Steve Cody was once a prestigious lawyer who represented plaintiffs in a historic lawsuit that reformed Miami-Dade government to better reflect minority communities. But then, in 2013, his law license was suspended. In 2020, under stress after his wife’s death, his leg was amputated due to an infection, yet he also won election as a councilman of the Village of Palmetto Bay. Now, he is involved in two ongoing, high-profile lawsuits. One of them involves suing his own village hall.
But after an intemperate social media post calling Charlie Kirk’s murder this week a “fitting sacrifice,” dozens are calling for his resignation, including state attorney general James Uthmeier and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins.
“[Cody] revealed that he can no longer be trusted to serve, lead, nor represent this community,” Higgins wrote on Instagram.
Cody refused to resign, but apologized for the comment. On Facebook, he posted, “I want to state unequivocally that this post did not and does not reflect my personal values, my deeply held beliefs, or my solemn responsibilities as an elected official.”
READ MORE: Miami-Dade Republicans demand Palmetto Bay Councilman resign for remarks on Kirk assassination
For five years, Cody — who declined to comment despite numerous requests by telephone, email and an in-person visit to a village council meeting — serves on the five-seat council of Palmetto Bay, which has struggled with debates such as land development, construction of the Palmetto Bay Village Center and a bridge on SW 87th Avenue.
Last April, Cody sued Vice Mayor Mark Merwitzer and Palmetto Bay, claiming he had been improperly sworn into his role.
“It’s personal contempt for me and spite,” said Merwitzer about Cody’s lawsuit. The two often vote opposite one another. For example, Cody supported and voted for Tanglewood Park, a planned public area with gardens and pathways, while Merwitzer sided with citizens who preferred to buy the land from the county.
“I’ve seen 8-year-olds handle conflict with more grace,” said Aida Marticorena-Crusan, a Palmetto Bay citizen, about Cody. She, like other citizens, worries that Cody’s actions and public comments about his opponents are “plain embarrassing.”
Cody has said he has Palmetto Bay’s best interests at heart, telling WLRN “that [Merwitzer being improperly sworn-in] can impose great liability upon everybody on the council.”
Voters have backed Cody twice in elections. One of his supporters is Arjune Singh, a business professor at Miami Dade College.
“He’s better than the alternative,” said Singh about Cody.
Xavier Suarez, a former Miami mayor, who is now running for the job again, says Cody is a knowledgeable and decent man.
“I like the guy,” said Suarez. “He [is] a unifier… simpatico, if I can use the word in Spanish.”
His golden age
Cody was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, and moved to South Florida as an infant. He attended Florida State University and obtained Bachelor of Science degrees in English and Political Science in 1978, graduated with a Juris Doctor degree in 1981 from the University of Florida and then joined the Florida Bar.
Cody then served as an aide to William “Bill” E. Sadowski, a member of the Florida House of Representatives. He moved to Miami in the early 1980s, when the city was in tumult.
The Mariel exodus had driven more than 100,000 Cubans to Miami-Dade. Tens of thousands of Haitians arrived around the same time.
Back then, Blacks made up 16% of the population and Hispanics were the majority in Miami-Dade, but only one of the nine county commissioners was black and no more than two Hispanics had ever been elected to the position. Voting and political campaigns were racially polarized.
In 1986, minority plaintiffs, including Suarez, then Miami mayor, sued Metropolitan Dade County, requesting better representation. They hired Cody, then 29, as their attorney.
In 1992, U.S. District Court Judge Donald L. Graham agreed with plaintiffs. His historic ruling redrew voting borders, leading to the modern 13 districts. As of 2025, four of the thirteen city commissioners are Black, another is Jamaican-American, and six are Hispanic.
“You will never have peace in a community unless everyone gets to sit at the table,” Cody reflected in an interview with Miami Community News last November. “Everybody at the table is not going to always get what they want, but the fact that they’re there to debate and to argue, sometimes even yell, means that you’re going to have peace in the community. The yelling will happen there and not out on the streets.”
Suarez added about their time working together, “He was a unifying force, very easy to deal with. And lawyers are not generally easy to deal with. They don’t know how to simplify things.”
Financial issues
The same year the Meek case was decided, 1992, Cody moved to Palmetto Bay with his wife, Rita M. Herrera, and two sons. Their third child, a daughter, was born two years later. They paid $195,000 for a 5-bedroom home.
But then came trouble. Starting in 1999, he was sued six times for missing mortgage payments.
Each time, the same story repeated. Companies sued after payments were missed. He repaid. The case was dropped.
Plaintiffs included IMC Mortgage Co. Chase Manhattan Bank, Truman Capital, JPMorganChase, Bank Of New York Mellon Trust, and Benfam Holdings PR LLC.
In 2000, he not only continued his law practice, but became an author. His first book was a political thriller titled Lying in State. In 2012, he released another political thriller, Soulless, and his first children’s book, “There’s an Elephant Following Me!”
