Former managing partner involved in Bush v. Gore charged with resisting arrest
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A former managing partner who represented Florida’s secretary of state in Bush v. Gore was arrested at his home last week after he was accused of refusing to open a bedroom door to police officers investigating a report of gunfire.
Police charged South Florida lawyer Joseph Klock Jr., 70, with obstructing justice and resisting arrest without violence, report the Miami Herald and Law.com. Klock was the former managing partner of Steel Hector & Davis before its 2005 merger with Squire Sanders & Dempsey. He is currently a partner with Rasco Klock.
Police who arrived at the home were investigating Antonio Scott, a former student at a reform school for which Klock was board chairman before it closed a decade ago.
Joseph Klock. Photo from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Scott was living at Klock’s home, but he fled before police arrived. Klock often opened his home to people with troubled pasts, according to a friend and colleague, Hilton Napoleon, who spoke to the publications.
Police later arrested Scott for allegedly threating a woman and her daughter with an AK-47 and allegedly attacking them with a baseball bat, according to the Miami Herald.
Klock told the publications that he never resisted arrest, and that the officer who arrested him was “showing off” for his colleagues. His lawyer, Thomas Cobitz, said police arrested Klock because the officers didn’t think he was moving fast enough.
Police said Klock had offered to open the bedroom door but then clenched the key in his hand. As police tried to arrest him, he allegedly yelled: “Don’t f—ing touch me.”
