by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
There were so many drugs in the Florida Keys in the 1970s, State Attorney John Sampson didn’t know what to do. He was the only prosecutor representing the Middle Keys out of Marathon and their proximity to Miami was causing no dearth in trafficking. Huge bundles of marijuana and cocaine would literally wash up on shore.
Corruption in South Florida has always been around. It’s warm weather and global patois has made it a destination spot for those wanting to hide from something. But in the 1970s, when the U.S. was experiencing its biggest rise in drug use in history and law enforcement had not yet mobilized in that part of Florida, the result was, well, cowboys and Indians.
When Sampson, now a general master in Duval County serving as the first line of defense in family law cases, first traveled to the Keys in 1972 as an intern in Key West from Florida State University Law School, it was quite an education.
“One assistant state attorney in Ft. Myers was shot at his front door,” recalled Sampson. “The U.S. attorney in Miami was kicked out by the governor, the public defender was indicted for drug trafficking and members of the Narcotics Task Force were arrested by the feds for serving as lookouts for pot smugglers.”
In 1972, the State Attorneys Office in the Keys was dealing with “Deep Throat” laws, too. It was at a time when the United States and Florida in particular, were grappling with what to do about obscenity laws and pornography. In Sampson’s opinion, they had larger concerns.
“Practically every guy I knew in law enforcement ended up getting indicted,” said Sampson. “The police couldn’t enforce the fishing laws because every time they went out on to a boat, they would find drugs floating in the water.”
Sampson was born in Pensacola in 1945 to parents who were from Long Island. The family spent summers there and winters in Florida. High school in the 1950s and 1960s bounced between Princeton, N.J. and Sarasota. The contrast between the Ivy League North and the segregated South was not lost on Sampson.
Sampson went to Rutgers for one year, but hated it. He joined the Marine Corps, spending three years in Vietnam. When asked about his experience there, Sampson somberly replied, “It was what it was.”
He returned to Florida and became the first person at Florida State to major in international business. And because there was still money left from the G.I. Bill, he went to law school.
“My dad was a professional engineer who always wanted to be a lawyer,” said Sampson. “I thought maybe I’d be a patent attorney.”
Instead, Sampson spent that eye-opening summer in Key West.
“When I told my boss I had an apartment on Duval Street,” said Sampson, “they wanted to know if they could stick a microphone through the floor of my bedroom to spy on the people below. Everybody was a criminal. You couldn’t trust anybody.”
That’s actually the reason that Sampson, who moved back to the Keys after law school to work for the State Attorney’s Office, left the Keys in 1978. There were six prosecutors from Key West to Key Largo, and while Sampson’s inner circle was honest, good guys were getting exposed as bad guys all the time.
“There’s a story about a gang of drug dealers who were making a million dollars a week in the Keys,” said Sampson. “Apparently one of their girlfriends deposited money in safety deposit boxes all over the Southeast before she died of an overdose. Legend has it, the money’s still there.”
When Sampson moved to Jacksonville, he spent seven years operating a family law practice on Blanding Boulevard. In 1985 he hooked up with Tom Strickland, a personal injury attorney, where he stayed for five years as Sampson & Strickland. Then it was back to solo practice until 1995 when Sampson became a general master.
The term general master derives from the ship-laden British, where “masters” of ships were appointed to make recommendations to the court regarding disputes that occurred at sea.
It hasn’t changed all that much. As a result of a court system that was expanded in the 1960s and 1970s to make justice more accessible to every American, judges needed help with huge caseloads.
During that time, family law cases increased exponentially as it became easier for people to represent themselves during a divorce and the judicial system tried to move faster. That was combined with welfare reform, wherein enforcement of child support laws became critical if children and single moms were to survive.
Sampson became a general master at the beginning of the system’s development in Duval County. As the first general master to be appointed, he helped build the program. And his experience in family law made it not only a passion but something that made practical sense.
General masters are not exclusively confined to family law. In Duval County, the general master’s office functions to review child support cases, pro se cases (where people represent themselves) and temporary hearings, where people sit down and work out details with their attorney. At the time of this interview, Sampson had a list of almost 300 cases that were on the docket for the following week.
“Ninety-nine point five percent of the time the judge approves our recommendations,” said Sampson, indicating that the general master is pretty much a judge without the “your honor.” He said all six general masters in Duval County are experienced family law attorneys. “You get pretty knowledgeable pretty quick.”
Sampson left private practice to be a general master because it enabled him to enact the greatest good and practice law “for laws sake.” It was a pioneering movement, too. Jacksonville was bracing for a flood in population — they needed him. Duval County, after all, collects more child support than any other county in the state per capita.
And what keeps Sampson going is the ever-changing role of his job. Not only is a bill pending in the Florida House to change the name from general master to magistrate — to align the position with the federal courts — the enforcement of child support transfers from the Department of Housing and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) to the IRS, to streamline procedures have taken effect, making the general masters office more critical.
In 1978, the same year Sampson left the Keys to practice family law in Jacksonville, The Miami Herald ran a week-long expose on the corruption in the Keys. Important drug lords were found out to be the adopted sons of police chiefs. The fire chief, Bum Fardo, had been indicted again.
After 24 years in Northeast Florida, Sampson has come to realize corruption exists everywhere. He has taught his son Kris, 24, and his daughter, Lara, 22, to be good citizens. He spends his days trying to make sure deadbeat dads pay their bills and that children aren’t used as pawns when parents get divorced.
As often as he can, Sampson goes scuba diving, a sport that the Keys was practically made for. He ‘s been certified since 1973, the year he graduated from law school. He’s been to Honduras, the Red Sea and the Bahamas.
So whether Sampson is fixing people’s family problems or exploring a reef, he’s the first to tell you, “There’s a lot going on.”