Fort Lauderdale defense lawyer

October 15, 2018

Florida Domestic Violence Trial: Must the Victim Testify?

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

In a single recent year, Florida law enforcement agencies received 105,700 reports of domestic violence. More than half of those, 63,200, resulted in an arrest. It’s known to be a relatively under-reported crime, but there are a fair number of cases that go to trial wherein the alleged victim refuses to cooperate or testify. It is a myth that prosecutors cannot move forward on these cases or that they cannot sometimes win them. It often depends on the independent evidence available – and the strategy employed by your Florida domestic violence defense attorney.

Let’s consider the case of Baker v. State, an appeal before Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal back in 2007. Defendant had been convicted of felony battery for accusations that he attacked his girlfriend, who had called 911 to report the defendant had bitten her and took her phone “and stuff.” She said she did not require medical attention. A police officer was dispatched, observing and photographing what appeared to be a small bite mark on victim’s arm.

Would this be enough to secure a conviction? Continue reading

August 30, 2018

Florida Sealing and Expungement: How a Fort Lauderdale Defense Lawyer Can Help

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

You may be aware that sealing and expungement is available for certain first-time offenders convicted and adjudicated guilty. Did you also know it’s important for those found NOT guilty to seal and expunge their records too?

This specifically involves cases where a defendant reaches a plea deal that involves a judge withholding adjudication, meaning the defendant isn’t formally convicted. However, the arrest will still pop up on a Florida criminal background check, which all but eliminates whatever benefit might have been derived from avoiding conviction in the first place. Florida law – specifically F.S. 943.053 – makes adult criminal history records public (with special restrictions for access) unless those records have been sealed or expunged. This encompasses not just your conviction and/ or case disposition, but your original arrest and charges. That’s why it’s so important after a case outcome wherein adjudication was withheld to determine whether you qualify for expungement or sealing of your record. The benefit of this is you can legally deny/ fail to acknowledge an arrest covered by that record (with exception for those seeking a change in immigration status or certain types of jobs, such as with a law enforcement agency or the Department of Children and Families).

The Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney team at The Ansara Law Firm can help you with both. It can be a somewhat confusing process, but markedly less so when you hire a lawyer to help you navigate it. (Note that Florida allows for automatic expungement of certain juvenile records when the minor reaches age 21, though you’ll want to check with an attorney to be certain and determine if other action must be taken.) Continue reading

March 6, 2017

Breathometer Maker Faces Sobering Truth: It Doesn’t Work

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

Makers of a device called the “Breathometer” promised that their product could help drinkers determine when they’d had too much to drive.

The product concept was first pitched on the television show, “Shark Tank,” and it involved an app-supported smartphone device that would help consumers make smarter decisions about whether to refrain from driving after consuming alcohol. By breathing into the app device attached to their phone, users would be able to tell whether they were over the legal limit of 0.08 alcohol concentration.

However, the Federal Trade Commission recently slammed the company, ultimately negotiating a settlement, amid charges the device didn’t actually work as promised. Specifically where the FTC was concerned, the company lacked the scientific evidence to support the claims made in advertising. 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

January 25, 2017

Man Arrested in Broward for Written Threats to Trump

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

This past election season was a contentious one and emotions were high. No matter who won, it was bound to rile some. While the U.S. Constitution extends a fair amount of latitude to private citizens who use their First Amendment freedom of expression to voice disdain for leadership, there is a line that can be crossed that could result in criminal charges.

That’s what a Broward County man recently discovered when he was arrested by federal authorities for making threats against then-President-Elect Donald Trump.

The Sun-Sentinel reports the 59-year-old suspect, who lives in Pembroke Pines, is alleged to have made threats to either harm or kill Trump. He was arrested at his home after local law enforcement authorities notified the U.S. Secret Service, who have the duty of protecting Trump. Continue reading

November 23, 2016

Report: Years of Delays on Thousands of Possible Wrongful Convictions

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

Thousands of individuals convicted on potentially tainted scientific evidence have been waiting years for the chance to clear their name, ProPublica recently reported.

Four years ago, a long-time chemist working at a state drug laboratory in Massachusetts admitted to contaminating samples over the course of her nearly nine-year career, resulting in more than 20,000 drug crime convictions that could have potentially been flawed. Those cases involved people from all across the nation and from eight different countries. In many cases, defendants were jailed. In some cases, defendants were deported. At the time, prosecutors insisted to the governor that addressing any possible breaches of justice would be priority No. 1.

