Fort Lauderdale Criminal Law Blog

In a recent post, we discussed Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. The Trayvon Martin shooting has brought the legislation under scrutiny, and now the case of a 31-year-old Florida woman is also making headlines.

The woman says she was in fear for her life when she fired a gun to scare away her enraged husband, who even said in court that he had threatened to kill her. Despite the husband's admitting to a history of domestic abuse, the court denied the woman's motion for a dismissal. (In a later hearing, the husband claimed that he initially lied about threatening to kill his wife.)

Two Florida men were recently arrested in connection with the alleged theft of a number of vehicles in Stuart and Palm Beach counties. The case is especially interesting because one of the defendants appears to have never been told that he was involved in theft, though according to the arrest reports, he did say that he suspected he was dealing in stolen property.

One of the men is a 34-year-old from Sebastian who has apparently cooperated with investigators after his arrest, which took place following a brief car chase. He told police that he would take older-model cars for test drives and then exchange the wrong but similar-looking keys when he returned the vehicles to the dealers. He said he would come back to the car lots at night and use the correct keys to steal the cars, which he would then sell for scrap.

There are many avenues of redemption for minors who accidently get caught up with the wrong crowd. When children get arrested -- for any charge -- there are rehabilitative options like alternative sentencing or juvenile probation that won't put their future at stake.

Last week, four young adults and one juvenile were arraigned in Broward County court on charges of attempted home burglary. According to police reports, the adults in the group forced a juvenile female to knock on the front doors of homes in Lighthouse Point under the auspices of selling magazine subscriptions. That way, the rest of the group would know if someone was home or not.

After the young girl went up to the front door of one house as directed, nobody answered. The elderly home owner said he didn't answer the door because he simply thought he was avoiding a sales pitch. But he called the police after the suspects backed their car up his driveway and reportedly started trying to pry open his garage door with a crowbar. Once police were called, the five fled in their car and a chase ensued. Eventually, they crashed their car into a parked vehicle and a home. According to reports, two of the suspects broke into the home's laundry room and hid in the backyard. Their location was eventually discovered by a police dog and they were taken into custody.

Police officers are not above making mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes are shown to be so egregious and damaging that not only are criminal charges against Florida residents dropped; the police officers themselves come under investigation. That is exactly what happened in a case involving a Coral Springs woman after a taped phone call revealed that city police officers cursed at her and even discussed how to address the internal affairs complaint they apparently felt was inevitable.

The 59-year-old woman from Coral Springs ended up facing four criminal charges, including driving under the influence of drugs and a felony charge of resisting an officer. State prosecutors have since dropped the charges, and the Broward State Attorney's Office is currently investigating whether the police officers lied under oath and trumped up the allegations.