Brian Tannebaum, a criminal defense lawyer in Miami, on some of the comments seen surrounding the George Zimmerman trial. Law is a complex subject with intricacies that vary by region. Of course the media should do a better job of finding and quoting pundits and guests, and each person who do well to know more about…
In a case that defines why you should never talk to the police without council, Salinas, the petitioner was questioned when not in custody or Mirandized. After answering some of the officer’s questions about a murder, Genovevo Salinas stopped answering questions about whether ballistics testing would match his firearm. This silence was used at trial as…
After speeding and crossing the center line, Missouri police stopped Tyler McNeely. After declining a breath test he was arrested and transported to a hospital where he refused to a blood test. The officer instructed a lab tech to take the sample. After the BAC tested above the legal limit, McNeely was charged with Driving…
The Florida Supreme Court has come back with a decision in favor the defendent in Florida v. Joelis Jardines. In this case the police took a drug sniffing dog on the property of a homeowner suspected of growing marijuana. At the front door, the dog allegedly sensed one of the odors it was trained to detect.…
Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech giving credit to defenders on the 50th Anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright. This was the landmark case that ruled that state courts under the Fourteenth Amendment must provide counsel to defendants of criminal cases who are unable to afford attorneys on their own. The case began from a 1961 burglary…
An appellate rule requires “extraordinary” circumstances to sentence outside of guidelines range. While the 11th Circuit has never found reason to deny an upward variance sentence, they have on occasion found downward variance sentences to be unreasonable. In this case the appellant plead guilty to a five year health care fraud scheme of $3 million.…
