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County Judge · Manatee County Court
What applies in this courtroom
320 verified requirements and 6 rule deadlines govern practice before Judge Melissa Gould across the judge, division, county, circuit, and statewide layers.
The tabs below show the judge-and-division layer only. The Full Premium Report assembles the complete stack — every requirement, deadline table, ruling intelligence, live case-type scan, and source appendix in one cited document.
Your first 7 Judge Intelligence Reports are free with a free account — no payment card required.
County Criminal Division 4 — Manatee County
County Criminal Division 4.
Verified 2026-08-02: this circuit publishes NO judge portraits. The 1st's Sanity CMS judge documents carry no image field at all (38 checked via the content API), and the 12th's Judges page serves only a logo, an email-signature graphic and an Adobe button. The missing photo is a court fact, not a harvest gap.
Captured verbatim from the court's own published pages and orders during circuit verification. Chambers practices change without notice — confirm anything time-critical with the judicial assistant. Procedural information only; not legal advice.
Appeals from this courtroom go to the Second District Court of Appeal (St. Petersburg).
● LiveThat court's published bench (15): Andrea Teves Smith, Anthony K. Black, Craig C. Villanti, Daniel H. Sleet, Edward C. LaRose, J. Andrew Atkinson, John Guard, Matthew C. Lucas, Morris Silberman, Nelly Khouzam, Patricia J. Kelly, Robert Morris, Stevan T. Northcutt, Susan H. Rothstein-Youakim
30-day recheck scheduled with the source monitor.
This tab lists judge-and-division rules only, and this judge's division publishes its practice at the county, circuit, and statewide layers instead — 320 verified requirements still govern this courtroom. The Full Premium Report assembles every one of them, cited.
See all 320 in the Full Premium Report →No judge-level deadline on record runs shorter than a statewide deadline with the same trigger. The sentinel compares quoted timing across every published rule scoped to this judge on each visit — a clean result today is re-earned tomorrow.
No judge-scoped deadlines on this tab. Deadlines are extracted only when the source rule text states them — we never infer or calculate dates the rule does not explicitly contain. 6 rule deadlines apply in this courtroom across all layers — assembled with citations in the Full Premium Report.
Timing shown here is quoted from the rule text. Compute your actual date against the court's calendar and the rule itself — not legal advice.
No verified ruling summary yet. BenchPath generates ruling summaries from opinion and docket corpora (CourtListener where covered) and publishes them only after human review — fabricated judicial analytics are exactly what this platform refuses to ship.
Use the live case-law search below to see what exists for this judge today.
How Florida’s appellate courts disposed of the 12 opinions in BenchPath’s corpus (October 14, 2022–December 12, 2025) that name this judge as the lower-tribunal judge — the courts’ own disposition labels, counted verbatim. This is a census of the appellate record we hold, not a complete case history, an affirmance rate, or a performance rating.
Florida appellate and Supreme Court opinions naming this judge as the lower-tribunal judge, taken verbatim from each court’s official slip opinion (source-hashed). Descriptive record, not a rating.
TAWANNA MARQUETTA WASHINGTON vs STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
No rule-level sources registered yet — judge-level provenance is listed in the Overview tab.
Research connectors
CourtListener
● liveFree Law Project
Free. Opinions, dockets, RECAP, judge metadata. Powering the case-law search on this page.
Westlaw
○ bring your licenseThomson Reuters
Bring your firm's license — enterprise connector queries your judge and related cases inside Westlaw. Phase 2.
LexisNexis
○ bring your licenseRELX
Bring your firm's license — enterprise connector for Lexis+ research tied to your matter. Phase 2.
BenchPath never scrapes licensed databases. Westlaw and LexisNexis connect only through your firm's own credentials and entitlements when the enterprise connectors ship.
No source changes detected for this judge yet — when the underlying court pages move, it shows up here first.
Jurisdiction per § 35.043, Fla. Stat. (six-district alignment eff. Jan. 1, 2023).
Rowe v. State of Florida
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Authored Opinion
JASON THOMAS DISHAROON vs STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
STEVEN WASHINGTON VS STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
LANDEROS v. STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
NANCY L. BLOSSER vs STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Murray v. State of Florida
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
STEVEN WASHINGTON VS STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
THISTLE v. STATE OF FLORIDA
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
Lightner v. State of Florida
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
Rainey v. State of Florida
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
Willard v. State of Florida
Second District Court of Appeal · Manatee County
Disposition (court’s label): Appeal - Per Curiam Affirmed
Answer three quick questions. The platform pulls Melissa Gould's full public case-law record from the source, newest first — your matter never narrows the pull; it directs the relevance ranking and the dual-AI analysis. Every hit comes back Bluebook-cited with the opinion's own words quoted verbatim. The scan takes the time precision takes.
Case-law search
CourtListener · free connector · liveCoverage note: CourtListener is strongest for federal courts and state appellate courts. Florida circuit-court opinions are sparsely represented — an absence of results is a coverage gap, not evidence about this judge.