About a month before Torea Spohr resigned as a circuit judge, an appellate court removed her from a child custody case, ruling that she had demonstrated bias and a disregard for state law. Contradicting a state agency, Spohr seemed determined to return an infant girl to a woman whose actions had contributed to the death of the girl’s 3-year-old brother.
Spohr also repeatedly defied orders from the Sixth District Court of Appeal, which had issued a stay in the case.
The Sixth DCA, based in Lakeland, issued the opinion March 28, following a November order granting an emergency petition from the Department of Children and Families seeking to have Spohr disqualified from the case.
Spohr, 43, submitted a letter of resignation dated April 29 to Gov. Ron DeSantis, with an effective date of July 15. She offered no reason for the resignation from the Circuit Court in the 10th Judicial Circuit, based in Bartow and covering Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties.
Spohr, who won election to an open seat in 2020 after facing no opposition, has been absent from the bench since April 29. Public disclosure of Spohr’s resignation only came in late May, in part because of an error in the original letter that had to be corrected.
The case that prompted Spohr’s disqualification involved a woman seeking to regain custody of her infant daughter, who had been removed from her as DCF filed to have the woman’s parental rights terminated.
Though the Sixth DCA’s opinion used initials because children were involved, all the details align with a shootout that occurred March 11, 2024, at the Cambridge Cove apartment complex in North Lakeland, killing a 3-year-old boy and a 22-year-old man.
Yeimarie Baez, now 23, visited the apartments with her two children and a companion, Robert Einzig, and all four were sitting in a Toyota RAV4, preparing to depart, with Baez in the driver’s seat. A Dodge Challenger pulled up behind the RAV4 and blocked its path, the Lakeland Police Department reported.
Two men carrying guns left the Challenger and approached the RAV4, and gunfire soon broke out, LPD reported. Baez grabbed her 3-month-old daughter from the back seat and fled, LPD Chief Sam Taylor said. Neither Baez nor the infant was injured.
LPD officers found Jaquez Norton, 3, shot dead in his car seat inside the RAV4. A man who had left the Challenger, Kemarius Wilson, was shot and later died of his injuries, LPD reported. Einzig suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.
Police recovered at least 28 bullet casings from the scene, LPD reported.
Kevarius Green, now 41, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder, as well as attempted first-degree murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle. Demarius Wilson, 23, was charged with tampering with evidence.
Asked about possible charges against Baez, LPD spokesperson Stephanie Kerr said that the agency would not comment as the case is still making its way through the court process.
Court: Woman put child at risk
As detailed in the opinion from the Sixth DCA, Spohr granted DCF’s petition on April 18, 2024, to remove an infant child from a woman identified as Y.B. The woman and her boyfriend traveled to an apartment complex with the girl and her 3-year-old sibling “in a car containing drugs and guns, to an apartment complex that Y.B. and her boyfriend knew was unsafe because they had been warned they would be killed if they went there,” the Sixth DCA opinion stated.
Y.B. and the boyfriend left the two children in the car unsupervised while visiting an apartment in the complex, the opinion said. They returned to their car and attempted to leave the complex when another vehicle blocked their exit.
All the details included in the Sixth DCA’s opinion match descriptions from LPD of the shootout at Cambridge Cove.
“Y.B. insisted that she would maintain her relationship with her boyfriend,” the opinion said. “The judge found that Y.B.’s poor judgment posed a substantial risk of harm to N.S.B. (the infant) and that N.S.B. should be sheltered with her father or in foster care.”
DCF filed an expedited involuntary petition for termination of parental rights on May 7, 2024, arguing that Y.B.’s actions led to the death of one child and put the infant at imminent risk of substantial harm. At a subsequent docket call, though, Spohr told Y.B. and representatives from DCF and the Guardian ad Litem office, which advocates for children in legal proceedings, that she wanted to discuss a case plan instead of setting a hearing on termination of parental rights.
At a later hearing, Spohr told the DCF lawyer, “I’m still confused as to why you haven’t made any kind of offer to this woman.”
Judge to DCF: You have no case
In September 2024, before a termination hearing had been held, Spohr heard Y.B.’s motion to modify the infant’s placement by removing her from her father and returning her to the mother. Lawyers for DCF and the statewide Guardian ad Litem argued that the child could not be placed with Y.B. without the completion of a home study.
Spohr reserved ruling on the motion, allowing Y.B.’s lawyer time to provide legal authority for a modification without a home study. She told Y.B. that if she filed a motion to dismiss, it would be heard the next day, the opinion said.
