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In the case of Jennifer Kish versus the State of Florida, Ms. Kish was convicted of the crime of culpable negligence for allowing her three children--ages 10, 8, and 7--who were sick with cold and upper respiratory symptoms, to be left unsupervised for two to three hours after school until adults arrived home from work. […]

A "mandatory minimum penalty" refers to a federal law that requires a judge to sentence a person convicted of that law to a specified minimum term of imprisonment in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. There are approximately 200 federal laws that carry a mandatory minimum penalty. According to statistics published by the United States Sentencing […]

In order to prove the crime of aggravated assault, a prosecutor in Florida has to show that the person accused of committing that crime had a specific intent to do violence to someone else. What is important is the intent of the accused person and not the reaction of the victim. For example, in the […]

In Florida, you can commit the crime of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon if you use your car to hit someone else's car when they are inside it. For example, if you use your car to hit someone else's car and the person in the other car is injured, or if he had to […]

In the case of Hume Hamilton versus the State of Florida, Mr. Hamiton was an 82-year-old man who was out walking his dog on a leash when a cat got too close to the dog. The two animals began fighting, so Mr. Hamilton tried to separate them while keeping the leash on his dog. Unfortunately, […]

In the case of Thomas Smith versus the State of Florida, Mr. Smith was convicted of possession of methamphetamine and possession of chemicals used to make methamphetamine. The case began when the police executed a search warrant at a home that was leased by a woman named Kelly Jiminez. The police found a Gatorade bottle […]

In the case of Dwight Parker versus the State of Florida, a police officer made a routine traffic stop of Mr. Parker's car after which he found a gun and some drugs located in the car. Before trial on the drug charges, Parker's lawyer asked the judge to not let the prosecutor mention the gun […]

In the case of Juan Guardado versus the State of Florida, Mr. Guardado was involved in a three-vehicle crash. Two of the passengers in Guardado's car were killed. When a Trooper from the Florida Highway Patrol arrived at the scene of the accident, he saw Guardado in the driver's seat with injuries to his face, […]

Last week, the United States Sentencing Commission voted to retroactively cut federal prison sentences for drug crimes. The Commission voted to retroactively decrease the drug table by two offense levels for all drug types. The result is that approximately 50,000 people who are currently incarcerated in the federal prison system for drug crimes could be […]

In the case of the United States versus Quartavious Davis, Mr. Davis was convicted of several armed robberies that occurred at different times and in several different locations. In order to prove that Davis was in the general vicinity of the robberies when they occurred, the prosecutor presented "cell site location information" at Davis' trial. […]