A Florida judge assigned Thursday to take over George Zimmerman's case is being described as ambitious and willing to hand down tough sentences.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson got the case after a Florida appeals court on Wednesday granted Zimmerman's request for a new judge.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that Nelson recently sentenced a robber to 27 years in prison after he'd rejected 20 years in a plea deal.

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"You don't mess around with her," Lake Mary attorney Isadore Hyde Jr. told the Sentinel. "She's very nice, very nice. You can tell her what's on your mind on or off the bench, but she will send your a-- away."

Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, had said the judge presiding over his case has made disparaging remarks about him.

The Fifth District Court of Appeal wrote in a decision that Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. should "enter an order of disqualification which requests the chief circuit judge to appoint a successor judge."

The opinion said: "Although many of the allegations in Zimmerman's motion, standing alone, do not meet the legal sufficiency test, and while this is admittedly a close call, upon careful review we find that the allegations, taken together, meet the threshold test of legal sufficiency."

The appeals court ruling was 2 to 1 in favor.

The dissenting judge wrote: "Although the trial court's order clearly manifested an exceedingly strong belief by the trial judge that Zimmerman 'flouted' and 'tried to manipulate' the system, I do not believe the order 'crossed the line' so as to require the granting of this motion."

Read the appeals court ruling (.PDF)

Zimmerman said in the appeal that he feared Lester was biased against him and he wanted a new judge to handle his case.

Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to the killing of Martin 17, in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., saying he acted in self-defense. He remains free on bail.

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Zimmerman's attorney, Mark O'Mara, had argued that Lester should disqualify himself after he said the judge made disparaging remarks about Zimmerman's character and advocated for additional charges against him in setting his $1 million bond in July.

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A Florida appeals court on Wednesday granted George Zimmerman's request for a new judge.

Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, had said the judge presiding over his case has made disparaging remarks about him.

The Fifth District Court of Appeal wrote in a decision that Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. should "enter an order of disqualification which requests the chief circuit judge to appoint a successor judge."

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The opinion said: "Although many of the allegations in Zimmerman's motion, standing alone, do not meet the legal sufficiency test, and while this is admittedly a close call, upon careful review we find that the allegations, taken together, meet the threshold test of legal sufficiency."

The appeals court ruling was 2 to 1 in favor.

The dissenting judge wrote: "Although the trial court's order clearly manifested an exceedingly strong belief by the trial judge that Zimmerman 'flouted' and 'tried to manipulate' the system, I do not believe the order 'crossed the line' so as to require the granting of this motion."

Read the appeals court ruling (.PDF)

Zimmerman said in the appeal that he fears Lester is biased against him and he wants a new judge to handle his case.

Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 death of the unarmed Martin, 17, of Miami Gardens, in a gated community in Sanford, Fla.

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Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty, saying he acted in self-defense. He remains free on bail.

A telephone message left with Zimmerman's attorney, Mark O'Mara, wasn't immediately returned.

O'Mara had argued that Lester should disqualify himself after he said the judge made disparaging remarks about Zimmerman's character and advocated for additional charges against him in setting his $1 million bond in July.

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The arid West Texas community of Lubbock found itself in the national spotlight after a county judge asserted on television that if President Barack Obama is reelected, the country will be under threat of invasion by the United Nations and should brace for a possible civil war.

The comments, made by Lubbock County Judge Thomas Head in a bid to raise local property taxes, have prompted Democrats to call for his resignation. They’ve also generated a busy, and awkward, week for some local Republicans.

"It’s been a weird week," said Carl Tepper, chairman of the Lubbock County Republican Party, who has been deluged by calls from around the country.

"I don’t agree with the tax raise. I don’t agree that the U.N. is invading the U.S. I’m not a conspiracy theorist," Tepper told NBC News Friday. "The great majority of Lubbock, Texas, does not agree with Judge Head on this issue."

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The furor started on Tuesday evening when Head appeared on a local Fox television station to drum up support for a 1.7 percent tax increase to bolster the county budget. Head’s comments veered into his concerns about civil unrest in the event of Obama’s election to a second term.

"He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N., and what is going to happen when that happens?" Head said. "I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy."

"Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ’em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say, 'You’re not coming in here'."

On Wednesday, Head said his remarks were taken out of context, and he meant them as a worst-case scenario, according toa report in Lubbock Avalanche Journal. 

He did not respond to NBC calls for comment. 

At a news conference on Thursday, Kenny Ketner, chairman of the Lubbock County Democratic Party charged that Head’s impartiality as a judge had been violated as a result of the comments, according to the Journal report. 

"Public officials have greater responsibility not to spout off about conspiracies and extremist fantasies," Ketner said.

"Judge Head’s statements on the United Nations invasion raise serious questions about his mental competency to hold elected office," according to the Texas state Democratic chair Gilberto Hinojosa, cited by a report in the Houston Chronicle.

Head’s comment is "not only ridiculous, it’s dangerous. It’s crystal clear that Judge Head should resign," Hinojosa added.

Head's is an elected county judge; his position is not slated for a vote until 2014. 

Tepper, of the Lubbock Republican Party, said he does not expect efforts for Head’s removal to gain any traction.

He said that while most people disagree with Head’s comments, there are concerns about federal policies that affect Lubbock, a community 300 miles west of Dallas that relies heavily on ranching and oil.  

"I have had a lot of people who are concerned with the Obama administration and their national environmental agendas," said Tepper. "This is an energy part of the country. When drilling is limited (by regulations) and the use of coal is limited, that is of great concern to the voters and the people of West Texas."

But he said Lubbock, Texas, was really "Lubbock, America," a nice family oriented community that has oil, cotton and cowboys, as well as sophistication and a diverse set of views. 

"We are very conservative, but I want to stress we have respect for the president, and for the federal government," Tepper said. "If we don’t like the president, we will try to beat him in the voting booth."

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Law experts are taking issue with a Virginia legislator’s comment that “sodomy is not a civil right” in explaining why he opposed a gay prosecutor’s bid to become a judge.

Virginia GOP delegate Bob Marshall spearheaded the effort to block Tracy Thorne-Begland, an openly gay prosecutor in Richmond, from becoming a judge, saying the attorney’s past activism and outspokenness on gay rights could bias his decisions on the bench.

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The Virginia House of Delegates this week voted to reject Thorne-Begland’s bid to  become a general district court judge in Richmond.

Speaking Thursday on CNN’s “Starting Point,” Marshall expounded on his reasoning.

“Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks never took an oath of office that they broke. Sodomy is not a civil right,” he said.

Marshall argued that Thorne-Begland’s past advocacy of gay rights would interfere with his neutrality on the bench, particularly in cases involving homosexuals. “He can be a prosecutor if he wants to, but we don't want advocates as judges," Marshall said.

William Eskridge, a Yale Law School professor and author of “Dishonorable Passions,” a book about the history of sodomy laws in America, rejected the contention that sodomy isn’t a civil right. He pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which struck down the criminal sodomy law in Texas – and by extension, other states – as unconstitutional.

“The Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence that anal or oral sex, commonly known as sodomy, when performed in private by consenting adults, is constitutionally protected -- which makes it a civil right,” Eskridge said.

Video: Conservative group targets 'Harvey Milk Day'

Though the Lawrence case involved two gay men arrested for having sex in one of the men’s apartment, Eskridge noted that the protection applied equally to heterosexuals, since the overwhelming majority of cases of sodomy occur between men and women.

“The representative has the same civil right as the gay prosecutor,” Eskridge said of Marshall.

“That is something you have a constitutional right to do. Adults have that right without being subject to criminal punishment,” agreed Kim Forde-Mazrui, a University of Virginia School of Law professor.

Mazrui also took issue with Marshall’s suggestion that Thorne-Begland’s sexual orientation could hamper his impartiality as a judge.

“If you mean that people are always biased in favor of members of their own group then that would suggest that a straight male or a white judge could not be impartial in a case involving a crime between a straight and a gay person, a man and woman, or a white and black person -- which would render most judges and juries suspect by his conception,” Mazrui said.

