Jacksonville Criminal Lawyer Blog

We receive a lot of calls from people in Florida who are applying for a job, are up for some sort of promotion or are going through an employment related background check and run into trouble when the employer finds a past criminal record. If this is something you have faced, or may face in the future, you should be aware that the law allows you to seal or expunge a prior criminal record in Florida depending on the circumstances of those charges and the ultimate disposition of the case. If you have a criminal record in Florida but the charges were dropped/dismissed or the judge withheld adjudication when you entered a plea of guilty or no contest, you may be eligible to have that criminal record expunged or sealed. Once that process is completed, Florida law allows you to deny, or leave off a job application, the arrest that led to the charge(s) that was ultimately sealed or expunged. That prior criminal record would be something just about all potential employers would never see.

That is one question that we often get from clients- who can see my criminal record in Florida once I have had it sealed or expunged? The answer is very few people. Under the Florida statutes, once your record has been sealed or expunged, you can still get a copy of your prior record and the various police departments and prosecutors' offices can see it if you get arrested on a new case and they want to run your record. As for potential employers, if you apply for a job with a criminal justice agency, if you apply to a state Bar to become a lawyer, if you apply for a job with the Department of Child and Family Services, the Agency for Health Care Administration, the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, the Department of Juvenile Justice or the Department of Education, they can still see it. Private employers that are not contracting with the above-mentioned entities should not have access to a sealed or expunged criminal record.

For the most part, employers are not going to see a criminal record in Florida that has been sealed or expunged when they otherwise would if you did not get the criminal record sealed or expunged. If you have any questions about whether you are eligible to have a criminal record sealed or expunged, feel free to contact us for a free consultation.

A criminal defense client asked us whether the police can conduct an investigatory stop, whether on foot or in a vehicle, based on an anonymous tip. For instance, let's assume that an unidentified person calls the police and says that person X is out on the street with illegal drugs in his possession or person Y is driving recklessly and may be drunk driving. Can the police in Florida approach either of these "suspects" and stop them to investigate them solely based on the anonymous tip? The answer is no.

Each of us has a Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by the police. That means the police cannot just stop someone without reasonable suspicion, i.e. specific facts, that a crime is taking place or is about the take place. When the police get a tip from some anonymous person, that by itself is not reliable enough to justify a police stop. The police would have the right to investigate further, but can only stop the "suspect" if the police officer observes certain facts that confirmed the tip him/herself .

For instance, in the case of the person who possessed illegal drugs, if the police officer observed the person making what appeared to be hand to hand drug transactions, that may be a basis to stop the person and investigate further. In the case of the alleged drunk driver, if the police located the vehicle and saw that the driver was swerving or speeding or otherwise driving recklessly, that would be sufficient for a stop and subsequent DUI investigation. However, if the police officer located the vehicle and the driver was driving appropriately, a stop based solely on the anonymous tip would be illegal.

We have read several articles on the Internet about police and Florida Highway Patrol officers stepping up efforts to stop people speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (aka drunk driving, DUI and DWI) in the Jacksonville, Florida area this weekend. Keep in mind that police come out in force on such holiday weekends and make many more traffic stops and arrests than on an ordinary weekend.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when a police officer suspects you of driving under the influence, every question he/she asks and everything he/she does from that point forward will be designed to obtain evidence against you to support the DUI case. For some reason, a lot of people think it is a good idea to answer questions about whether he/she has had anything to drink that night and if so, how many drinks. Unless the answer is zero, answering this question will only serve to help the state prove the DUI case against you. The same goes for the field sobriety tests. A person fails the DUI field sobriety tests when the police officer says so. It is a subjective test. And this is the same police officer who already has it in his/her head that you are drunk or he/she would not have asked you to perform the field sobriety tests in the first place.

Obviously, the best plan is to either not drink or get a ride with a friend or a taxi if you have been drinking. But, if you have been pulled over and the police officer is asking questions relating to a DUI or any other crime, understand that you have a Constitutional right to remain silent. If you decide to waive that right and answer questions, your answers will be used against you.

In a recent possession of marijuana case in Florida, the criminal charges against a juvenile were dropped because the juvenile was searched illegally by the police officer. The police officer found the juvenile near a high school during school hours. He approached the juvenile and determined that he was supposed to be in school at the time. A police officer does have a right to detain a juvenile if he has reason to believe that the juvenile is skipping school. The purpose of the detention is to return the juvenile to the school.

