Recent Blog Posts
Beware Of The New Synthetic Cathinone In South Florida’s Drug Supply
Most Floridians have never heard of khat, a plant whose stimulant properties can be tapped by chewing the leaves; chewing khat has been a popular recreational activity in Yemen and parts of East Africa for centuries. The drug has never caught on in the United States, since cathinone, the active ingredient in khat, is… Read More »
Turning Yourself In After An Arrest Warrant Does Not Mean Surrendering To Your Fate
In action movies, when a court issues a warrant for the arrest of a defendant, the action usually picks up. The defendant knows that he is only one traffic stop or only one chance encounter with a police officer in a mall away from getting hauled off to jail. Therefore, the defendant tries everything… Read More »
Drug Sales To Undercover Cops Do Not Always Lead To An Immediate Arrest
In the movies, you often see undercover police officers buy drugs from a career drug dealer, or even from an everyman whose financial circumstances have gotten so bad that he is willing to sell his prescription ADHD pills, and as soon as the money and the drugs have changed hands, the police flash their… Read More »
Nolle Prosequi And Other Anticlimactic Endings To Your Criminal Case
How would you feel if you were facing criminal charges, preparing for trial or trying to decide whether to accept a plea deal, and suddenly your criminal defense lawyer called you to tell you that your case was over? Until you enter a guilty plea or until the jury returns a verdict at your… Read More »
You Have The Right To Transparency About The Prosecution’s Case Against You
A criminal trial should be more like a game of chess or checkers and less like a game of Mastermind, Stratego, or Battleship. In other words, you should be able to see all of your opponent’s pieces at all times. Both sides must choose their strategy based on evidence that is available to both… Read More »
Is It Legal To Own A Pill Press?
The identifying characteristic of drug paraphernalia is that it is an ordinary item that, by itself, is perfectly legal to own, but circumstances surrounding the police’s discovery of the item in your possession lead them to suspect that you are using it for the consumption, manufacture, or distribution of illegal drugs. A pipe is… Read More »
Clinical Trials For Medical LSD Are In Progress
If you smoked weed before or during the George W. Bush administration, then you remember a time when certain talkative stoners had a lot to say about the medicinal benefits of weed, and sometimes they could find people who agreed with them. The logic back then, which became a major impetus for the medical… Read More »
The Lack Of Criminal Intent Defense
Long before you were old enough to be tried as an adult in the criminal justice system, an authority figure such as a parent or teacher probably told you that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking it. There are no crimes where you can be acquitted simply by proving that… Read More »
Undercover Police Buy Hallucinogens From Uber Driver
Many arrests for felony drug offenses, such as drug trafficking, occur as the result of undercover police operations. Confidential informants or undercover officers buy drugs from defendants on several occasions, usually after communicating with them by text message or secretly recording their phone conversations with the defendants. Once the police have enough evidence to… Read More »
What’s In Store For Florida Cannabis Laws In 2024?
It has been a long time since anyone has gotten arrested in Palm Beach County simply for having a small bag of weed in their pocket, but Florida continues to operate under a set of sometimes ambiguous and sometimes contradictory laws about cannabis. Those laws are always changing, as some legislators want to place… Read More »
