Category Archives: Drug Crime Defense
Informant Testimony Is Not Infallible
Accepting a plea deal in a drug case is nothing out of the ordinary; more than 90 percent of defendants in criminal cases plead guilty. If you have been on this Earth long enough to catch a criminal case, then you are old enough to know that nothing in life is free. There is… Read More »
Medetomidine Is Not Just for Catnaps and Doggie Dreams Anymore
Watching Nickelodeon in Florida in the 1980s and early 1990s was a fever dream to say the least. Its weirdness appealed to a child’s sense of wonder as much as it did to a pothead’s appetite for snacks and giggles. The shows and commercials were just the right mix of hilarious and unsettling, but… Read More »
Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Florida Drug Cases
If your parents’ employers were early adopters of email, then your parents probably came home from work sometimes with printouts of funny emails that their coworkers had forwarded to them, and sometimes your parents would read them out loud at the dinner table until long after it had stopped being funny. Incompetent members of… Read More »
Nelson Hearings in Florida Drug Cases
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of defendants in criminal cases to a fair trial. The text of the amendment lists several components of a fair trial but case law has further interpreted the amendment and set more specific criteria by which the court can tell whether the defendant’s… Read More »
New Amendment to the Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act
Thanks to the “no double jeopardy” rule, an acquittal is forever, but if you get convicted of a crime, you still have a chance to make things right. If you acknowledge that you committed the crime, then the best thing to do is to get through your sentence as quickly as possible and then… Read More »
Florida Doctor Convicted of Supplying Opioids to Drug Trafficking Operation
Florida’s pill mills are the stuff of legend, but by now, they belong to the legendary past. There was a time, so the story goes, when drug dealers would make road trips to Florida from across the southeastern United States to visit shady pain clinics in strip malls, and licensed physicians would prescribe untold… Read More »
Hearsay Evidence in Florida Drug Cases
The sensationalized talk shows that used to play on TV between the 1970s and the 2000s were designed for an audience that had nothing better to do during the day than watch TV. While the gainfully employed people of the world were at work, or else sleeping off last night’s shift in preparation for… Read More »
Justice for People Convicted Under Illegal Drug Sting?
The best thing that can happen after you plead not guilty to criminal charges is that the state dismisses the charges against you during the pretrial discovery phase. The next best thing is that the jury acquits you at trial; if this happens, then pursuant to the “no double jeopardy” rule, the state can… Read More »
Drug Charges Are Worse When Teens Are Present
The popular media tend to depict illicit drug use as a young person’s game. When several local governments in Florida decriminalized recreational use of cannabis for people 21 years old and up, they did so on the assumption that, if you are in your 20s or older, you can make responsible decisions about smoking… Read More »
Fentanyl Tears Apart a Community Suffering From Addiction
In certain parts of Florida, fentanyl is as ubiquitous as reptiles far from their native range who have found a fertile breeding ground in the Sunshine State. Everyone knows someone who died an untimely death because of opioids and others separated by their addiction from the ability to work and to repair their relationships… Read More »