Unfortunately, that has not proven to be true. Four years later, and prosecutors have battled to hang onto pretty much every single conviction garnered with this flawed evidence. Meanwhile, defense attorneys arguing on behalf of potentially innocent defendants are asking courts to vacate all the convictions that relied to any substantial degree on that lab worker’s tainted results. Continue reading

September 2, 2016

Court: Cops Can’t Stop You Just Because Your State Has Legal Weed

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

Drivers in states where marijuana is legal cannot be pulled over in other states by cops who make assumptions based on solely on the origin of the license plate. That’s according to a ruling by federal justices with the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Tenth Circuit.

Mind you, this ruling – Vasquez v. Lewis and Jimerson – is technically only applicable in the Tenth Circuit, which covers the six states of Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, plus those portions of the Yellowstone National Park extending into Montana and Idaho. However, given that this is not an issue that has arisen at this level in other jurisdictions, it’s likely to have set a clear precedent on the constitutionality of such practices. Some have referred to policing in this manner as, “license plate profiling.”

It’s not as major of a problem here in Florida because not many other nearby states have allowed legal marijuana, even for medicinal purposes. But that’s not to say someone traveling from Washington or Colorado might not get the side eye from law enforcement here. Based on the reasoning of the 10th Circuit, this is wrong. Continue reading

August 9, 2016

Grand Theft Auto v. Carjacking: Both Serious Felony Crimes in Florida

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

There have been a number of recent high-profile cases of theft of motor vehicles in South Florida in recent weeks, with defendants in each case facing serious penalties.

Still, it’s important to note that grand theft auto and carjacking, while both major crimes, are inherently different, which means the approach of prosecutors and defense attorneys will be different as well.

Grand theft auto, as codified in F.S. 812.014, is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a maximum five of $5,000. It’s on par with theft of a firearm or commercially-farmed animal or a controlled substance. The offense may be bumped up to a second-degree felony if the vehicle involved costs more than $20,000 (but less than $100,000), in which case the penalty is increased to a possible 15 years maximum in prison. Carjacking, meanwhile, is codified in F.S. 812.133, is a life felony if a firearm is used; Otherwise, it’s considered a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Carjacking is the act of taking a motor vehicle either by force, violence, assault or putting in fear. Continue reading

July 16, 2016

NYT: A $2 Roadside Drug Test is Sending Innocent People to Jail

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

It is common in traffic stops where officers suspect the presence of drugs to search the driver and request a search of the vehicle. If an officer finds a substance he or she suspects to be an illicit drug, they rely on a roadside drug test to make the call. The results of these $2 kits, which have largely remained the same in design and process since they were first released in 1973, can mean the difference between a person being released at the scene or being arrested on felony charges.

In a troubling expose on these kits, The New York Times delved into the accuracy of these kits and what they have meant to the lives of many of the 1.2 million people who are arrested annually in the U.S. on illegal drug possession charges. While those arrested are presumed innocent until proven guilty, these cheap testing kits are often a key deciding factor in how public defenders fight these cases and how prosecutors pursue them.

One analysis of the accuracy of the kits was conducted by the laboratory system operated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). What they discovered was that more than 20 percent of the evidence police listed as “methamphetamine” in fact was NOT methamphetamine. In fact, half of the false positives weren’t even drugs at all. A tracking by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office revealed 15 false methamphetamine positives just in the first seven months of 2014. Further, in combing through department records, officers had been given ambiguous instructions on how to conduct the tests and some misunderstood which colors indicated a positive and which indicated a negative. Continue reading

July 2, 2016

Utah v. Strieff – U.S. Supreme Court Expands Lawless Searches

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

In a contentious 5-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court in Utah v. Strieff ruled in favor of a cop who seized drugs after an unlawful stop. It was only after that stop the officer learned the defendant had an outstanding traffic warrant. After making an arrest, the officer searched defendant and found drugs and paraphernalia. Plaintiff argued this evidence should be suppressed under the exclusionary rule.

However, the majority ruled that although the initial stop was not lawful, which would normally mean any evidence obtained thereafter could not be used against defendant, the court instead chose to apply the attenuation doctrine. This doctrine states that even though the way the evidence was obtained was illegal, such evidence can still be admissible if the connection between the evidence and the illegal method is sufficiently thin or attenuated. The court held that the officer made a good-faith mistake when stopping the defendant, who was leaving a suspected drug house. This was not, the court decided, part of some systematic recurrence of police misconduct and nor would the decision result in the proliferation of dragnet searches for those with outstanding arrest warrants.

Dissenting Justice Sonya Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, had strong words of rebuke for the majority on this issue, saying unlawful police stops, “Corrode all our civil liberties and threaten our lives.” Continue reading