Fort Lauderdale Criminal Attorney Blog

March 1, 2017

Florida Lawmakers: Scrap Minimum Mandatory Sentences for Non-Violent Offenses

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

Florida Senate committee members unanimously voted on a measure that would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences in 118 crimes where such requirements currently exist. Members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee say mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, a holdover from all those “tough-on-crime” initiatives, passed SB 290, which gives judges more discretion in sentencing on non-violent offenses (save for drug trafficking).

The decision came as lawmakers noted that thousands of people are being locked up in the state every year for decades-long sentences that are costing taxpayers an inordinate amount of money, ruining lives and doing very little to keep anyone safe in the long-run. In fact, these efforts may be counter-intuitive to public safety because they leave those hemmed up in the system with very few resources or supports once released after spending a much of their life in prison.

Take for example the case of a woman serving a 25-year sentence at the Homestead Correctional Institution for selling less than 40 pills in exchange for $300. Minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines required the judge to impose the maximum penalty of 25 years. She won’t be released until 2023. By then, her incarceration will have cost taxpayers more than $450,000. Continue reading

February 28, 2017

South Florida Teen Charged as Adult in Fatal Crash Faces Re-Trial

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

The boy was just 15-years-old in November 2015, allegedly driving a stolen Mustang convertible at reported speeds of up to 120 mph as he tried to evade the police officers chasing him, lights flashing.

At the same time, a woman was on her way to pick up her own teenager, a 16-year-old girl who was in dance class. She never saw the convertible that crossed through that intersection. The 46-year-old woman, a mother of two, was ejected from the vehicle and died instantly, according to The Sun-Sentinel. The crash occurred at the intersection of Palmetto Park Road and Northwest Second Avenue, after the teen reportedly ran a red light.

Prosecutors have direct-filed the teen as an adult on charges of vehicular homicide, fleeing the scene of a fatal crash and driving without a license. If convicted on all charges, he faces up to 25 years in prison. His first trial took place in January and ended in a mistrial. Jurors reportedly deliberated for more than nine hours and still were unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Continue reading

February 24, 2017

Sober Home Owner Pleads Guilty to Health Care Fraud Conspiracy

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

A second person arrested in a wide-ranging federal investigation into insurance fraud by South Florida sober homes has pleaded guilty to health care fraud conspiracy.

The Sun-Sentinel reports the 45-year-old defendant conceded before the court that he had accepted nearly $250,000 in kickbacks to refer clients living in his sober living homes for testing and treatment for substance abuse. Additionally, he reportedly sent some 60 clients with health insurance to two different recovery centers, and those centers in return sent him approximately $500 a week.

At this point, authorities have arrested seven people for health care fraud conspiracy at sober homes throughout Broward and Palm Beach counties. A 46-year-old man from Boynton Beach was the alleged ringleader of the operation. Meanwhile, this defendant who recently pleaded guilty faces up to 10 years in federal prison. Continue reading

February 21, 2017

Father Gets 2 Years for Cruise Ship Attack on Teen Who Propositioned Daughter

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

The 33-year-old Ohio father of a teenage girl was sentenced to two years in prison for an attack on a teen boy who had allegedly propositioned the 13-year-old girl while on a cruise ship off the coast of Florida.

The incident occurred on an Independence of the Seas cruise ship back in the summer of 2015, where defendant and his family were vacationing. Defendant’s brother-in-law reportedly overheard the teen boy, age 14, offer his daughter a key chain in exchange for giving him her virginity. Authorities then said defendant took no action to intervene when the 31-year-old brother-in-law grabbed the boy in the library of the ship, forced him to pull down his pants and simulated a sexual act on him.

He was arrested and later convicted on charges of child abuse and false imprisonment. Despite his repeated apologies to the court and insistence that he meant no harm, the judge pointed out the man had failed to apologize to the teen boy himself. Continue reading

February 17, 2017

Florida Lawmakers Seek THC Blood Limits for Marijuana DUI

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

Florida’s law against driving under the influence, F.S. 316.193, covers the offense of operating a vehicle while intoxicated not just by alcohol, but by any chemical substance that impairs the person’s normal faculties. This includes marijuana. However, now that the drug has become legal for medicinal purposes in the Sunshine State, some lawmakers say this statute does not go far enough.

Now, House Bill 237, the Driving Under the Influence of Drugs Act, proposes that DUI arrests can be made and convictions secured if evidence is presented the driver had 5 nanograms or more of THC per milliliter of blood. If the law is passed, it would go into effect this October.

However, there has been significant push back from the scientific community on this because blood testing for THC, which is a fat-soluble compound, is known to be an inaccurate means of testing impairment. That’s because the substances stays in one’s body long after consumption, unlike alcohol, which dissipates quickly. What that means is if you find a certain amount of alcohol in one’s blood or breath or urine, that alcohol was consumed fairly recently and one can opine with reasonable certainty about the degree of intoxication. But that isn’t true with marijuana. In fact, all a test like this will tell you is that the person is a marijuana user. A high level of THC in the blood stream is not necessarily indicative of impairment. It may only indicate the person is a regular user. So if a person consumes a little of the drug every evening for a month and is pulled over one morning – completely sober – he or she could well have a THC level above that 5-nanogram limit. Continue reading

February 14, 2017

Teens Arrested in South Florida Shopping Center Robbery/ Assaults

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

One boy is a ninth-grader who is just 15. Another is a 16-year-old girl and another just turned 18. All three are facing charge that could put them behind bars for many years.