Y.B. filed the motion, and the following day Spohr resumed the hearing on the modification motion, considering the just-filed motion to dismiss over DCF’s objection.
At the hearing, Spohr told the DCF lawyer: “The overall issue is that we have a child that has been taken away from the mother and it does not look like a great case for you guys. I’m just not seeing it. I don’t know how you are going to get there. And, it bothers me that she is still away from her child and I can’t see a path to a victory for you.”
Spohr denied Y.B.’s motion to dismiss but granted modification, ordering the child’s return to her mother.
At a hearing on Oct. 7, Spohr considered the Guardian ad Litem’s motions to dismiss and to stay and vacate the modification order, which argued that the child’s placement could not be changed without a home study.
“I think the statute puts us in a bad place here, because you guys don’t have a case,” Spohr said, according to the Sixth DCA opinion.
A lawyer for the Guardian ad Litem pointed to state law showing the requirement for a home study.
“I get that,” Spohr responded. “And you know what I said? I said appeal it. I’m going to do it anyway because it’s wrong. It’s just wrong. And I’m just not going to abide by it. I get that statute says that. I fully understand it. But what is right to be done here is to return this child to her mother.”
Petition to remove Spohr
On Oct. 21, 2024, DCF filed a motion to disqualify Spohr, “alleging that DCF had an objectively reasonable fear that it would not receive a fair trial because of the judge’s statements demonstrating she had pre-judged the evidence and that she would not abide by controlling statutes,” the Sixth DCA opinion stated.
Spohr summarily denied the motion. DCF filed an emergency petition in the Sixth DCA to have Spohr disqualified from the case. The Guardian ad Litem filed a petition with the Sixth DCA seeking a stay on the modification order.
The Sixth DCA granted that petition and entered an order for Spohr and Y.B. to show cause as to why DCF’s petition should not be granted. That order operated as a stay of the trial court proceedings.
“The same day — in violation of the stay imposed by our Show Cause Order — the judge entered an order striking several of DCF’s witnesses for the final TPR hearing which had been scheduled for the next day,” the Sixth DCA opinion said.
In further violation of the court’s order, Spohr convened an evidentiary hearing the next day on a motion filed by Y.B. to further strike DCF witnesses, the opinion said. When Spohr began questioning the DCF’s lawyer about witnesses present, the lawyer objected, citing the stay from the Sixth DCA.
“OK,” Spohr responded. “We’re going to do it anyway.”
“The judge interrogated DCF counsel for almost an hour about DCF’s investigation of the case and preparation of its witnesses for trial, allowing Y.B.’s counsel to freely interject comments on DCF’s answers,” the opinion said. “The judge also called one of DCF’s trial witnesses to the witness stand, placed her under oath, and conducted her own examination of the witness.”
DCF then asked the Sixth DCA to force Spohr to comply with its stay on the case. A day after the hearing, the court entered an order directing Spohr to comply with the stay, “but not before the judge had issued yet another order in violation of the stay,” the opinion said.
After the Guardian ad Litem joined DCF’s petition, the Sixth DCA on Nov. 13 granted the petition, disqualifying Spohr from any further proceedings in the case and quashing all orders she had entered after the show cause order.
Court: Open disregard for law
In the opinion, the Sixth DCA emphasized Spohr’s statements about DCF’s opposition to Y.B.’s regaining custody of the girl, including, ‘You guys don’t have a case.”
“During the same timeframe, the judge openly disregarded the controlling law (‘I’m just not going to abide by it.’), to DCF’s detriment and Y.B.’s benefit,” the opinion said. “Either the unequivocal pre-judgment of DCF’s case or the open disregard of controlling law was sufficient, alone, to give DCF a reasonable belief that it could not get a fair trial of its TPR petition.”
The Sixth DCA added: “The judge’s subsequent convening of an evidentiary hearing to ‘make a record’ undermining DCF’s case and bolstering Y.B.’s defense — in knowing violation of this Court’s stay — removed all doubt.”
Judge Roger Gannam signed the opinion, with Chief Judge Dan Traver and Associate Judge Brian Lambert concurring.
Chief Judge James Yancey of the 10th Judicial Circuit issued a special order on May 1 amending his assignment of judges from Jan. 6 through July 6. At the time, he described Spohr as “on indefinite leave.”
Circuit Judge Jalal Harb, who had been assigned to the violation of probation division, took over Spohr’s docket. Spohr, whose annual salary is $196,898, will continue to be paid through July 15, when her resignation is official.
Asked why Spohr is still being paid, Yancey said that he could not comment.
Spohr was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2009 and has no disciplinary history over the past decade, according to the group’s website.
Another Stetson CoL grad?