But professional problems ensued. Two cases, one involving bounced checks worth about $2,300 and another related to miscommunication with clients, resulted in a one-year suspension of his law license, which was later extended to three.
In 2012, Cody admitted in his guilty plea to the Florida Bar that he had “issued checks that were drawn on a closed personal account, knowing that the account did not have sufficient funds to honor the payment.”
Client funds were not involved, and Cody later paid back the restitution. But the acts reflected on Cody professionally as, per the rules of professional conduct, “a lawyer shall not engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”
Another time, when Cody was defending Hotel Nash LLC in a lawsuit, Cody served an offer of judgment involving attorney fees, without consulting his client. For that, the Florida Bar demanded Cody pay his client back over $12,000, plus administrative fees.
By early August 2014, almost a year after the suspension, Cody had not paid any of the Hotel Nash restitution and on August 21, a day after the deadline passed, Cody answered that he was unable to pay the restitution, though he eventually paid it all back. Still, the incident caused the one-year sentence to be extended to three.
After suspension ends, delinquent bar members are allowed to reapply for their law licenses. But Cody never regained his. His membership lapsed and Cody remains ineligible to practice law in Florida.
Cody became a widower in 2019, when his wife, Rita M. Herrera, passed away. A contemporary obituary in the Miami Herald stated, “It was [in Florida] that she met the love of her life, Stephen Cody, and what started as a summer fling turned into a magnificent relationship that lasted almost 41 years.”
In his interview with Caplin, Suarez sympathized with Cody and lamented Rita’s death. “My wife is named Rita, so I used to always say that was my second favorite Rita in the world.”
The Miami Herald later reported that “one of the reasons he fell into financial trouble was the death of his wife in July 2019 and an infection in his leg that led to an amputation in June 2020. The combined medical costs totaled about $1 million,’ [Cody] said.”
Public jeers and cheers
In 2020, Cody defeated incumbent David Singer in a run for Palmetto Bay village council’s district 2.
The next year, Singer sued Cody for defamation, demanding over $1 million in damages, claiming that Cody had sent an email to Singer’s employer at the time claiming Singer had used company resources for personal business, criticizing Cody on his Facebook Live show.
“I don’t practice law anymore, but I was a trial lawyer for 32 years,” said Cody in his email to Singer’s boss. “I’m a widower with time on my hands. I could bring a lawsuit against your company… It won’t cost me a dime.”
In court documents, Singer alleged he had been let go because of Cody’s comments.
Two years after that lawsuit, Cody and Singer became involved in profane and sometimes obscene back-and-forth exchanges through emails and Facebook, painfully recounted in court records and online.
READ MORE: Village Council drama leaves Palmetto Bay residents paying thousands of dollars
Councilman versus Village Hall
In April 2025, Cody sued Vice-Mayor Merwitzer and Palmetto Bay, claiming that Merwitzer was improperly sworn in after his January election. This would, Cody posited, render all decisions since then legally invalid.
“I live rent-free in his head,” said Merwitzer, who thinks that Cody is motivated by a personal and political grudge, as they often vote on opposite sides of issues that come before the council.
Mayor Cunningham, who formerly supported Cody, declined an interview request and said, “I’m not the mother of the council; everyone there is an adult. Well, almost everyone.”
Cody argues that Merwitzer was not sworn in by an authorized notary. Village Attorney John Dellagloria and Merwitzer contend the process was proper.
An independent legal opinion by Joni Armstrong Coffey, a former county attorney who now works for Akerman LLP law firm, asserts Merwitzer was properly sworn in. Even if he wasn’t, Coffey contends, minor defects in an oath do not legally invalidate service.
Social media post fallout
The property that Cody and his family purchased at 16610 SW 82 Ct. is now empty, refurbished and for sale.
“I am working on getting [mortgage issues] resolved. I am not going anywhere,” said Cody to the Miami Herald in 2021, during a past mortgage lawsuit. “The ground is littered with the bones of people who underestimated me… I am still standing.”
Perhaps the biggest outcry against Cody came last week, when he mocked Kirk in a Facebook post, saying the 31-year-old’s death is “a fitting sacrifice to our Lords: Smith & Wesson. Hallowed be their names.”
Before Cody deleted his Facebook post, it was reposted and criticized by Mostly Peaceful Latinas, local podcasters. Their critique of the comment went viral, with over 120,000 views.
The following day, September 11, Cody apologized for his statement online. But it was too late. Mayor Cunningham and many others — all the way to Tallahassee — called for him to resign.
In an email sent through the village newsletter, Cunningham stated, “I must call for Councilman Cody to step down. The people of Palmetto Bay deserve leadership that reflects compassion, responsibility, and dignity in moments of crisis.”
The same day, Palmetto Bay citizens protested at Village Hall, demanding his resignation too.
This story was originally published by Caplin News, a publication of FIU's Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media, as part of an editorial content partnership with the WLRN newsroom.
