St. Petersburg Criminal Lawyer Blog
The mental stability of the person charged with a crime is often at the center of Florida sex crime cases. Generally, a court may determine that a defendant doesn’t have the mental capacity to adequately understand the charges against him. In these situations, a judge may postpone or scrap criminal proceedings against the person. But the judge also has the authority to order that the defendant be committed to a secure facility in the meantime. A recent case out of Florida’s First District Court of Appeal is a good example of some of the legal issues that can come up in these types of cases.Defendant was charged in 1996 with committing two counts of lewd and lascivious acts in the presence of a child. A court eventually deemed him incompetent to stand trial on those charges because of an intellectual disability. The charges were later dropped when Defendant was civilly committed to a secure residential facility. Defendant eventually went back to court, asking to be released from the facility. He argued that the court no longer had jurisdiction over the case because the maximum penalty he could face for the charges was 15 years and he had spent more than that time in the facility. The trial court disagreed.
Affirming the decision on appeal, the First District agreed with Defendant that he couldn’t be forced to spend more time in the facility than the maximum possible penalty for the crimes with which he was charged. But it also agreed with the trial judge that Defendant could get up to 15 years for each offense. At the time the state legislature passed a law limiting secure facility detention, the court said there was already a separate statute in place allowing judges to sentence criminal defendants to consecutive (running one after the other) instead of concurrent (running at the same time) jail stretches for each offense.
“The legislature is presumed to have known that a trial court could determine that it had jurisdiction for an extended period of time based on a consecutive sentencing structure,” the court said.
The First District also rejected Defendant’s argument based on the “rule of lenity,” which provides that ambiguities in the law should be interpreted in favor of the defendant. The court said that rule only applies to criminal laws, not to a separate statute related to incompetence and residential facility commitment.
If you or a loved one has been charged with a sex crime in the state of Florida, it is essential that you seek the advice and counsel of an experienced lawyer. St. Petersburg sex crime attorney Will Hanlon is a seasoned lawyer who fights aggressively on behalf of clients charged with a wide range of offenses. Call our offices at (727) 897-5413 or contact us online to speak with Mr. Hanlon about your case.
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