Author: bwauy

For those of you old enough to remember, there used to be a live court reporter in each court room for criminal proceedings. To save money, the Sixth Judicial Circuit stopped court reporters in misdemeanor proceedings about six years ago. Shortly thereafter, the court did away with any live court reporters in felony court proceedings….

Can the police search my house after I’ve been arrested? A police misconduct attorney at www.rizklaw.com can explain the question to you very well. Probably not. Unless you invited them in to search, or some one else who lives in your house did, or you were arrested in your home. But if you were arrested…

This morning in the Tampa Tribune there was a story about a driver who refused to stop and led the police on a 27 mile chase into Hernando County reaching speeds of 130mph. You can read it yourself. Does this mean the police were chasing him up US 19 at 130mph? Does the public’s safety…

On April 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an opinion which will directly affect the manner in which law enforcement in Florida, and across the country, can search vehicles during traffic stops. Prior to this decision, law enforcement typically searched a vehicle once the driver or a passenger was arrested for any crime, even…

I was reading a recent case from Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals where a juvenile driver was stopped for an expired tag.  The officer decided not to give him a citation since the tag was only 10 days expired.  As the officer was about to let him go, the officer asked, “[I]s there anything on you or in this…

This is a question that comes up time and time again and every legal answer seems to be a little different and the reason for that is every circumstance is different. Once again, it depends. The police only have the right to enter your house when: You give them consent to enter, or someone else…

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has signed a new bill into law (SB 2276) requiring people “arrested” for felony offenses to provide a DNA samples to be placed into a statewide database. Prior to this enactment, only those citizens “convicted” of specific felony offense were required to provide DNA. Just so you know, the State keeps the…

One of the questions we hear most often from our clients is: “Can the police go into my home without a warrant?”  And the answer, as always, is – IT DEPENDS. In a recent case out of Palm Bay, Florida; the police were investigating a domestic disturbance. They offered to give the intoxicated defendant a ride,…

A man stopped under very tenuous circumstances finally obtained justice from a recent Second District Court of Appeal ruling. The underlying “suspicious” conduct of which the accused man was guilty consisted of nothing more than just running from his home to catch a taxi in a hasty manner, and this was not enough to amount to acting…

In today’s modern world, cell phones have become nearly ubiquitous. With this in mind, privacy activists hailed the US Supreme Court’s 2014 Riley v. California decision this past summer, which ruled that law enforcement officers must obtain search warrants before searching the cell phones of persons under arrest. This decision, along with a similar one from the…