James D. Whittemore
| James David Whittemore | |
|---|---|
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| Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida | |
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Assumed office May 25, 2000 |
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| Appointed by | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | William Terrell Hodges |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
James David Whittemore January 14, 1952 Walterboro, South Carolina |
| Education |
University of Florida B.S.B.A. Stetson University College of Law J.D. |
James David Whittemore (born January 14, 1952) is an American judge presently serving in the Tampa division of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. He was previously a Florida state trial court judge, a federal public defender, and an attorney in private practice who won a criminal case before the United States Supreme Court. As a federal judge, Whittemore presided over a number of high-profile cases, including a lawsuit against Major League Baseball to challenge its draft procedure, and the Terri Schiavo case, after the United States Congress had specifically given the Middle District of Florida jurisdiction to hear the seven-year-long fight over whether the brain-damaged Schiavo should be taken off life support.
Whittemore was born in Walterboro, South Carolina. He graduated with honors from the University of Florida in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree, and then received his Juris Doctor from Stetson University Law School in 1977. He briefly worked at Bauer, Morlan & Wells, a small law firm in St. Petersburg, Florida, before becoming one of the original four federal public defenders in the Middle District of Florida in 1978. Whittemore returned to private practice in Tampa three years later as an associate at Whittemore & Seybold, and then at Whittemore & Campbell from 1982 until 1987. In 1985, Whittemore successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in Wainwright v. Greenfield, 474 U.S. 284 (1986), that a criminal suspect's silence after he received the Miranda warning could not be used at trial to discredit his insanity defense. Whittemore's client had been convicted of sexual battery; the Court's ruling secured him a new trial. From 1987 until 1990, Whittemore was a sole practitioner in Tampa.
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