“I think that kind of categorical presumption is misguided and there’s no support for that,” added Theodore Ruger, a law professor the University of Pennsylvania. “Many judges -- most famously judges like Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg --  were well-known advocates before taking the bench and they went on to distinguished careers.”

Thorne-Begland, a former fighter pilot who lives with his partner and two adopted children, came out as a gay Naval officer 20 years ago to challenge the military's now-defunct "don't ask don't tell" policy, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The announcement triggered his honorable discharge from the Navy. He has spoken out frequently on gay rights since then.

His boss, Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring, has said Thorne-Begland “would have been an outstanding judge.”

“It's hard to think about what happened in the General Assembly and not conclude that it's a form of bigotry,” Herring told reporters on Tuesday.

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Critics denounced a vote Tuesday by Virginia lawmakers rejecting a gay prosecutor for a judgeship in the state’s capital, saying the representatives were on the “wrong side of history” and pushing a “form of bigotry,” according to local local media reports.

Tracy Thorne-Begland, a prosecutor for 12 years in General District Court in Richmond, was the only one of more than three dozen judicial nominees who failed to win approval from the House of Delegates, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The final tally was 33 for and 31 against, while 36 either didn’t vote or abstained. Fifty-one votes were needed to approve.

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Thorne-Begland’s nomination for the bench in the same court where he was a prosecutor came under scrutiny last week after the Family Foundation of Virginia, Republican Delegate Robert G. Marshall and others said they opposed his nomination because of his candor on gay rights. They said they didn’t object to him because of his sexuality, The Washington Post reported.

“He holds himself out as being married,” Marshall said, according to the Post. In Virginia, where gay marriage is not legal, he said Thorne-Begland’s “life is a contradiction to the requirement of submission to the (state) Constitution.”

But Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring described the decision as an “embarrassment” for Virginia that cast “a definite pall on the state,” and said Thorne-Begland would have done a great job.

“It's hard to think about what happened in the General Assembly and not conclude that it's a form of bigotry,” Herring told reporters, the Times-Dispatch reported.

"We are on the wrong side of history," said Democratic Sen. A. Donald McEachin, of the rejection. "This is not our finest hour."

Thorne-Begland told the Times-Dispatch after the vote: "I look forward to continuing to serve the citizens of the city of Richmond and the great Commonwealth of Virginia."

Thorne-Begland announced he was a gay Navy officer some two decades ago on the television program “Nightline.” That led to an  honorable discharge for the decorated officer under the military's former "don't ask, don't tell," policy, according to the Times-Dispatch.

That policy, repealed in 2010, banned gay men and women from serving openly in the military.

The Virginia assembly’s decision came a week after North Carolina voting down gay marriage while President Barack Obama became the country’s first president to support same-sex unions. A Gallup poll released last Tuesday found that 50 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage while 48 percent were opposed. It was the second time that at least half of Americans had backed same-sex marriage.

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Seminole County Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler took herself off George Zimmerman's second-degree murder case on Wednesday because of a possible conflict of interest.

The new judge on the case is Judge Kenneth Lester Jr., a 15-year veteran who has heard death penalty cases, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Zimmerman, 28, is charged with second-degree murder for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, 17, during a scuffle in a gated community in Sanford, Fla.

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Zimmerman, a block watch volunteer, has pleaded not guilty, claiming it was self-defense.

The killing of Martin on Feb. 26, and a long delay in an arrest or charges in the case, sparked protests across the nation as well as emotionally charged debate about race relations and self-defense laws.

Martin is black, and Zimmerman is white and Hispanic.

Special Prosecutor Angela Corey ordered Zimmerman’s arrest and filed charges last week. Recksiedler was assigned to the case at that time.

Recksiedler is on a temporary assignment for the Florida Supreme Court.

Zimmerman is being held in Seminole County Jail while he awaits a bail hearing, scheduled for Friday. That hearing will decide if Zimmerman will be released on bail pending trial, and the amount of money he would need to post.

“The goal is to have a new judge in place in order to make that hearing,” Michelle Kennedy, court spokeswoman, told msnbc.com on Wednesday.

