at St Thomas University School of Law, graduating J.D., specializing in tax law, in 1991, when she was admitted to the Florida Bar and started her own practice.
At first, she said in a profile of her judicial career in Daily Business Review, 'I wanted to do criminal tax litigation. But I really liked estate planning,'
She went back to law school and got a master's degree in estate planning.
Aged 32, Booth was released and tried to find work, but as a convicted felon, found it hard. The one upside of prison was that he was able to kick his drug addiction but his weakness for gambling remained.
Within a year he was arrested on burglary charge and returned to prison to serve out the remainder of his sentence.
In 1997, at the age of 31, he was on work release duty with other inmates helping to clean trash from the roads around Miami.
Despite nearing the end of his sentence Booth fled from the work details and went on the run.
Family members hid him and he remained free for almost two months until he was caught while attending a Miami Heat basketball game.
Around the same time - the year 2000 - Glazer became a judge.
Over the last 15 years Booth has been in and out of prison. He was last released in December 2014 and found work with a construction company before being arrested in July of 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment