Category: Blog

I sometimes get a frantic phone call from a wife or mother stating that one of her family members has just been arrested and asking whether her loved one will be able to bond out of jail.  I ask what charge the loved one was arrested for.  If the charge is a crime of violence listed […]

In a previous blog posting, I argued for rationality in sentencing given the widespread problem of prisoner overcrowding in the United States generally and in Florida particularly.  After publishing that posting, I came upon an article that appears on the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' website.  That article points out the disparity in sentencing between […]

Time Magazine These days, judges are handing out prison time like it's candy.  I have personal knowledge of one case in which a person was convicted of kidnapping his girlfriend and then sentenced to life in prison even though the victim told the judge that she only wanted her boyfriend to be sentenced to ten years […]

As if confessions and DNA weren't enough evidence in the Dunbar Village rape case, it has now come to light that the police have seized letters from one of the incarcerated suspects and that a  telephone conversation of that same suspect was secretly tape-recorded by the police.  It is because of costly mistakes like this that people who are […]

A few years ago, the Governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in that state because of his well-founded fear that wrongfully-convicted people might be executed.  Then, just last month, the American Bar Association issued a report in which it identified numerous problems with Ohio's existing death-penalty scheme.  No doubt many of those […]

This is the problem with breath-testing machines in Florida DUI cases: a couple of numbers are spit out of a machine that very few people understand. Those numbers say that the person arrested was driving with a breath-alcohol level that was over the legal limit. Those numbers are, in turn, presented to a jury who […]

One thing is certain: when the police are called to an assault and battery in Florida, someone is going to get arrested, and it's almost always the man. When that happens, I often receive a frantic phone call from a wife or girlfriend saying that she didn't intend for her husband or boyfriend to go […]

There are many things to consider when hiring a Florida criminal attorney. The following is a list of some (but by no means all) of the things that you should consider when hiring a criminal lawyer in the State of Florida:  Be certain that the attorney you intend to hire actually handles criminal cases. Don’t hire […]

Federal drug laws can sometimes lead to paradoxical results. Consider the following story from the Drug Law Blog: The United States Gets Tough on Methamphetamine By Locking Up All Its Cold Medicine, Forcing Tweakers To Import Speed From Mexico Instead and Messing Up the Formula For Nyquil. In March, President Bush signed the renewal of […]

Globe reporter Gary Greenberg gives his impressions as a juror in a criminal trial where Ron Chapman served as the defense counsel.   [See a PDF copy (8MB) of the original article here.]   Globe Crime Extra "I, The Juror" Our man tells what it's like sitting on murder jury in case of Viet vet […]