Talk:Jose Alejandro Gonzalez, Jr.
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He is past President of the Fort Lauderdale-Southside Kiwanis Club; former Vice-president of the Henderson Clinic of Broward County, a charitable non-profit mental health facility; and past director of Broward chapter, Arthritis Foundation of America, the Fort Lauderdale Jaycees, the Florida Alumni Association, the Young Democratic Club of Broward County, the Fort Lauderdale Touchdown Club, and the Broward County Gator Club.
A member of the American Bar Association, the American Judicature Society, The Florida Bar, The Federal Bar Association, and the Broward County Bar, he is also a member of the bar of the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals for the 5th and the 11th Circuits, and of the bar of the United States Supreme Court. Judge Gonzalez has also served as an Associate Judge of the Fourth District Court of Appeals of Florida on several occasions; and has served by designation on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
An Alumnus of the National Judicial College at the University of Nevada-Reno, and of the Federal Judicial Center, Washington, D.C., he has participated as a lecturer at various programs sponsored by the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, The Florida Bar, the Broward County Bar, the American Bar Association, The Federal Bar Association, and the Circuit Judges Conference of Florida. He is the author of the chapter on "Jury Instructions" in Florida Civil Trial Practice, second edition, and has twice attended the summer Program of Instruction for Lawyers at Harvard Law School.
Four of his cases were eventually the subject of written opinions by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Five books have been published concerning four of Judge Gonzalez' more notable cases. James Mills, Underground Empire (Doubleday, 1986) and Roger Warren, Invisible Hand: The Marijuana Business (Beech Tree Books: William Morrow, 1986) both deal with U. S. v. Stienberg, et al. In re: E.S.M. Government Securities is the subject of Donald Maggin's, Bankers, Builders, Knaves and Thieves (Contemporary Books, 1989). As Nasty As They Wanna Be, Luther Campbell and John R. Miller (Barricade Books, 1992) covers Skywalker Records, Inc. v. Navarro, from the defendant's point of view. Roy Black, Black’s Law (Simon and Schuster, 1999) reviews U.S. v. de la Mata, a major federal prosecution involving a prominent Miami banker.
Judge Gonzalez is the author of over 250 published legal opinions. For over a decade he also published a weekly Gator Football newsletter each fall. He has missed very few University of Florida home football games since 1968; and has lived to see the Gators win two National Football Championships and the Boston Red Sox win two World Series. He is a member of the Lauderdale Yacht Club and the Country Club of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His other interests include thoroughbred horse racing, classical music, and the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Mass. which he attends each summer. His heroes include Abraham Lincoln, Simon Bolivar, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Judge Gonzalez is married to Mary Sue Copeland, an attorney in Fort Lauderdale. He has two daughters, Margaret Gonzalez Sires, a Pine Crest homemaker and mother of two boys and one girl, who is married to a lawyer; and Mary Gonzalez Murphy, a former television producer for Channels 7 and 10 in Miami. Mary is also a homemaker in Stuart, Florida, the mother of two daughters, and is married to a retired major league pitcher who now owns and operates a thoroughbred racing stable. His first marriage ended with the death of his wife, the former Frances Frierson, in 1981.
Two of his former law clerks have followed him to the bench: Hon. Martin J. Bidwell, Broward Circuit Court, and Hon Janis Keyser, Palm Beach County Court.
