People in the U.S. have a number of Constitutional rights that ensure (among other things) due process as they go about their lives. One of those, as outlined in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. It has long been established that…
A recent decision by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals makes it clear that police have the right to stop you for license plate framing that obstructs ANY portion of the words on the plate. That means police have yet one more reason to initiate traffic stops (which can lead…
The U.S. Department of Justice, as well as the FBI, made an official acknowledgement that almost every examiner in the FBI’s elite forensic unit provided testimony that was inherently flawed in nearly all trials wherein they offered evidence against defendants in criminal cases for more than 20 years prior to…
Over the last several decades, the American criminal justice system has relied increasingly on forensic testing to definitively identify suspects, nail down timelines and prove or disprove theories about what happened and who was involved. However, there is an increasing amount of data showing that some of these methods are…
Florida Senate committee members unanimously voted on a measure that would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences in 118 crimes where such requirements currently exist. Members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee say mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, a holdover from all those “tough-on-crime” initiatives, passed SB 290, which gives judges more discretion…
One boy is a ninth-grader who is just 15. Another is a 16-year-old girl and another just turned 18. All three are facing charge that could put them behind bars for many years. Detectives say the teens are involved in nearly a dozen cases of alleged assault, battery, carjacking and…
Concerns about due process violation have been raised with the increasing use of a form of technology that conducts “probabilistic genotyping” as opposed to the regular DNA testing that has long been used as evidence in criminal cases. One example of this offered by ProPublica, a non-profit, Pulitzer prize-winning online…
The so-called, “War on Drugs” has been an irrefutable failure in so many respects, to the point many states and municipalities have been actively working to de-criminalize possession of marijuana and related non-violent offenses. However, this does not meant that those caught with the substance can expect a break. The Marijuana…
A South Florida domestic violence arrest recently led to a reportedly huge break in a 26-year-old cold case. Joseph Zieler, 54, was arrested in August for allegedly shooting his adult son with an rifle. His was not seriously hurt, but Zeiler was facing a felony charge nonetheless. Because this was a violent…
Three years ago, Florida legislators passed a controversial bill that affected almost every kind of court case in the system – including criminal cases. The change involved the standard to which expert witnesses are held in court. Their expert qualifications, their methodology, their testimony – all of this came under…