St. Petersburg Times, Oct 3rd, 1965
Five years ago no one had ever heard of Paul Antinori Jr. Today he’s one of the most argued about men in Florida. Elected Hillsborough County state attorney last year by a razor-thin margin (617 votes) Antinori quickly became one of Tampa’s most controversial — and in some quarters, popular — public officials. In less than a year, he:
Banned all gambling at the Florida State Fair, including those phony “skill”
games that officials had in the past permitted.
Went into court against the
book “Candy” a sex satire he considered obscene.
Stirred up a storm of
controversy by refusing to release any details of a murder he had announced as
“closed” when the murdered woman’s husband committed suicide.
Refrained from
asking the death penalty, for the killer of a Tampa policeman, an action which
drew heavy fire from the policeman’s widow.
Permanently banished reporters of
the Tampa Tribune, Tampa Times, and WFLA-TV from his office.
This last action brought the 30-year-old state attorney his most recent headlines, winning him both friends and enemies. He states his case: “They refuse to recognize that a man is not to be tried in the newspapers. He is to be tried in court. They want to print all the evidence before the trial.” When he elaborates, he unconsciously offers the opposition case as well as his own: “The newspapers will not respect my judgment and the police’s judgment about what should be splashed around in the paper.” No self-respecting newspaper would let a public official tell it what to print or not to print. Whatever the arguments, newsmen will agree with Antinori on one point: “This thing seems to have aroused people.”
Paul Antinori has a flair and intensity that would arouse people anyway. Grandson of an Italian immigrant who was gunned down in gangland fashion in Tampa 25 years ago, he has had to live down a family notoriety that would have been a tremendous handicap to a lesser man. His father and an uncle served time in federal prison on a narcotics charge in the 1940s and in 1953 his Uncle Joe was murdered in an Ybor City bar by a hired killer. His father, Paul Sr., opened an appliance store when he got out of prison and won a reputation as an honest, hard-working citizen. “I idolize my father” young Paul says. “His every breath was devoted to me – to making something of me. I am what I am today because of my dad.”
His father interested him in the law as a profession, and he says today he never considered being anything but an attorney. He excelled as a debater in high school and college. Criminal law always interested him, he recalls, but it was a while before he could engage in it. After earning a law degree at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. he joined Fowler, White, Gillen, Humkey & Trenam, a highly respected Tampa law firm that doesn’t take criminal cases. Most of Antinori’s time was spent defending insurance companies against damage claims. Then the family of a Tampa photographer accused of murder asked Antinori to defend him, and the firm let him take the case. It was a sensational trial, and perhaps the turning point in Paul Antinori’s life. He won a verdict of innocent for the photographer, and in the process bested then State Attorney Paul Johnson in courtroom combat. More criminal cases came his way, and the Fowler-White firm broke tradition to let Paul handle them. He won almost all of them.
Antinori says he didn’t plan to run for state attorney until February of last year. His early registration shows no inclination to run for office in his strongly Democratic county. He was registered as a Republican for nearly four years before switching parties in March, 1960. Those were Eisenhower years, Antinori notes.
One of his first actions after taking over the $21,000-a-year job was to clean up the state fair, an action which won praise from almost everyone. State Secretary of Agriculture Doyle Conner has said the fair would have had to be moved elsewhere without the action, Antinori reports. The court suit to take “Candy” off bookstands proved more controversial Antinori says he took action only after a school teacher and deputy sheriff complained to him that the book was being circulated throughout junior high and high schools. The suit ended when the distributor voluntarily took the book off Tampa newsstands but Antinori notes two Pennsylvania courts have since ruled the book obscene.
One of his complaints with the Tampa newspapers concerns stories about his stand on capital punishment. The state attorney says he is against capital punishment not on moral grounds but because “capital punishment serves no logical or useful purpose in today’s world. It’s an anachronism.” But he notes that even some prosecutors who believe in capita1 punishment don’t ask juries for he death penalty as of matter of trial technique. “Actually, the prosecutor need not say anything about it. The jury is instructed on the law by the court.” So Antinori doesn’t mention, the subject “as a matter of trial technique, as a matter of trial approach, and because I do not believe it is the prosecutor’s job to tell the jury what the penalty should be.”
But, he complains: “The newspapers made the public believe that I told the jury I did not believe in the death penalty.” That isn’t so. Antinori says his family’s old legal difficulties make him more understanding but not any more sympathetic to people who run afoul of the law: “I understand both sides of the picture better. I have a greater understanding of the anti-social mind.”
His battle with the Tampa newspapers has caused him to step up his speaking
schedule, and he often speaks to three or four luncheon groups a week.
This is necessary, he claims, because the newspapers “don’t print the news as it
happens. They slant the news to make me look silly.” It’s reached the
point where Antinori’s name doesn’t even appear in the Tampa papers’ news
columns. Quite apart from the papers’ view of him, insiders who are
watching his battle with the major communications outlets of his city are
fascinated. They think Paul Antinori is either incredibly foolhardy or
very brave. You can get an arguement either way.