Former Palm Coast Surgeon John Cascone Again Avoids Felony Conviction Over Abuse, Pleading to Misdemeanors

For the second time in five years, former Palm Coast surgeon John Cascone today pleaded two felony-battery charges to simple battery misdemeanors, avoiding jail and limiting punishment to 24 months of probation, which he may terminate early. The case followed a similar path to one involving Cascone five years ago, with notable differences.

This time, his adjudication was not withheld: he was adjudicated guilty on both charges. And his probation term was doubled, with the two probation terms to be served consecutively.




Cascone, 59, formerly employed by AdventHealth Palm Coast, now lives in Georgia. In August 2019 he was charged with a second-degree felony count of aggravated battery-domestic violence and a third-degree felony count of battery by strangulation in an incident involving his then-43-year-old-wife–his second wife–which he contested throughout. (They had a 5-year-old child in common; she had two other children.) He told authorities that his then-wife had short-term memory issues, an eating disorder and drinking issues and that she had been combative when he was trying to help her after both had returned from an evening out, when they’d been drinking.

But the woman was hospitalized in Jacksonville with a brain bleed, according to the arrest report, and her account in a petition for an injunction was vastly different from Cascone’s.

Nine months later Cascone pleaded out in an agreement that resulted in both charges being dropped and replaced with a simple battery misdemeanor and no conviction: Circuit Judge Terence Perkins withheld adjudication and sentenced him to a year’s probation, which was terminated that December, five months early. State law provides for early termination if the probationer follows all probation rules. The plea agreement also stipulated that the case did not involve domestic violence.   Cascone continued working at the local hospital.




There was to be only limited contact with the victim, who had filed for an injunction against Cascone. Cascone and his wife divorced, and he was limited to seeing his child only through visits at what was then known as Sally’s Safe Haven in Bunnell, where a parent could spend a set amount of time with his or her child under the watch of the haven’s personnel. Each visit was documented in writing and in detail by an employee, down to the conversation between father and child. (“When are you coming home? I really miss you,” the child is quoted as saying in one of their exchanges.)

On Nov. 9, after Cascone had regained some time-sharing custody of the child, Circuit Judge Chris France granted a temporary emergency motion to suspend shared custody. Earlier that week, Cascone had again been arrested at his Colchester Lane house, this time on a charge of aggravated child abuse involving the 15-year-old daughter of the woman he had married three years earlier, as well as a felony battery charge involving the wife. He faced a first-degree felony and a third-degree felony charge. He had pepper-sprayed the 15-year-old child after head-butting the mother, according to an arrest report, and after his then-wife told him, “you’ve hit me three nights in a row.”

the State Attorney’s Office filed two felony battery counts of domestic violence instead, with one prior. Today, those charges were reduced in a negotiated plea to two simple misdemeanor battery counts, this time with an adjudication of guilty and 12 months of probation on each count. He is required to participate in a domestic violence intervention program, have a substance abuse evaluation, and treatment–and no contact with either victims.




He is prohibited from consuming alcohol or drugs and will be subjected to random urinalyses without warrant. He is also prohibited from owning or possessing firearms during the probation term.

Cascone, who was in court today–he stood, in shirt and tie, next to his attorney, John Hager, as he tendered the plea–will transfer his probation requirements to Georgia, where he had moved with his family when he was 6 years old (he was born and raised in his earliest years in Queens, New York.) He has two grown daughter from his first marriage.

A WebMD page lists him as a surgeon at Archbold Memorial Hospital in Thomasville, Ga., though he is not listed among the providers at that facility, on Archbold’s web page. When he signed the deed that completed the sale of his house on Colechester Lane in Palm Coast in January, he listed an address in Marietta, Ga. His third wife, the victim in the case resolved today, signed as the witness on the deed.