JUDGE'S CASES OF COMPASSION TOUCHED MANY

TAMPA -- Once on a deep-sea fishing trip, Don Evans smoked marijuana with
some friends.

That was years before Evans became the drug court judge in Hillsborough County.

Just retired, Evans, 63, jokes that unlike former President Clinton, he
admits he inhaled. He quickly adds that he was in international waters
during his one-time marijuana experiment.

It's a telling revelation from the judge who successfully ran the drug
division in Hillsborough Circuit Court for eight years before retiring
January 13.

Evans wasn't known as a holier-than-thou type of judge during his nearly 21
years on the bench, where he handled civil, family, and criminal cases
before establishing the drug court and its focus on rehabilitation.

Evans said the drug court was the highlight of his legal career.

Before he graduated from the University of Florida law school, Evans was a
probation officer.

Some of the training and experience , notably understanding that even good
people make mistakes, later helped him in drug court.

"There are a lot of decent people who become addicts. They're not
necessarily dangerous people. Their criminal behavior is related to their
addiction," Evans said. "It would be wrong not to give them an opportunity."

Evans also offered repeated opportunities to Michael L. Jones, a former
criminal defense lawyer who lost his job, his family and his home because
of cocaine use.

Evans also offered repeated opportunities to Raymond Scott Norman, a serial
bank robber nicknamed the "Crowbar Bandit."

Jones and Norman illustrate in the extreme the effects of Evans' leniency.

Jones was a successful Tampa criminal defense lawyer who gained local fame
in the 1980s. In 1985, he persuaded Evans to drop a second-degree murder
conviction for Tyrone Oliver, who was 15 at the time and convicted with two
adult men for an Ybor City robbery and murder. Oliver wasn't present
during the slaying of the victim, Orlando Arbalaez.

After Evans dismissed Oliver's conviction, Jones continued his practice,
but at some point slipped into a cocaine habit.

In 1993, because of problems related to his drug use, he quit his
$100,00-a-year practice and resigned from the Florida Bar Association.

In 1995, he stood before Evans again, this time as a defendant for cocaine
possession.

Jones said he didn't believe he had a problem. He said "Yes, sir," during
appropriate moments when the judge lectured, then did what he wanted
outside the courtroom.

Jones returned to Evans' courtroom as a defendant numerous times, many for
violating his probation.

But Evans stuck by Jones, including the time he sentenced Jones to three
months in jail for violating probation.

It was the beginning of Jones' recovery.

When he got out, he spent five months in the Drug Abuse Comprehensive
Coordination Office, then another six months at the Center for Rational
Living, both Tampa drug rehabilitation centers

Jones is married now and attends Alcohol Anonymous meetings three times a
week. He works as a legal researcher for a Tampa law firm. Since October
2001, he has been taking random drug tests and all have been clean, Jones said.

He recently retook and passed the Bar exam and hopes to become a lawyer
again soon.

Evans "did more than help me turn my life around. He saved my life," Jones
said.

In 2001, Norman came before Evans on a cocaine possession charge. Like
Jones, Evans gave Norman a break.

But Norman was a first-rate con man. He had conned his family, girlfriend
and authorities into believing he ran a roofing company.

In reality, his full-time job was casing and robbing banks.

In three years, he robbed 30 banks and spent the estimated $500,000 he
netted in the heists on drugs, booze and bills.

On the day he was arrested for the bank robberies last year, he was
supposed to appear before Evans in one of many routine follow-up court
hearings about Norman's drug use.

Prosecutors had pushed for prison time on Norman's cocaine possession
charge, but Evans believed Norman would respond to drug treatment and
ordered Norman to enter the Center for Rational Living, said Darrell Dirks,
who supervises prosecutions in Hillsborough's drug court.

Dirks said Evans didn't know anything about Norman's secret life as a bank
robber, and no one else knew until Norman was arrested at his final bank
robbery and confessed to police and media. Still, Norman's case was one of
many in which Evans believed in rehabilitation when prosecutors believed
prison was the only option.

Still, Dirks said he respected how dedicated Evans was to the drug court,
which sometimes started at 7:30 a.m. and recessed 12 hours later.

Today, Evans works part time for the Florida Mental Health Institute at the
University of South Florida and plans to do legal mediation work. When he
is not at his new job, he and his wife, Bab, enjoy time at their cabin in
North Carolina.