Detectives say the teens are involved in nearly a dozen cases of alleged assault, battery, carjacking and robbery in Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Dania Beach and Aventura. According to The Sun-Sentinel, the teens robbed at least five women at their homes or at local shopping centers. Authorities say the women were robbed, punched and in some instances pepper-sprayed while the teens snatched what they could from the alleged victims. Most occurred in supermarket parking lots, though there was one case outside of a restaurant and another in a woman’s driveway. In one case, a woman’s vehicle was reportedly stolen from her property just hours after she was attacked at a nearby grocery store.

At a detention hearing, a Broward judge denied the youngest defendant the chance to be confined at home. He will instead be housed at a juvenile facility until prosecutors decide whether to direct file on a felony charge of robbery. The 18-year-old defendant faces 10 felony charges so far (including carjacking, robbery by sudden snatching and aggravated battery on an elderly person, who was 73). The 16-year-old is also facing numerous charges. Continue reading

February 10, 2017

State Seeks Reversal of Stand Your Ground Immunity for Deputy

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

Prosecutors allege a Broward sheriff’s deputy was not entitled to legal immunity under the so-called “stand your ground” law. The state is appealing the ruling last year by Broward Circuit Judge Michael Usan, who ruled the 38-year-old deputy should have immunity from prosecution. The deputy, Peter Peraza, is the first on-duty officer of the law to be charged with a firearm death of a civilian in in Florida in 37 years. As The Sun-Sentinel reported, the deputy faced charges of manslaughter for the 2013 fatal shooting.

The incident happened in Oakland Park, where the 33-year-old decedent was walking through an apartment complex past a pool with children and parents present. He reportedly had a realistic-looking rifle on his back and reportedly ignored Peraza’s orders to set it down. The deputy told the judge he had no choice but to fire his service weapon after decedent turned toward him and his fellow law enforcement officers and appeared to raise it as if to fire. It was later determined that weapon was an air rifle, and it wasn’t loaded. However, members of decedent’s family offered up evidence that he was wearing headphones at the time of the shooting, contrary to testimony given by deputies who insisted there was nothing that obviously indicated to them that he could not hear what they were saying when they ordered him to lay down the weapon.

Intention to appeal was first filed by prosecutors shortly after the judge’s ruling last year, but it was only formally filed late last month. Prosecutors argue that stand your ground immunity can’t be extended to police or other law enforcement officers who are in the midst of making an arrest. Stand your ground allows the use of fatal force to stop a threat that is reasonably deemed imminent. Continue reading

February 7, 2017

Broward Defense Lawyers Can Help With Having Crime Records Sealed, Expunged

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

Recently, the Broward state attorney’s office held a workshop for adults interested in having a criminal charge sealed or expunged from their record.

Those who have a criminal conviction on their permanent record probably know that it can hinder one from landing a job, getting a decent apartment to rent, obtaining child custody or earning certain types of special licenses or certifications. It can touch nearly every facet of everyday life. This is true even though a person may have been cleared of the criminal allegation or they have successfully completed probation or a diversion program or otherwise paid their debt to society. Even having done all this, a person can still find that the arrest record haunts them. This is why expunging or sealing one’s criminal record can be so important to one’s future.

This is the fifth time the local state attorney’s office has held this workshop, which involves helping people prepare the sealing or expunging application that is required by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to initiate the process, which can be initiated for both adults and juveniles, though the process can vary. Although there are certainly some who benefit from these free workshops, there is good reason why most people who initiate the process do so with the help of an experienced criminal defense lawyer. Continue reading

February 1, 2017

Court Orders Remedy of Thousands of Flawed Drug Convictions

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

In criminal cases, scientific evidence is given a significant amount of weight, whether that is DNA evidence or proof of that a certain substance is in fact illegal. However, as we’ve seen in a number of instances across the country in recent years, that evidence is not infallible. One of the most infamous cases of this was that of a chemist in Massachusetts, who reportedly admitted to manipulating drug test results in order to give prosecutors a leg up. She is believed to have been involved in more than 20,000 drug cases in the course of her 8.5 years working with the state crime lab (from which she was later fired).

Now, the question is what to do about all those potentially tainted convictions, many of which were secured using the test results of that chemist. Recently, more than 4.5 years after the chemist confessed, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has called on prosecutors to reverse potentially thousands of those.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, prosecutors have been reluctant throughout this process to reverse convictions where the chemist’s work played a role. In one instance, prosecutors argued they didn’t have any obligation to let those convicted know of their possible innocence in the court’s eyes. Incredibly, one prosecutor even opined that many of the defendants were probably too poor or else too tied up with issues that were more pressing, such as addiction or mental illness, to have any real desire to address these cases. But the state’s highest court isn’t buying that. Continue reading

January 29, 2017

Drug Suspect Charged With Murder After Passengers Die Trying to Escape

By The Law Offices of Richard Ansara, P.A.

The 30-year-old suspect was likely going to be facing drug trafficking charges. He didn’t want to confront that possibility. Instead, he fled from police in an attempt to escape. But he lost control of the car. The vehicle overturned and careened into a nearby canal and started to sink. Defendant swam out through a window, but police caught him within minutes.

What the suspect didn’t inform police of until it was too late was that there were two other people still trapped in that submerged car. It wasn’t until officers asked that he offered up the information.

Now the Sunrise man is facing two second-degree murder charges in those deaths. He is being held without bond, and faces up to life in prison if convicted. Continue reading