Zimmerman’s defense attorney, Mark O'Mara, on Monday requested that Recksiedler surrender the case because of a conflict of interest. Her husband is a partner in a law firm that includes Mark NeJame, an attorney who provides on-air analysis of the case for CNN. Zimmerman’s family also had approached NeJame about representing him, but NeJame declined.

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A lawyer for former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky vowed to seek a dismissal of child sex abuse charges against his client after a judge on Tuesday refused to force prosecutors to provide more details on the allegations.

Judge John Cleland rejected attorney Joe Amendola's request for more information such as exact dates of the purported molestations, details that Amendola said were crucial to building a defense against 52 counts of sexual abuse.

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Instead the judge in Pennsylvania's Centre County Court sided with prosecutors, who said they had already extracted as much information as possible from the accusers, described by prosecutor Joe McGettigan as "very troubled children" who were now adults.

"If the victims were capable of providing detail ... we would have done so," McGettigan said.

Several of the accusers allege in court documents the abuse occurred over several years, including one who said it began when he was 8 and lasted six years.

"Any order directing the Commonwealth to supply details would be a futile act since the Commonwealth has explained it cannot supply the details requested," the judge wrote, using Commonwealth to refer to the state.

In response, Amendola said he will seek a dismissal of the charges.

Amendola told reporters on Monday he believed Sandusky's right to due process was being violated.

Sandusky, who has maintained his innocence, is under house arrest. Jury selection in his trial is set to begin in mid-May.

The sex abuse scandal rocked the world of college football and led to the dismissal of Penn State's legendary coach Joe Paterno and University President Graham Spanier.

The university's Board of Trustees said both men showed a "failure of leadership" in not doing more when alerted to suspicions of child sexual abuse by Sandusky.

In a statement on Monday, Paterno’s family blamed the Board of Trustees for not conducting a thorough investigation of the sex-abuse scandal and said they had changed their story about the reason's for Paterno’s firing.

"The tough questions that have yet to be addressed relate not to Joe Paterno, but to the board. Two months ago, as Joe Paterno was dying, the board conducted a series of media interviews condemning him for 'moral' failures. Now they are trying a different tack and accusing him of 'leadership' failures,” the statement, quoted in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, said.

Paterno, who was head coach at the football powerhouse for 46 years, died of lung cancer on Jan. 22.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Note to thieves. If you steal a nameplate from a judge, don't let anyone post a picture of you holding it on Facebook.

Authorities in South Florida say that's exactly what led to the arrest Thursday of 21-year-old Steven Mulhall on violation of probation charges.

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Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that Mulhall pried the $40 nameplate from the courtroom door of Broward Circuit Judge Michael Orlando while making a court appearance. He says Mulhall has multiple petty theft convictions and now faces felony charges.

"The nameplate is like only $40, not that big of a crime, but what an idiot. He puts it on Facebook," Lamberti told the Palm Beach Post.   "Here he is flaunting it on Facebook. He violated the terms of his parole by stealing, from a judge he appeared before, no less. He's got multiple convictions for petty theft, so now this is a felony."

Girlfriend’s Facebook page
Deputies picked up Mulhall, Lamberti added, after verifying the suspect had appeared before Judge Orlando. The judge's nameplate was pried from the door around Feb. 23, according to the arrest report. A tip to Broward County Crime Stoppers led authorities to Mulhall.

"The tipster gave us his address, name and the Facebook page," Lamberti told the paper. The picture reportedly was found on Mulhall’s girlfriend's Facebook page. The girlfriend's name was Natalie ComaToze Segura, according to arrest records.

The nameplate will be returned to the judge. A phone number wasn't available for Mulhall.

Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report from The Associated Press.

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When the end of a longtime relationship cost artist Danica Phelps her home, she used her creative energies to chart the troubled period in her life. The result: A work of art that incorporates an eight-page court ruling that she says pushed her down the path toward foreclosure.

Titled "The Cost of Love," the 25-panel piece weaves 350,000 tiny red-hued stripes -- in shades of cherry, burgundy, peach  and pink – together with words from the ruling, including "animosity," "eviction," "mortgage," "girlfriends," "child," "donor" and "insemination."

