07.16.2010
Is a person surrounded by police officers asking him questions free to leave? What if they take his identification? What if they approached him by blocking him in with a patrol car and shining a light in his face? What if they asked to search him? The courts have long struggled with the application ...
07.12.2010
When deciding whether or not self defense is a viable defense to murder, the Fourth District Court of Appeals recently held that testimony about the dangerous nature of a particular neighborhood is not relevant to a person’s state of mind at the time of the crime. In other words, a defendant cannot ...
07.07.2010
The Fourth Amendment has long stood for a fairly common-sense principle: Agents of the government are not supposed to enter or search a place where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy without a warrant or probable cause to believe that there is some evidence of a crime there. Although ...
07.01.2010
Many people believe that if an undercover police officer is asked if they are a member of law enforcement, that the officer must be truthful. This is not the case. The police can lie to you. They can tell you that they are not cops. According to federal law, government agents are under no duty [...]![]()
06.24.2010
In Florida, most jury trials are conducted with six jurors. How do those six get picked? From a large group of people who are asked a lot of questions. How do you ensure that those six will be fair and impartial? You make sure they are judging the facts of the case before them, not [...]![]()
