Joel T. Lazarus

Who is Joel T. Lazarus?

Joel T. Lazarus was a prosecutor and then a judge in Florida who gained national attention when he gave Lionel Tate a life sentence for a murder that Tate committed at the age of twelve.

Lazarus received his bachelors degree from Babson College and an MBA from Columbia Business School. However Lazarus did not like investment banking and so in 1974 started law school at Nova Law School.

Lazarus worked as an assistant state attorney from 1978 until 1993. According to some, Lazarus's most notable case as a prosecutor was putting Kathy Willets and Jeffrey Willets behind bars for running a prostitution ring. This case involved Ellis Rubin seeking to claim that Prozac created an unquenchable sexual appetite as a defence for Kathy Willets.

Another case that Lazarus was involved in was that of Eddie Lee Mosley. However unlike many other cases, in the Mosley case Lazarus negotiated a plea deal which resulted in no jail time for Mosley. Mosley committed multiple rapes and murders after this plea deal. Lazarus said he went for the plea deal because Mosley's victims were "prostitutes and druggies" and thus not good witnesses. This assessment of the victims is not supported by court records, though. They were poor and African-American, but there is no evidence they were prostitutes or on drugs, and in 1981 a jury did convict Mosley largely from testimony of one of these victims that Lazarus said was unreliable.