Articles Posted in Sex Crimes

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Florida and federal laws generally require a person charged with a sex crime to register as a Florida sex offender with the local sheriff’s office. A person who fails to do so faces significant criminal penalties, including jail time. Those penalties increase for people who commit another sex crime during the time that they should have been registered. A recent case out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a good example of how judges look at evidence of those crimes.The defendant was staying at a friend’s home in Central Florida in 2012 when the woman woke in the middle of the night and found him standing at the front of her 12-year-old daughter’s bedroom. The woman went into the bedroom and noticed that her daughter was in a state of distress. The daughter told her mother that the defendant had groped her. The police arrived on the scene and arrested him. He was originally charged with lewd or lascivious molestation and later convicted of felony battery, a lesser offense. He also later pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender (based on a previous conviction) and was sentenced to an additional stint in prison of up to 57 months.

The defendant later appealed the sentence, arguing that the judge wrongly increased his time behind bars after finding that he committed a sex offense against a minor during the time he was supposed to be registered as an offender. He argued specifically that the finding was based on inadmissible hearsay, which refers to statements that are offered at trial by a person other than the one who made the statement and are offered in order to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. Hearsay is generally inadmissible, but there are a number of exceptions. That includes the sentencing stage, at which hearsay can be admitted as evidence as long as it is found to be reliable.

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Florida law makes it a crime for a person with HIV to knowingly have sex with another person without telling their partner about the infection. In a recent Florida sex crime decision, the state’s Supreme Court made clear that the law applies to both heterosexual and homosexual activity.The defendant was charged in 2011 with violating a Florida law that makes it a crime for a person with an immunodeficiency virus that can be transmitted by sexual intercourse “to have sexual intercourse with any other person” without telling the person about the disease. The defendant, who is HIV positive, allegedly forged a lab report to indicate that he was not infected with the disease. He showed the forged report to another man with whom he was in a relationship before the men engaged in oral and anal intercourse, according to the court.

A trial judge dismissed the charge, agreeing with the defendant’s lawyer that the state law covers only “the penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ.” The judge cited a 2011 decision from the Second District Court of Appeal, which sits in Lakeland. That court reached the same conclusion. On appeal, however, the Third District in Miami disagreed. The appeals court said the term “sexual intercourse” includes oral and anal sex.

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Crimes with a statute of limitations are required to be prosecuted within a defined period of time. This helps ensure that evidence for the prosecution is still available at trial and encourages law enforcement to actively seek to resolve crimes. A Florida appeals court recently determined that the limitations period had expired against a criminal defendant who was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct, a Florida sex crime.The defendant was the former boyfriend of the alleged victims’ mother. After the mother abandoned her children, they were placed in their grandmother’s care. The defendant continued to be a part of the children’s lives. The two children, along with their brother, went to the defendant’s apartment one day to clean it. At the time, the two children in question were 12 years old and 10 years old. The defendant allegedly engaged in sexual acts with both the 12-year-old and the 10-year-old while they were cleaning his home. On the 12-year-old’s next birthday, the defendant gave her an inappropriate, sexually suggestive birthday gift. When the girl’s grandmother found it, she prohibited the defendant from having any further contact with the children.

The applicable statute of limitations, at the time of the crime, for lewd and lascivious molestation of a child between the ages of 12 and 16 years (Florida Statutes Section 800.04(5)(c)) was three years from the date that the crime was committed. However, the limitations period for that offense does not begin to run until the victim has reached the age of 18 or the violation has been reported to law enforcement.

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