Florida law requires drivers arrested for a DUI to take a breath, urine or blood test if the arrest is lawful and the officer has probable cause to believe you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Defendants may be asked to take more than one test and in…
A scorned paramour who posts nude images or video clips of an estranged ex-lover isn’t likely to deemed great dating material. But as of this moment, they probably won’t face criminal charges, at least in Florida. That is almost certainly going to change very soon. The practice, dubbed “revenge porn,”…
A Fort Lauderdale man arrested for identity theft is accused of heisting the identities of others in order to open store credit cards in both Broward and Palm Beach Counties. The investigation has been ongoing for a full year, since last April, when a Pembroke Pines man reported to police…
The case of Coffey v. Shiomoto involved a woman who was arrested for DUI, pleaded guilty to “wet reckless” (a lesser charge available in California, where this case originated) and then fought to have her administrative license suspension vacated. Similar to what happens in Florida, a person arrested in California…
Several sociologists, psychiatrists and law school professors have in recent years sought to answer the question of whether a defendant’s perceived matters in criminal cases. For example, the “Capital Jury Project in South Carolina,” by researchers of law at Cornell University delved into the issue of remorse in capital murder…
Dozens of cases linked to allegedly racist former ex-Fort Lauderdale police officers have been dropped by prosecutors, according to recent news reports. As of this writing, 12 felonies, 19 misdemeanors and one juvenile case had been dropped, while another 20 were being analyzed. Each of these cases had one thing…
There are tens of thousands of Floridians currently under community control – also known as probation – following conviction for a crime. The standard terms of this control usually involve some type of regular meeting with a probation officer, no contact order with the victim, potentially a restitution order, routine…
Most people view domestic violence as a kind of misdemeanor crime that can fairly easily be overcome in court, as the accusations are largely he-said-she-said. Sometimes, this is true. And it’s also true that a lot of allegations get overblown as a result of statements made in the intensity and…
A criminal grand theft case against former rapper Vanilla Ice (AKA Robert Matthew Van Winkle) has been dropped in a plea deal recently approved by a Palm Beach County judge. Police in Latana had arrested the former “Ice Ice Baby” rapper after it was alleged he had stolen a pool…
We typically don’t think of speeding as an infraction for which one could face jail time, let alone an extended prison term – especially if the offending driver wasn’t drunk or under the influence of drugs. And yet, that is what’s happening in a recent case in Boca Raton, in…