In this case, the police officer detained the juvenile, searched her pockets and found marijuana. Normally, a police officer is allowed to search someone who has been arrested to make sure the suspect does not have a weapon and presents no risk to the police officer's safety. However, truancy, i.e. skipping school, is not a crime so this juvenile was not arrested. As a result, the police officer could not use the search incident to arrest basis to search the juvenile. If the officer has a right to detain someone, as he did here, he/she can pat that person down for weapons to ensure officer safety, but the officer chose not to do that and went straight into a search instead.

Alternatively, if the police officer had some reason to believe that the juvenile was in possession of marijuana or other illegal drug, he may have been permitted to search the juvenile. If the officer had patted the juvenile down first and felt something that seemed to be drugs or a weapon, then a search would likely have been authorized. At the hearing on the motion to suppress the marijuana, the police officer testified that he searched the juvenile for officer safety because he was about to place him in his patrol car to take him back to school. But since no arrest was made, this was not a valid basis to search the juvenile under the Fourth Amendment.

In order for a police officer to conduct a valid search of a person, the police officer must establish a legal basis. Since neither of the two possible bases for a valid search applied (search incident to an arrest or specific evidence of illegal drugs), the search was illegal, and the marijuana was thrown out.

The 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids the government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment. The Florida Constitution has a similar provision. This issue normally arises in death penalty cases. However, the U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing the issue of whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a juvenile to life in prison for committing a crime that did not involve a murder.

Two of the cases being reviewed by the USSC are Florida cases- one involved a 13 year old who was convicted of the rape of an elderly woman, and the other involved a 17 year old who was convicted of armed robbery and other related charges. There are 77 prison inmates who have been sentenced to life in prison for crimes that did not involve a homicide. Florida seems to have more than most, if not all, other states. The judges on the Supreme Court can decide to keep the status quo and allow criminal courts in Florida to impose life sentences for juveniles who commit serious but non-homicide crimes, abolish the practice altogether or come up with some middle ground where the judges are required to weigh certain factors before imposing a life sentence in such cases.

This is something we are hearing quite often these days as the economy is struggling and many people are looking for jobs. Many people contact us who are either worried that a prospective employer may see something on their criminal record that may prevent them from being hired or have applied for a job only to be told that their criminal record disqualifies them from the position they are seeking. Or in some cases, current employers have performed background checks and discovered a criminal record that resulted in the person being fired.

The ability to seal or expunge your criminal record can be a very helpful tool to make sure a past mistake does not come back to hurt you in your job search or current job. Sealing or expunging a criminal record is the best way to keep information about a past crime from potential or current employers.

If you have had a prior criminal case that was either dropped or resolved with the adjudication withheld, you very well may be eligible to have that criminal record sealed or expunged in Florida. If you have questions about your criminal record and whether or not you are eligible to have it sealed or expunged, feel free to contact us for a free consultation.

Lawrence Taylor, who was one of the most famous linebackers in the NFL, was arrested for hit and run in Dade County, Florida over this past weekend, according to a news article. In Florida, the crime of hit and run, also referred to as leaving the scene of an accident, can be a misdemeanor or a serious felony depending on the circumstances. For instance, if a person is involved in an accident that just results in property damage and fails to stop and provide his/her information, that should be a second degree misdemeanor. However, if the accident involves an injury to another person and the driver leaves the scene of the accident, it can be a third degree felony crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison. If the accident results in a death to another person, the hit and run charge can be a first degree felony punishable by up to 30 years.

Hit and run charges are not always that easy for the state to prove. It is one thing for the state to establish that a particular vehicle was involved in a hit and run accident based on evidence of the make, model and license plate number. However, the state still needs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was actually the person who was driving the vehicle at the time of the hit and run. Oftentimes, the state just has a description of the vehicle and a vague description of the driver, if at all, and this is not enough to support a hit and run charge.

Several times, we have discussed the trend we have seen towards more federal investigations and arrests in mortgage fraud cases in Florida and Jacksonville. Federal authorities are responding to the tremendous meltdown in the housing markets and numerous mortgages that have gone unpaid. In many local U.S. Attorney offices in Florida, mortgage fraud cases used to occupy a relatively small percentage of the caseload. However, since the mortgage and housing crisis, some offices in Florida have so many mortgage fraud cases that all of the prosecutors have one or more of them.

