A federal appeals court recently took up a case in which a trial court sought to effectively put a man convicted of various child pornography offenses in Florida behind bars for life. The appeals court said that sentence might have been overly harsh, given the unique circumstances of the case.…
The Florida Supreme Court in 2015 clarified its position on when a person can be charged with soliciting sex and traveling after soliciting sex without running afoul of the rule against double jeopardy, which bans multiple convictions for the same crime. In a recent case, Florida’s First District offered some…
To search your phone for evidence of a crime, police officers generally need to get a warrant from a judge or show that they have probable cause to believe that there’s evidence of a crime on the device. Even in cases in which a judge grants a warrant, any evidence…
The rule against hearsay generally bans one person from testifying in court about what another person, like a witness or victim, said outside of court, if it’s being used to prove a fact. In other words, a witness generally can’t testify in court that the victim told him who committed…
Jury selection is a critical part of any Florida criminal trial, including those that involve sex offenses. Lawyers have the opportunity to remove certain people from the jury pool, but judges wield much of the power in determining who makes it into the jury box. In a recent decision, Florida’s…
DNA evidence can play a critical role in Florida sex crime cases, but it also has some limits. In many cases, DNA evidence may confirm that the person charged with the crime and the victim had some sort of sexual contact, but it can’t determine whether that contact was consensual.…
Florida law allows state authorities to involuntarily detain a person who is otherwise free if he or she has been deemed a sexually violent predator. In order to be subject to potential civil commitment under state law, a person must have a criminal history of sexually violent activity. As the…
When sex crime and other criminal cases involve more than one defendant, it can be tough to establish who committed what crime. That’s often made more complicated by co-defendants who turn on one another and blame each other for committing the crimes. A recent case out of Florida’s Fourth District…
Jury instructions are important in any criminal case. They’re particularly critical in cases in which a jury is tasked with deciding whether a person committed a felony or a related misdemeanor offense instead. A recent case out of Florida’s Supreme Court makes clear that judges don’t have the right to…
Electronic evidence like emails and text messages are often at the center of Florida sex crime cases. A recent federal case out of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals is a good example of how that evidence often comes into play. In 2015, an FBI agent responded to a Craigslist…