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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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As cell phones have risen in popularity, criminal prosecutors now use cell phone records to build their cases. Cell phone records can show such records as calls made or received, text messages, and even proximity to cell towers. Although cell phone records do not provide specific GPS coordinates of a person’s whereabouts, prosecutors often rely on the location of a cell tower to relay the general location of a criminal defendant at the time the alleged crime occurred.The St. Petersburg murder trial of a man accused of killing a confidential informant is relying heavily on testimony derived from a review of cell-tower data that allegedly implicates the defendant. The court heard testimony from a detective who reviewed the defendant’s cell phone records on the night of the alleged murder. His testimony stated that the defendant made calls to the victim moments before the shooting occurred, allegedly to set up a fake drug deal as a way to lure the victim onto a deserted street. In addition, the detective’s testimony traced the approximate location of the defendant, stating that the defendant allegedly picked up an accomplice, drove to the area of the crime, and then went to a hotel room, where he met with other alleged accomplices. The detective tested this theory by driving the same route and confirming that the same cell towers that picked up the defendant’s calls also picked up his calls along the way.

Although criminal prosecutions often rely on cell phone records, Florida law does not give law enforcement free access to those records. Florida Statute section 934.23 authorizes law enforcement to require the disclosure of cell phone records from an electronic communication service only pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge of a competent jurisdiction. In order to obtain a warrant, the law enforcement officer is required to offer specific facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe the contents of an electronic communication are relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

If law enforcement officials obtain a warrant, the electronic communication service, such as a wireless provider, may be required to disclose certain defined types of information. For instance, records of call duration, cell phone type, subscriber number or identity, credit card associated with customer’s phone, and phone connection records are all available to law enforcement officials under Florida law.  These records may provide the type of evidence prosecutors need to establish the facts of a crime, but they are only legally available with a warrant.

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