Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Smartphones and the Fourth Amendment
The biggest tattletale in your second-grade class made sure that the teacher and all the students knew if anyone cheated at a game, picked their nose, or cut in front of someone else while waiting in line. The Internet-enabled device in your pocket, the one that you take with you everywhere, is an exponentially… Read More »
Can I Get In Trouble For Possession Of Gabapentin?
It was a normal Florida afternoon. David was driving his Ford truck, with his friend Nova in the passenger seat; the two had been helping Nova’s grandmother move to a new apartment. The police pulled them over because the truck had expired tags and, this being a Florida story, one thing led to another,… Read More »
What Is Habeas Corpus?
On the first day of class, teachers of introductory level Latin classes often ask the students why they chose to study Latin, given that it is no one’s native language, and people alive today who can converse in Latin are few. Almost any conversation that two Latin speakers might have could be more easily… Read More »
How Much Freedom Do You Get When You Are Out on Bail?
Things can easily go from bad to worse at a traffic stop. One minute you are taking in the familiar comforts of South Florida road rage, and the next minute, a police officer has pulled you over and is making all kinds of excuses that innocent things in your car or in your past… Read More »
Traffic Stop Do’s and Don’ts
Most people are at their worst when they are inside motor vehicles. You probably know someone whose vocabulary goes from church lady to shock jock the minute she backs out of her driveway. Even the most mild-mannered people become rage monsters or nervous wrecks when faced with South Florida traffic. It provokes almost everyone’s… Read More »
Extradition Treaties
If you went to elementary school in South Florida, sing along. “Miss Lucy had a baby. She named him Tiny Tim. She put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.” Keep singing until you get to the part about “the lady with the alligator purse.” You have never seen an alligator… Read More »
Twins and Forensic Science
Prolific authors of formula fiction, sometimes euphemistically known as genre fiction, always eventually run out of ideas. Once an author publishes more than about 50 novels, you often find that the plots become increasingly far-fetched, or that they seem like rehashes of novels that the same author wrote decades earlier. An author under pressure… Read More »
The Many Faces of Prosecutorial Misconduct
Unless you have experienced it firsthand, it might seem strange to hear people complain that “It’s not fair” in the context of a criminal prosecution or trial. Isn’t that something that children say when adults try to impose a punishment or stop them from doing something they want to do? Consider that defendants in… Read More »
Meet Iso, the Mega-Opioid Threatening South Florida
Florida is not for the faint of heart. Even the boldest and bravest people are no match for the terrifying sights, sounds, and events that the Sunshine State has in store. In fact, the best way to deal with the horrors of Florida is to put them in perspective by comparing them to something… Read More »
No, You Can’t Pay Your Bail With Drug Money
Police know that there are few scarier experiences than driving along one of South Florida’s delightfully flat roads, just minding your business and enjoying the effects of the evening’s weed, and then an hour later, being in a jail cell-like room in a police station, with a possible prison sentence awaiting you. Some people… Read More »
What Does Research Methodology Have to Do With Your Criminal Case?
The school science fair, with the hallways of your school decked with triptych poster boards explaining the process and results of experiments conducted by students outside of school, are a distant memory, and unless you later sought employment in a scientific field, neither have you. Today, every time you respond to a notification on… Read More »
In Praise of Non-Human Witnesses
These days, machines seize every opportunity to speak on behalf of humans and make decisions on our behalf, and often we simply resign ourselves to it. Google auto completes our search queries, showing us what it wants us to see before we have even completed our thought about what we want to look for. … Read More »
Scopolamine, the Scariest Drug Not to Be Categorized as a Controlled Substance
Schedule I controlled substances are the most illegal drugs in the United States, but the categorization of drugs into the five schedules of controlled substances is not directly related to the risk of death from overdose or adverse effects from the drug. For example, heroin and MDMA are Schedule I controlled substances, and both… Read More »
New Florida Domestic Violence Laws for 2024
Police get calls about domestic violence all the time; some couples and families have such a volatile relationship that the police know which house to go to before the 911 dispatcher even tells them the address. Sometimes the incident turns out to be a tempest in a teacup, where two members of the same… Read More »
Drug Mule Diaries
When you are a kid, your parents, your teacher, and the media send the message that music stars are the coolest thing in the world, and drugs are the scariest. News reports full of police sirens and crime scene tape and “drugs are bad” assemblies in school focus on what drugs will do to… Read More »
Product Tampering – Is It Illegal?
Game shows where contestants answer trivia questions, solve puzzles, or perform athletic feats may seem outdated, but the popularity of reality TV shows about people being horrible to each other never go out of style. If you have no money and no time commitments this summer, you can easily pass the time watching YouTube… Read More »
Latest MDMA Research Fails to Convince FDA to Legalize It
MDMA is awesome; you don’t need to graduate from medical school to know that. If you want to see the wonders of MDMA, just attend any rave and see people who are the age where misanthropy is the essence of cool dancing together and thoroughly enjoying themselves. MDMA is also a Schedule I controlled… Read More »
Facing Insider Trading Charges?
You know you are good at your job when portrayals of it in the entertainment media annoy you. Real doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and teachers are nothing like how Hollywood screenwriters portray them. You know what your Hollywood-created on screen avatar should do in the situation portrayed on screen. And you can think… Read More »
Types of Real Estate Fraud
South Florida is the land of impossibly beautiful edifices that seem to spring up overnight. How many times have you driven past a row of McMansions that was an empty field of dirt the last time you drove down that road, and it was a swamp a year ago? There are no basements in… Read More »
PCP, Embalming Fluid, or Both
Our Miami drug crimes defense lawyer explains how PCP got one of the least appealing drug nicknames, namely embalming fluid, as well as the legal trouble that you can get into for smoking actual embalming fluid. PCP, Another Rejected Pharmaceutical Drug From the Trippy 50s Phencyclidine (PCP) was first synthesized in Germany in 1926. … Read More »