"This is the whole decision represented in these panels," Phelps, 40, said recently at Brennan & Griffin, the art gallery that represents her and is showing her work in Manhattan's Lower East Side neighborhood through Sunday. "I didn't want my emotion to be represented. What I wanted was to put out this word for word and to allow the viewer to have their own emotional reaction to it."

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Phelps, who has used similar striping in previous pieces, said the genesis of her latest creation occurred in 2009, when her relationship with an ex-girlfriend unraveled and she decided to move out of the four-unit apartment building she owned in New York.

After moving in with relatives and unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her ex to move out of the apartment they had shared for three years, Phelps initiated eviction proceedings. 

Once a family
But on June 2, 2010, Housing Court Judge Laurie L. Lau dismissed the case. Because Phelps and her ex-girlfriend had been a “familial unit” when they moved in together and jointly parented a now 3-year-old-boy named Orion born to Phelps through artificial insemination, Lau wrote, the latter was not subject to eviction under New York City law.

"While their relationship has obviously deteriorated into one of animosity and hostility, the evidence establishes the parties had intended to form a lasting familial unit,” the judge said. “It has been held that 'lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence,' ... satisfy the definition of 'family' for purposes of the Rent Stabilization Code."

Irishman makes 'billion-euro home' from old notes to protest economic 'madness'

Phelps then decided to stop paying the mortgage on the apartment building, which is now in the midst of foreclosure. A real estate agent is trying to help her arrange a short sale (an agreement between a lender, a buyer and a seller in which the lender agree to accept less than the total loan) to avoid that.

She calculates her financial loss at $350,000, hence the number of red stripes in her artwork.

"I know that this show sounds like it’s about the cost of having been in that relationship, but what the meaning is to me actually is the cost of maintaining Orion's happiness and his future," she said of her son. "If I have to lose the house ... I feel like it's actually a small price to pay."

$26 a letter
To make the panels – each of which represents one paragraph of the court decision -- Phelps first counted the numbers of the letters in the text – approximately 13,000 -- and divided 350,000 by that number. That worked out to $26 a letter.

She then took large pieces of paper and drew lines according to the value of each word.

For example, a 13-letter word would be worth $338, and thus would be followed by 338 stripes. She glued words from the judge’s ruling on large pieces of paper and painted the lines around them, using a mix of watercolor and gouache – a form of watercolor with more pigmentation.

The foreclosure crisis, Beverly Hills-style

She then cut the paper into rows and glued them onto birch plywood. At the bottom of each panel is the "cost" represented and the paragraph it represents from the ruling.

Phelps, who had other artists help her with some of her earlier stripe art, said she wanted to do this one herself, even though it took her five months to finish it.

“I felt like each stripe should be painted by me,” she said with a sigh. “It's like letting go of the house, every single penny of it. And once I’ve painted it, it's gone."

She said she found the process peaceful and healing, though some viewers don’t get that sense when they view it.

"People have said, 'Oh it's so dark … all that red is so angry,'” she said. “I look in here and it's glowing to me. … I feel like I accomplished what I set out to, which is to turn something that was depressing to me into something very beautiful."

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A Pennsylvania judge faces criminal charges for allegedly dismissing traffic tickets against herself that included expired registration on her BMW, the state's attorney general said on Monday.

Magisterial District Judge Kelly Ballentine, 43, of Lancaster, faces conflict of interest, tampering with public records and obstruction charges in the case, Attorney General Linda Kelly said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

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Lancaster police issued two tickets to Ballentine in November 2010 for parking violations in front of her home. She got a third ticket for out-of-date registration on her BMW sedan, the statement said.

Ballentine failed to pay the tickets on time and summonses were mailed to her. The judge then accessed the online court system records and dismissed the summonses, which had been issued in her name, it said.

Ballentine was arraigned on Monday and released on $25,000 bond, the statement said.

Ballentine was not immediately available to comment.

According to the Lancaster New Era website, Ballentine was put on paid leave until the criminal charges, nine of which are felony charges, are resolved.

Pennsylvania's judicial conduct rules require judges to disqualify themselves in proceedings where they are a party, the Lancaster paper reported.

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