Category Archives: Criminal Defense
When Does the Criminal Justice System Give You a Chance to Learn From Your Mistakes?
Everyone makes mistakes, but how closely your mistakes follow you around, and for how long depends on who you are. The consequences of an arrest or a criminal case are one of the many ways that it is expensive to be poor. If you belong to the 99 percent and cannot afford to hire… Read More »
Is Getting Catfished a Crime?
The bad news is that the Internet, with its anonymity and its hyperreality, brings out the worst in everyone. The good news is that almost nothing on the Internet is real. Every time you go to YouTube or Tik Tok to relax for a few minutes after a stressful phone call with a family… Read More »
What Are Nebbia Holds?
If you ever want to distract your elders from giving you unsolicited advice, ask them about the old days and how much simpler life was, specifically, how much less everything cost, and the stories will flow. In the 80s, a box of Lemon Head candies cost 25 cents at any gas station, and a… Read More »
Weapons Charges in the Age of Permitless Carry
If movies like Scarface and the Bad Boys franchise give the impression that everyone in Florida has a gun with them at all times, the news media do not do much to dispel this stereotype. From murders to people brandishing weapons just because they can to traffic stops where the vehicle is full of… Read More »
Failure to Appear in Court
People in their 40s and older have a vague memory of a Disney cartoon where Donald Duck’s nephews skip school and a police officer follows them around, trying to arrest them. In most cases, being absent from school or work will not get you arrested, although it can have plenty of other negative consequences. … Read More »
The Hope Card Program and Florida Domestic Violence Cases
Florida enacted several new laws in 2024, with the goal of preventing domestic violence, and specifically, with the goal of preventing violence-plagued relationships from escalating to the point of serious injury or death. These new laws require additional procedures by the courts and by law enforcement when police respond to domestic violence calls or… Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
The Miranda Warnings and Florida Criminal Cases
Almost everyone has heard a police officer say, “You have the right to remain silent” in a movie or TV show about a criminal case, but they usually don’t show what happens next. Fictional dramas use that phrase, which is part of the Miranda warnings to show that things are getting serious; the police… Read More »
What To Know About Opening Statements
Imagine the opening sequences from the most iconic movies set in Miami. From Scarface to The Birdcage and from One Night in Miami to the Bad Boys series, the first impression the audience gets is that of the beauty and peril of South Florida. The images tell you where the story that is about… Read More »
