Pinellas County Florida Criminal Lawyer Blog

As many people know, getting contraband in jail is very common.  I have heard many stories from inmates in the Pasco County Jail that cigarettes and drugs a readily available in the jail.  And although I have no confirmation of it, the inmates tell me it's the guards who are smuggling it in.

In Sheriff Bob White's most recent way to save tax people dollars, he arrested one of his own deputies for giving chewing tobacco to inmates who are building a airlane hanger for his aviation unit.  Technically, this is illegal and is called Introduction of contraband into a Detention Facility. The deputy also allegedly allowed the inmates girlfriends to bring smokeless tobacco to the building site.

Note that the deputy was not in the jail, but rather off site.  Does this still count?  Yes - according to Brooks v. State, a First District Court of Appeal case from 1988, an inmate can be convicted of Introduction or possession of contraband when he's of the jail property on a work release program.  The question really is:  can the guard be prosecuted for this?

Florida Statute 951.22 says it is unlawful to introduce contraband "except through regular channels as duly authorized by the sheriff or the officer in charge."  Because they were off site, wasn't he the officer in charge? 

Here's a guard who was just trying to be a nice guy and he gets arrested for it.  No good deed goes unpunished. 

In an interesting legal move for her first days as Attorney General, Pam Bondi has now outlawed a certain type of bath salts.  She did this through an emergency rule which will now make possession of the bath salts a third degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.(read more from the St. Petersburg Times 1/27/11) The Attorney General cannot make laws on her own, they must ultimately be passed by the florida Legislature. 

The bath salts are sold in tobacco stores and are said to be 10 time more powerful than cocaine.  The salts have been banned in the UK and some other countries for months.  (See this article quoting a former cocaine user on the effects) It is the latest in Florida's overwhelming attempt to prevent people from getting high under the guise of public safety. 

Just so everyone is aware - the police DO NOT need a warrant, or your permission to get your records from a pharmacy. There are several recent cases from the 2nd DCA which confirm this. 

The police no longer need a search warrant to get copies of your prescriptions from pharmacies.  In a recent case from the 2nd DCA - the court said that pursuant to Florida Statute 893.07(4) which requires pharmacies to maintain records of controlled substances - the police DO NOT need a warrant to get the records from the pharmacies - it is yet to be seen whether or not they can get reocrds from a doctor without your permission.    See State v. Herc

But it seems to me that it's not people's personal prescription records being seized that's the problem - it's the pharmaceutical companies - who are making a killing off these drugs.  Take the drug giant, Merck which makes a generic form of oxycodone called Percocet.   They made 7.9 BILLION dollars in 2009. This number is the tip of the iceberg.  There are hundreds of generic drugs for all the narcotic pain medicines.

Nevertheless, the AG and the police are watching this epedemic like hawks. The new Attorney General vows to go after "pill mills" while hiring former Senator Dave Aronberg to head up the fight.  A very interesting quote from Mr. Aronberg:

"Florida has become the drug dealer for the entire country," he said. "The most powerful way to deal with that is to put people in jail."

I always find it interesting when goverment officials want to put people in jail.  What about the pharmacutical companies??  I guess that would cut into their campaign contributions. 

Always better to fight crime at the street level than solve the real problem.  If they solved the problem what political issues could they run on next term? 

While I was in law school, I interned in the Staff Attorney's Office of the Sixth Judicial Circuit.  At the time (pre budget cuts) there were about six attorneys and two interns whose sole job was to read and answer motions for post conviction relief.  These are motions filed, usually pro se, by a person who has been sentenced to prison who thinks the sentence is illegal in some way.

Most of the motions had to do with jail credit.  When a person is sitting in the county jail, all the days they serve there should count toward their prison sentence.  For example, if a person sits in jail 90 days before serving a 5 year prison term, he should be credited for that time in jail.

The 5th DCA (Daytona Beach) just ruled on the case of McLeod v. State  It seems McLeod pled to a 3rd degree felony and was given proabation with a suspended sentence of 5 years in the Florida Department of Corrections.  The maximum sentence on a 3rd degree felony is 5 years.  So if McLeod violated his probation, he would have gotten the full 5 years, minus any time served in the county jail.  Unfortunatly for McLeod, he did violate and the court sentenced him to the five years minus 92 days he'd spent in jail. 

But he'd actually spent 318 days in jail and argued that he deserved credit for all of them.  The State and the judge argued that McLeod waived his right credit for time served as part of a plea agreement.  (Who in their right mind would believe that this was a "plea agreement" to the maximum amount of time possible for the crime?)

The 5th DCA agreed with McLeod and better yet - said that because he was entitled to credit for all of his time served, he was actually sentenced to more than the maximum of 5 years which made his sentence illegal. 

If you think you have agreed to an illegal sentence - call Pawuk & Pawuk.

Something we're seeing more and more frequently in our practice are people who need to get rid of very old warrants in order to recieve their social security checks. 

If you have an outstanding warrant you cannot collect from social security - whether it's retirement income or disability. (See Social Security Administration Handbook)

This week, a 63 year old man turned himself in on a 20 year old warrant - a warrant from 1990 - for a VIOLATION OF PROBATION on a felony possession of marijauna charge. (St. Petersburg Times article)

The man left Florida years ago, moved to Tennessee and lived a normal life.  But when he wanted to collect his retirement income from Social Security,  they wouldn't allow it because of the outstanding warrant in Pasco County, Florida.

So without hiring a lawyer, the man turned himself in.  He now sits in Pasco County jail with a 0 bond. 

If you have an outstanding warrant - call us.  We might be able to prevent you from having to sit in jail for weeks or months pending the outcome of your case.  In some cases, depending upon the reason for the warrant - we might be able to prevent you from coming to Florida at all. 

Police arrested a 54 year old man for whacking a 12 year old boy with a baseball bat after the boy and his friends repeatedly rang his doorbell and ran away in the middle of the night. (See St. Pete Times article 1/3/2011)

After the third ring, the man hid in the bushes and hit the boy as he was running by the house.

He was charged with aggravated child abuse.  Aggravated child abuse is committed when anyone commits an aggravated battery upon a child - it is a first degree felony.  (See Florida Statute  827.03 

By using a baseball bat, technically the man did commit an aggravated battery, since a baseball bat can be considered a deadly weapon. 

Many people reading the article, and the newspaper article seems to sway this way too, might consider the "crime" to be mere street justice.  If the guy calls the police and they do nothing, talks to the parents, and they do nothing, and the security company in the development do nothing - what was he really supposed to do to stop the harrassment by neighborhood kids?  I guess he could have sued the families of the children for distrubting his "quiet enjoyment" of his home.  Good luck with that one, or finding a lawyer to take a case like that.

Pawuk & Pawuk doesn't usually handle child abuse cases, however, with facts like these, I think I might.