Judges›Palm Beach County
Howard Coates, Jr.
Circuit Judge · Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court
Current assignment
Circuit Criminal — Division V
Provenance
- Verified from
- Official court page
- Last verified
- July 5, 2026
30-day recheck scheduled with the source monitor.
Verified rules for this judge's division
Courtesy Copy of Every Speedy-Trial Demand — Division V
Judge Coates requires a courtesy copy of all FILED speedy-trial demands and notices of expiration, and counsel must know when speedy runs at every status check; no unilateral hearing settings.
Out-of-Custody Defendants Appear In Person for Core Events — Division V
Judge Coates requires defendants not in custody to be physically present for plea conferences, arraignments, calendar calls, motion hearings, and trials; Zoom is allowed only for dispositions and status checks.
Proposed Orders Filed BEFORE the Hearing — Division V
Judge Coates inverts the after-hearing norm: proposed orders — including on Motions to Withdraw — are submitted electronically through OLS BEFORE the hearing, in Word.
Ruling intelligence
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.
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.
Research connectors
CourtListener
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LexisNexis
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