Accountability group, Barfield seek rehearing of 1st DCA order to expunge Hope Florida presentment

A motion asking the 1st District Court of Appeal to rehear its Oct. 7 opinion ordering the Leon County grand jury presentment from fall 2025 expunged was listed as pending on the court’s online docket Oct. 25, with no response or ruling entered after it.¹ The Florida Center for Government Accountability and Michael Barfield, its executive director, filed the motion, which was e-filed at 11:55 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22.²³

The filing is titled “Intervenors’ Motion for Leave to Appear as Appellees, to Withhold the Mandate and Preserve the Presentment, and for Rehearing, Clarification, Rehearing En Banc, and Certification.” It was filed in Case No. 1D2026-2435, In re: Leon County Grand Jury Presentment, Fall of 2025, and refers to a related case, No. 1D2026-2369.² The center announced the motion Oct. 23 in a press release on the Florida Trident, the newsroom the center publishes, and said a 317-page appendix of public records accompanied it.³

Barbara A. Petersen and Robert Craig Waters represent the center. Barfield is representing himself.²

What the motion asks

The motion asks the court to:²

• Recognize the movants as appellees, address their status as respondents in the related case, and have them served with the filings under confidentiality protections.
• Withhold the mandate and keep the complete presentment and its exhibits preserved under seal.
• Grant rehearing or clarification, including vacating or clarifying the reversal of lower-court orders that protected their participation.
• Alternatively, grant rehearing by the full court under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.331(d).
• Alternatively, certify four questions to the Florida Supreme Court and certify conflict with decisions of other courts.

The grounds it gives

The motion states that the movants were not served with the notice of appeal, the briefs, the record or any order of the appeals court, and that they first knew of the appeal on Oct. 7, the day the opinion was made public.² It says a July 8 circuit court order required the state attorney to notify them of any appeal, and an Aug. 25 writ from the appeals court in the related case barred the state attorney from giving that notice.²

On the law, the motion argues that the opinion’s use of a 1957 Florida Supreme Court decision, State ex rel. Brautigam v. Interim Report of Grand Jury, must be reconciled with the court’s 1977 decision in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Marko and section 905.28, Florida Statutes.² One proposed certified question asks whether people granted limited intervention must be recognized as appellate parties and given notice before orders on their participation are reversed.²

“We are asking the court to hear us before the presentment is gone for good,” Barfield said in the center’s release.³

What the Oct. 7 ruling ordered

According to the motion, the Leon County circuit court granted the two movants limited intervention on March 25, 2026, and on July 29 repressed or expunged about 112 of the presentment’s 116 pages while denying full expungement.²

The Oct. 7 opinion reversed that order to the extent it denied full expungement, remanded with directions to expunge the presentment in full and reversed the orders on notice to the intervenors, the motion says.² The docket lists the Oct. 7 disposition as reversed, with a correction dated Oct. 8.¹ Judge Lance Neff wrote the 19-page ruling, WUSF reported.⁴

What happens next

The movants ask that the mandate be withheld while review continues.² The docket showed the motion’s status as pending as of Oct. 25.¹

What the records do not show

• The text of the Oct. 7 opinion; SignalData did not open it, so its terms are reported as the motion and WUSF describe them.
• Whether any party will respond, or when the court will rule.
• Whether the court will treat the movants as parties.
• The contents of the 317-page appendix, which SignalData did not review.