Orlando, Florida Criminal Law Blog

The Bradford County Sheriff's Office recently instituted a policy of placing large red signs outside of the homes of people who have been designated as sexual predators under Florida law. Under the law a sexual predator is a person who has been convicted of either a first degree felony which is sexual nature, or more than one second degree felonies which are sexual in nature. Under Florida law, there are requirements on community notification of the addresses of sexual offenders and sexual predators, but Bradford County is really pushing the envelope on this one.

You have to expect that law suits are going to be filed challenging this policy, arguing both violations of the residents right to privacy, as well as actions being brought by neighboring homeowners, who can certainly expect their property values to plummet.

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Breath test devices are notoriously unreliable. They are consistently challenged in court cases involving individuals suspected of driving under the influence (DUI). Even so, American law enforcement officials may soon embrace a newly created breath device that allegedly detects a dozen different kinds of controlled substance use. If so, breath test challenges could soon become a fixture of cases involving drug offenses as well as DUI offenses.

The drug breath test device was designed in Sweden and is so far only in the testing phase. According to a study recently published in the Journal of Breath Research, the device can detect several illegal substances. The test can allegedly detect traces of morphine, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana, among others. In each of the test cases, drugs were detected 24 hours after the user had last sampled them.

More people are in jails and prisons in the United States than in any other country in the world. As our prisons start to fill up, lawmakers have to start making decisions that lower the overall number of incarcerated individuals to a reasonable number, while keeping the general public out of harms way.

Lawmakers in several states have recently made moves towards lowering the overall number of incarcerated people. Here are a few recent highlights:

In California, the Senate passed a bill that allows prosecutors - under their discretion - decide to prosecute drug possession (of any substance) as a misdemeanor rather than a felony.

Alaska passed a similar bill, except it would always classify drug possession as a misdemeanor. The bill passed in the Senate, and is now headed to the House.

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After users responded to ads on a website that allegedly connected prostitutes with johns, almost 100 people were arrested, including a 21-year-old man on his honeymoon in Orlando who left his wife at the plush resort. Authorities are conducting a further criminal probe into the website to determine the nature of their business. A sheriff's officer reported that the parties connected through the website between May 8 and 14. However, the website says that no one may use their services to engage in illegal activity.

An undercover officer placed an ad for prostitution on the site, and the wayward honeymooner responded. His wife called the authorities to say that he was missing when he didn't come back to the resort. 

Ninety-two people were taken into custody for committing prostitution or solicitation of prostitution. The men and women included 12 "pimps," 39 alleged prostitutes and 39 suspected "johns." The pimps brought the prostitutes to the location while the johns sought out sex with the prostitutes. Two people were taken into custody for other charges. 

The National Transportation Safety Board in Washington has taken a new look at the DUI limits, and made a recommendation to the states that the BAC limit be lowered to .05. Since 2009, the legal limit has been .08, which legally determined the sobriety level for someone driving a vehicle. Law enforcement arrests those driving at the legal limit.

Now, with texting, distracted driving has reached higher proportions. In the recent years, there have been as many as 44,000 fatal auto accidents in which over 10,000 of those were the result of a DUI offense. This is approximately one-third, which Hersman states have declined in recent years. But, when the number of accidents from texting is added in, the number of fatalities grows.

The United States has declared this a national epidemic, which includes drivers from teens to adults. In an effort to create a lighter standard, the NTSB recommended that all 50 states accept this new BAC level for DUI/DWI drivers. Since 1980, more than 445,000 people have died in America due to alcohol or drug impaired driving, and that number is approximately 1 ½ times the population of Orlando. NTSB projects that the new BAC would save 500 to 800 lives a year. 

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A bill making the death of an unborn child a separate crime from an offense against the mother has passed the Florida House.

H.B.759 passed on a vote of 74-43 on Thursday and includes the provision that criminal charges would apply even if the perpetrator did not know the woman was pregnant. A similar bill has already cleared several committees in the Florida Senate.

The wording of the bill suggests that any point of gestational development is covered, creating contention among the bills many opponents. Opponents point out there would be an increase in pregnancy tests on women injured or killed as the result of a crime. 

The state of Florida has decided to take a strong stand on the protests that have sprung up against protesters making political statements at funerals; the protests have been a particular problem at the funerals of members of the armed forces and have taken place across the U.S. In response the Florida State Legislature has decided to bring in strict laws detailing when and where protesters can be when funerals are taking place.

The bill's sponsor Republican Lizbeth Benacquisto representing Fort Myers saw the Funeral Buffer Bill pass the state legislature and be signed into law effective October 1st 2013 by Governor Rick Scott. The new law, which is punishable with up to a year in jail requires all protests to take place no closer than 500 feet from the funeral venue, a distance that cannot be encroached upon one hour before the funeral, during the funeral and one hour after the funeral. The buffer zone is designed to ensure the protesters maintain their right to free speech while the family and friends of the deceased have the space to grieve and pay their last respects in privacy. 

Sometimes when legislators are facing dramatic budget cuts, they make smart choices that ultimately benefit their constituents while saving money at the same time. Unfortunately, at other times legislators either use the excuse of budget cuts to pass controversial and harmful legislative agendas or simply look in the wrong places for the answers.

Florida is facing a budget crisis. But rather than continuing to explore reducing the state's prison population and fostering alternatives to imprisonment for low-level offenders in order to save money, state legislators have decided that executing death row inmates faster and without adequate appeals will be a fine solution to finding some much-needed room in the budget. Even though individuals convicted of serious felony offenses who are facing death by the hand of the state are perhaps most in need of an adequate appeals process.

Although it may seem as if cyber fraud is already rampant online, cybercriminals are coming up with new and even more malevolent ways to attack people online in exchange for greater pay-offs. Over the last couple of months many cyber thieves have started to target elements of website infrastructure such as hosting services, domain naming services, and certificate issuing authorities. Their effort is to spread malware farther and more efficiently.

CTO and chairman of Marble Security, Dave Jevans, stated that the criminals are now targeting infrastructure elements of the internet and each attack is very well planned and orchestrated to have very severe results.

By attacking hosting services cyber thieves are able to gain access to thousands of websites at one time allowing them to quickly get spread their malware. They also attack email servers so that they can get to millions of messages daily and millions of email addresses. Jevans explained that once a cyber criminal is able to get into an email provider they can send out email filled with malware to millions of users that have no reason to distrust the company that appears to be the original sender.

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