The trends towards increased federal prosecution of mortgage fraud cases certainly includes the Jacksonville, Florida market. According to a recent article on News4Jax.com, there were twenty-four recent mortgage fraud related arrests in Jacksonville. There were over one hundred such arrests throughout Florida. Florida is obviously a major target for mortgage fraud related criminal cases due to the sheer volume of real estate and real estate transactions in the state. For some reason, many people consider Jacksonville the number one city in Florida for mortgage fraud.

However, the crime of mortgage fraud is often not black and white like some other crimes. What one prosecutor or FBI agent calls mortgage fraud, someone else may call good business or a misunderstanding on behalf of one of the parties to the mortgage transaction. Whether a transaction is a mortgage fraud crime or not may depend on what disclosures were made, whether verbal or in writing. There are often honest and legitimate differences of opinion between what one side considers a legitimate way of conducting business and the other side considers a serious felony crime. When law enforcement casts the net of arrests so wide so quickly, it is certainly likely that many of these cases fall on the legitimate business side of the line.

If you are stopped for a DUI (aka driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, DWI or drunk driving) and the officer has detained you for a DUI investigation, arrested you or read the Miranda warnings to you, you have a right to remain silent and not answer questions. Keep in mind that once the police officer has it in his/her mind that you may be impaired by alcohol or drugs, everything he/she does from that point on is to gather evidence to be used against you in a DUI case.

After a traffic stop where the police officer suspects you of driving under the influence of alcohol, he/she will ask you questions about where you have been, whether you have been drinking, and if so, how much. These questions are obviously designed to collect evidence to arrest you and charge you with DUI. The officer will also ask you to submit to field sobriety tests or exams. These are very difficult balancing exercises that are hard to perform under any circumstances. More importantly, whether or not you pass or fail is a completely subjective decision made by a police officer who obviously already thinks you are impaired or he/she would not have asked you to do them in the first place.

As criminal defense lawyers in the Jacksonville, Florida area who handle a lot of DUI cases, we read a lot of police reports where a person has made statements that help the police and the state prosecute them for DUI. When the U.S. Constitution affords you the right to remain silent and not incriminate yourself, consider why you would want to make a statement to the police in such a situation that is only going to be used against you in a criminal case.

Marijuana grow houses, where people make structural and electrical modifications to a home or other building to create a warm and humid environment where hybrid marijuana plants can grow indoors, are becoming more popular in Florida, according to a recent article on News4jax.com. Apparently, drug trafficking organizations are setting up grow houses all over Florida and the Southeast from Miami to Jacksonville to Atlanta. They are able to grow more potent marijuana that can bring in more money per plant. Additionally, many criminal courts have become less strict with marijuana crimes reducing the risk of setting up a marijuana grow house. According to the article, most people arrested for the first time for having a marijuana grow house get probation instead of jail or prison time. Of course, that will depend on a variety of factors in the case and the particular county where the suspect is arrested.

According to the article, the number of marijuana grow houses have increased exponentially since 2000 when most of the illegal drugs in Florida were brought in from Mexico and South America. The article estimates that approximately 100 pounds of marijuana from Florida grow houses are shipped from Miami to other parts of the country.

Last week, we wrote about the greater number of DUI arrests that we expected over the Halloween and Florida-Georgia weekend in Jacksonville, Florida. True to form, police were out in force making DUI arrests throughout Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach. In addition to DUI arrests, an article today indicated that Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach police made more than 250 arrests for consuming or possessing alcohol by minors.

Most people understand the seriousness of a DUI arrest and the potential penalties that go with a DUI. For that reason, we make it clear that people should be very careful answering questions and submitting to tests when a police officer is investigating them for DUI.

Most people also think an arrest for underaged drinking or possession of alcohol is very minor. Often, when the police officer makes an "arrest" for this charge, the officer merely gives the person a ticket which is a notice to appear in court at a later date or a notice to set a court date in the future. Technically, this is still considered an arrest on your record. More importantly, the charge of possession or consumption of alcohol by a minor is a second degree misdemeanor crime in Florida which carries a maximum potential penalty of 60 days in jail. It is highly unlikely that you would get anywhere near that kind of jail time for possessing or drinking alcohol as a minor. However, you may simply enter a guilty plea to the charge without realizing that you have just received a misdemeanor conviction on his/her permanent criminal record. Depending on whether the judge adjudicates you guilty or withholds adjudication, you may never be able to seal your criminal record now or in the future.

Misdemeanor crimes are less serious than felony crimes, but they can result in a criminal record that can have a negative effect on you in the future when it comes to applying for schools or jobs. If you have questions about how to handle a misdemeanor charge or sealing or expunging a criminal record, feel free to contact us for a free consultation.