By CHRIS BUTLER

BARTOW — Tenth Judicial Circuit Judge Susan Roberts was probably the one who was going to hear Highlands County capital murder cases involving both Michael Branham and Florida Highway Patrol shooting suspect Joshua Altersberger.

She was also going to hear more capital murder cases stemming from Polk County. 

But not anymore.

State attorneys who filed motions last month asking that Roberts be removed from first-degree murder cases falling within her jurisdiction learned this week that she has been reassigned.

Roberts is currently the only judge hearing first-degree murder cases coming out of Highlands and its surrounding counties.

Tenth Judicial Circuit Spokesman Chip Thulberry said from Bartow Friday that Chief Judge David Langford has reassigned Roberts to family court.

Langford assigns judges within the district to different courts such as criminal, family and probate. Langford said last month that he had no plans to remove Roberts from first-degree murder trials. But he also said at the time that she could be reassigned to another court as part of a normal rotation process.

But both Langford and Thulberry said that the controversy over Roberts had nothing to do with the recent change.

“This is a customary rotation every 18 months or so,” Langford said Friday.

Thulberry said Michael Hunter will assume Roberts’ duties as a capitol murder judge later this year.

State attorneys said they faulted Roberts for a number of things. They include what they said was Roberts’ insensitivity to the families of murder victims and stated opposition to the death penalty in at least one instance.

State attorneys said in documents filed against her that she’s conducted her court in an “inexcusable” manner.

In one case, Roberts told jury members in one trial that she believed the first-degree murder defendant was guilty but she had decided to acquit him because a guilty verdict from the jury “might get overturned on appeal and it would cost the state more money.”

Several Lakeland jurors later criticized Roberts for the decision, with many saying they never would have acquitted the murder suspect. 

During one trial, state attorneys said Roberts told them she would declare a mistrial “if any of the victim’s family members showed ANY emotion during testimony.”

Roberts denied state attorneys’ initial motions that she disqualify herself.

She had spent the past 14 months hearing criminal trials.