Articles Posted in Probation

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If a person is convicted of a sex crime, their rights may be impacted long after any penalties imposed for the crime are served. For example, sex offenders are often prohibited from entering certain areas where children are present and, in some cases, may be barred from having contact with children altogether. In a recent case decided by the District Court of Appeals of Florida, Fourth District, the court analyzed a court’s jurisdiction to modify the terms of restrictions of probation imposed on a person convicted of a sex crime. If you are a resident of St. Petersburg faced with charges of a sex crime, it is in your best interest to speak with a trusted St. Petersburg sex crime attorney regarding your rights.

Facts Regarding the Underlying Case

It is reported that the defendant was charged with over thirty counts of controlling, possessing, or intentionally viewing photographs depicting sexual conduct involving a child. The defendant pleaded guilty to three of the counts, and the State agreed not to prosecute the remaining counts. The defendant was then sentenced to a term of imprisonment for eighteen months, to be followed by ten years of supervised sex offender probation. One of the conditions of the defendant’s probation was that he was barred from having any unsupervised contact with a child under the age of eighteen.

Allegedly, in 2018, over a year after the probationary sentence was imposed, the defendant filed a motion asking the court to clarify the condition regarding unsupervised contact with a child. Essentially, the defendant’s motion asked the court to remove the condition as a term of his probation so that he could reside with his wife and two minor children following his release from prison. The court held a hearing, after which it granted the defendant’s motion. The State appealed.

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Criminal cases involving juvenile defendants can raise a number of tricky legal questions. Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal recently took up the case of a man who was sentenced to life in prison when he was a minor. The decision offers some important insight for anyone facing criminal charges as a juvenile, whether it’s for a Florida sex crime or another offense.

Defendant was 17 years old when he was charged with first degree murder in 1973. He eventually pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Defendant got that parole six years later, when he was let out of prison on supervised release. He was sent back to prison two years later after being convicted of cocaine possession and battery on a law enforcement officer. He was released on parole and sent back to prison two additional times over the next two decades.

In 2017, Defendant filed a motion seeking to correct his original life sentence. He argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama and the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Atwell v. State made it unlawful for a minor to be sentenced to life in prison. In Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a juvenile can be sentenced to life in prison must receive some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. In Atwell, the state’s highest court struck down a sentence for a juvenile who would not have had the opportunity for parole for some 140 years.

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Probation is an alternative to prison time that in some cases allows a person convicted of a crime to spend less or no time behind bars. In Florida sex crime cases, judges generally have the power to impose various restrictions on people convicted of sex crimes. A recent case out of Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal explains some limits on how those restrictions are imposed.

Defendant entered into a plea agreement after being charged with various sex crimes stemming from undisclosed allegations. He pled guilty to traveling to seduce, solicit or entice a child to commit a sex act and to transmission of material harmful to minors. A judge sentenced Defendant to more than two years in prison. Defendant was also designated as a sex offender, based on the traveling to seduce offense, and got sentenced to an additional six years of probation. As a condition of that probation, he was restricted from having contact with or being in proximity to children.

Defendant appealed the sentence, arguing that he shouldn’t have been given sex offender probation based on the circumstances. He pointed out that the plea agreement made clear that the victim was not a child. While the case was on appeal, the First District Court of Appeal held in a separate decision that a judge must orally pronounce the specific terms and conditions of sex offender probation. Those that the judge doesn’t pronounce are not enforceable, the First District said. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal disagreed with that ruling in a separate case of its own. The appeals court said a judge that orders a person to serve sex offender probation “need not individually specify each item contained within the umbrella of sex offender probation conditions.”

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