Florida criminal defense attorney

October 28, 2018

Florida Supreme Court Rejects Daubert Expert Testimony Standard

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

In a split 4-3 decision, the Florida Supreme Court soundly rejected the Daubert standard of evidence for expert witness testimony – the one used in federal courts and adopted by many state courts, in favor of the less stringent Frye standard, the older method that prior to 2013 had been the standard in the Sunshine State.

What does this mean for Fort Lauderdale criminal defendants? It will be relevant both for them as well as for plaintiffs in civil cases. The Daubert standard establishes a rule of evidence (found in Federal Rules of Evidence 702) that pertains to the admissibility of an expert witness’s testimony, stemming from the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. It holds that a witness can only be qualified as an expert if he or she has the knowledge, skill, experience, training or education that is considered a baseline to form that opinion. Testimony must meet a specific list of criteria, and the judge acts as the gatekeeper. Those whose opinions fail to meet that proof burden can be excluded.

Frye, meanwhile, is less stringent, considered a general acceptance test for scientific evidence requiring that one’s expert opinion, if based on a scientific technique, can only be admitted where that technique is “generally accepted as reliable in the relevant scientific community.” Continue reading

October 15, 2018

Florida Domestic Violence Trial: Must the Victim Testify?

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

In a single recent year, Florida law enforcement agencies received 105,700 reports of domestic violence. More than half of those, 63,200, resulted in an arrest. It’s known to be a relatively under-reported crime, but there are a fair number of cases that go to trial wherein the alleged victim refuses to cooperate or testify. It is a myth that prosecutors cannot move forward on these cases or that they cannot sometimes win them. It often depends on the independent evidence available – and the strategy employed by your Florida domestic violence defense attorney.

Let’s consider the case of Baker v. State, an appeal before Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal back in 2007. Defendant had been convicted of felony battery for accusations that he attacked his girlfriend, who had called 911 to report the defendant had bitten her and took her phone “and stuff.” She said she did not require medical attention. A police officer was dispatched, observing and photographing what appeared to be a small bite mark on victim’s arm.

Would this be enough to secure a conviction? Continue reading

November 30, 2016

Algorithms Replacing DNA Testing in Some Criminal Cases

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

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 publication, was a case out of New York two years ago. Police officers attempted to pull over a vehicle that was operating without headlines. However, they driver and passenger fled on foot. Officers gave chase and then heard a gunshot. Police never actually caught up with the suspects, but they did find a loaded handgun nearby. The car, which had been abandoned, was connected to its owner. Police arrested him, but they couldn’t link him to that gun unless they could secure a DNA match. Unfortunately for them, the DNA that was left on the handgun did not provide a good sample for conventional methods. DNA from at least four or five people was on the weapon. So prosecutors requested an analysis from a company that offers the genotyping software program.

Traditional DNA analysis asks researchers to visually and manually interpret the markers on the sample to determine whether there is a match. This new type of testing runs the information through a computerized algorithm in order to determine the likelihood that a certain individual’s DNA is present in the mixture, when compared to the DNA of a random person. Those who developed the technology insist the results are the best way to remove human bias from the process. However, criticism has arisen about whether this process undermines defendants’ due process. Continue reading