Articles Posted in Attorney Richard Ansara

There are tens of thousands of Floridians currently under community control – also known as probation – following conviction for a crime.

The standard terms of this control usually involve some type of regular meeting with a probation officer, no contact order with the victim, potentially a restitution order, routine drug testing and orders to steer clear of law violations.

Going against any one of these conditions can result in severe penalties – up to and including reinstatement of the full sentence. This is how someone with a suspended sentence can end up serving years in prison for failing a drug test.
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The Florida Supreme Court recently ruled all Florida juveniles convicted of homicide and sentenced automatically to life imprisonment must now be resentenced under a new law passed last year.

The ruling addresses the issue of retroactivity for Miller v. Alabama, which was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred life sentences for juvenile killers.

There are approximately 250 state prisoners in Florida currently serving life sentences for homicides committed before their 18th birthday. Legislators passed a law last year to conform to the Miller decision, but it was only applicable to murders committed after July 2014. For two decades prior, state law mandated juveniles convicted of first-degree murder should receive an automatic life sentence.
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There is a popular, viral meme that states something to the effect: “A good friend will bail you out of jail. A best friend will be sitting next to you in the cell.”

It’s intended to elicit a chuckle, but the reality is, helping a friend or family member commit a crime – or covering for him after – is no laughing matter. Particularly in cases of felonies, those who assist in committing crimes or covering for someone, can face serious penalties.

A recent example of this was seen in the federal case of U.S. v. Marion, where a defendant pleaded guilty to a charge of accessory after the fact. He reportedly helped his cousin hide from a shooting and carjacking spree that left one man dead and several other people traumatized.
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Tis the season for giving – and also for taking. Theft in its various forms inevitably spikes during the holidays, when more opportunities present themselves.

From retail theft to package theft to identify theft – there is always more of it in December and January. Law enforcement agencies have responded to this by initiating special operations to target such offenders, particularly those involved in organized retail crime.

For example, “Operation Holiday Steals” was a three-day sting involving partnerships with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, local police, U.S. Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service and some two dozen large-scale retailers, including Target, Walgreens, Macy’s and Sports Authority. The stores sent their best loss prevention administrators to work with law enforcement in order to identify and arrest some of the area’s top retail crime offenders. Several banks and financial firms helped with detection of stolen credit cards and credit card fraud.
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The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that real-time cellular phone site data is protected under Fourth Amendment privacy provisions. That means if officers don’t have a warrant to track your cell phone signal in real time, they can’t legally do it.

This clarifies privacy protections that were previously in question, and narrows the scope of law enforcement authority, which has continuously pressed for broader discretion in tapping into the wealth of data available from cell phone communications.

The decision reached in Tracey v. State, started with the drug-related arrest of a man, partially on the basis of information obtained from real cell-site location data pinged from his phone to local cell phone towers.
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Defendants can face theft and dealing in stolen property charges in connection with the same incident. However, Florida Statute 812.025 only allow defendants to be convicted of one of those two charges, when the alleged offenses are committed in connection with a single scheme or course of conduct.

However, appellate courts have continued to grapple with this issue, despite the Florida Supreme Court’s resolution in August last year with rulings in Williams v. State, Blackmon v. State and new proposed jury instructions in these cases.

In Williams, a defendant was charged with both theft and dealing in stolen property, and defense counsel requested special instructions indicating to the jury he could not be convicted of both. The court denied the request, the jury convicted on both counts, and the court subsequently dismissed one of the charges. A similar scenario arose in Blackmon. The Florida Supreme Court ruled the lower courts erred in failing to give a special jury instruction. The court further issued a standard special instruction in these cases, asking jurors to determine whether defendant is “more of a common thief or more of a trafficker,” based on defendant’s intent and use of the property after it was stolen.
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A defendant convicted of multiple drug charges in Fort Lauderdale has had that conviction reversed, and the case remanded for retrial, on the grounds that prejudicial evidence was admitted into in error. Further, Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal found the trial court erred in a number of rulings that were unfairly harmful to the defendant prior to his conviction.

Fort Lauderdale drug defense lawyers recognize that in the course of an arrest, evidence may be uncovered that police deem relevant at the time, but for purposes of trial are found to be more prejudicial than probative. This kind of evidence must be omitted from the record, so as to not unfairly prejudice the defendant.

One of the most common examples has to do with gun-related evidence. Jurors can make a host of assumptions based on evidence of a gun found on the defendant, but those assumptions could be unfair if the gun wasn’t an element of the crime accused.
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Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal recently found in Romanyuk v. Florida that a trial court wrongly denied jury instructions requested by the defense in a prescription drug criminal case.

The case resulted in a conviction, which per the new ruling is now reversed. Our Broward criminal defense lawyers see this as a relevant issue at a time when law enforcement agencies throughout the state are cracking down on prescription drug crimes. While it’s true that some individuals may possess these substances illegally, the vast majority are prescribed by a doctor and are legitimate.

This case involves a defendant who found herself in a series of unfortunate circumstances, and was targeted by law enforcement as a result.
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Fort Lauderdale criminal defense lawyers have long known that eyewitness identifications in criminal cases are fraught with all kinds of potential problems. Setting aside those who have motivation to lie, memory errors are a major issue when someone’s reputation and future is at stake.

Extensive research by legal and psychology scholars has made it clear that memory is fallible, subject to suggestion, bias and other outside factors.

So when a criminal case is based in large part on the foundation of eyewitness testimony, defense lawyers have an obligation to carefully question these accounts. In the recent case of Constant v. Florida, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal reversed a robbery conviction and remanded a case for a new trial, following evidence that there were prosecutorial errors in the single-eyewitness case.
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When a traffic stop is predicated on illegal pretenses, everything police discover as a result becomes void and barred from the courtroom.

This is the basis for the “fruit of the poisonous tree” legal doctrine, and our Fort Lauderdale criminal defense lawyers know that it is intended not only to serve as a protection for the accused, but also to encourage police officers to have legitimate reasons before initiating a traffic stop. Otherwise, they recognize their efforts will be for naught.

This point was illustrated recently in the case of State v. Jones, which was reviewed by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.
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