Category: Blog

When a person is arrested for a State crime in Florida, he is typically taken before a judge within twenty-four hours of his arrest so that the judge can set the conditions of his release from jail.  That hearing is called a first appearance, and it is governed by Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.130. Sometimes, […]

In the case of Wiles v. Bagley, Boyce F. Martin, Jr., a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, stated that "[c]apital punishment in this country remains 'arbitrary, biased, and so fundamentally flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair." In this particular case, Mark Wiles was convicted […]

In the case of Jacobson v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Mr. Jacobson after finding that agents of the federal government entrapped him when they overstepped the line between trapping an unwary innocent person and trapping an unwary criminal. In 1984, Mr. Jacobson ordered two magazines and a brochure from […]

         In the case of Jacobson v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Mr. Jacobson after finding that agents of the federal government entrapped him when they overstepped the line between trapping an unwary innocent person and trapping an unwary criminal.          In 1984, Mr. Jacobson ordered two magazines and a brochure from […]

In the two cases of United States of America vs. Powers and United States of America vs. Buckius, both Mr. Powers and Mr. Buckius were indicted for failing to register as sex offenders as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (otherwise known as "SORNA").  After being indicted, both defendants filed motions asking […]

I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new website for my law firm, the Florida Criminal Records FAQ. The purpose of this new website is to answer many basic questions about criminal records in Florida, with an emphasis on how to seal or expunge such records. Here is a sample of some of the […]

          DNA profiling is a method used by forensic scientists to help identify a criminal suspect based upon his unique genetic code.  If you watch some of the crime-scene shows that appear frequently on television, you would think that DNA profiling is infallible.  (In fact, one prosecutor in a case that I tried referred to […]

          On February 23, 2009, I posted an article on this site entitled Why Florida Jurors Are Rarely Allowed to Hear Evidence of Previous False Accusations.  In that article, I discussed two Florida cases, Pantoja v. State of Florida and Washington v. State of Florida, both of which held that jurors should not have been […]

          In many criminal cases, the evidence presented at trial boils down to one witness accusing the person on trial of committing an illegal act.  For example, in some rape cases, the prosecution's main evidence consists of the alleged rape victim's testimony that the accused individual is the man who raped her.  It sometimes happens, though, […]

          Wayne R. Lafave, a noted criminal-law scholar, has said that "there is no dispute that [police searches based upon consent] affect tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people every year."  That being the case, it is not surprising that the United States Supreme Court has, over the years, addressed the lawfulness […]