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He had been in and out of hospitals for years, his family said, and had become blind.

Baxter presided over traffic court for most of his 18 years as a county judge. He gained a reputation of being an innovator in making the court system accessible to all, and for his witty, to-the-point remarks to lawyers and defendants.

”He always said he loved being on the bench that was closest to the people,” said Gerald Schwartz, a friend and longtime political consultant.

Schwartz helped Baxter come up with the campaign slogan, ”Put a mensch on the bench,” a nod to Miami’s Jewish community. Mensch is a Yiddish word for someone who does good deeds.

‘He floated it out to me and said, `What do you think?’ ” Schwartz said. “I told him I thought it would work. It was a campaign tactic so people would know he was Jewish, even though the name Baxter isn’t readily identifiable.”

Among Baxter’s most recognizable legacies is the use of closed-circuit television to arraign people who had recently been arrested. The judge wanted to reduce the cost and security of bringing prisoners from the jail to the court for their first hearing.

His solution: Set up video cameras in the jail and pipe the feeds onto television monitors in the courtroom. The system is used today in courtrooms across the country.

Baxter also was instrumental in getting an ATM installed in the North Dade Justice Center so people with suspended licenses could withdraw cash, pay their fines and reapply for driving privileges without having to leave the court.

He was a stickler for obedience to driving laws, often lobbying for harsher DUI punishment and coming down hard on motorists who ignored court-ordered license suspensions. Baxter would also send undercover officers into the courthouse parking lot to arrest people who tried to drive away after having their license taken away in court.

”People would go sit in his court just to hear what he was going to say,” said his son Kenneth Baxter, a Fort Lauderdale real estate attorney. “He always ruled with fairness and integrity — always.”

On Halloween night in 1990, Judge Baxter shot at two robbers who burst into his northeast Miami-Dade County home. The judge hit one of them with a bullet from his .22-caliber pistol. The men were arrested and sentenced to prison.

Several years later, in 1995, Baxter began a downward spiral of health problems that his family attributed to his use of the now banned diet drug fen-phen. He retired in 1996, two years before the end of his term, and spent his last few years at an assisted-living center in Plantation, near his son.

Baxter, a Korean War veteran, is also survived by son Mitchell, sister Zelda Hymowitz, grandchildren Jonathan and Rachel, and former wife Elaine Bachenheimer.

Services will be held at noon today at Levitt Weinstein’s Beth David Memorial Gardens, 3201 NW 72nd Ave., Hollywood.