West Palm Beach Criminal Lawyer Blog : Ronald Chapman: West Palm Beach Criminal Lawyer | Florida Criminal Attorney: DUI, Assault & Battery, Felonies | Criminal Law Firm

The following story appears in the Palm Beach Post newspaper.  Although it originates in South Florida, the story could happen anywhere.

DNA TESTING ON TRIAL

By Susan Spencer-Wendel

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 23, 2007

WEST PALM BEACH — Exonerations using DNA evidence have topped 200 cases now, corroding confidence in the American criminal justice system.

Men and women imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, many of those sexual batteries. He-said-she-said cases debunked by science decades later.

Some men exonerated when they were set to be executed. Most men released from prison with a bag of belongings, some robbed of half their lives.

For every person who walks out the steel door comes a wave of prisoners insisting they, too, have DNA evidence that they want tested - post-conviction claims, they are called.

It's a trend so disturbing, Florida legislators recently passed a law requiring that all criminal defendants taking plea deals be asked beforehand if there exists any biological evidence that may exonerate them. It's the state's way of heading off a defendant's post-conviction claim before he even utters "guilty."

It's a way to spare the courts more cases and victims more agony.

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Sometimes when a man is arrested for the crime of domestic battery in Palm Beach County Florida, the judge who sets his bond orders him to have no contact with the alleged victim (which is usually the man's wife or girlfriend).  Often the judge enters such a "no-contact" order without first getting any input from the wife or girlfriend because she is not present in court when the judge enters the no-contact order.  Later, when the woman finds out that she is not permitted to have any contact at all with her husband or boyfriend, she seeks advice from an attorney regarding whether or not there is a way for her to legally have contact with her husband or boyfriend.  When presented with such a situation, the course of action that I typically pursue as a Florida assault and battery attorney is to get a court date as soon as possible for my client so that I can ask the judge to modify the no-contact order to state that the man can move back into his home with his wife or girlfriend as long as he does not touch or strike her in an unwarranted manner.  If the judge grants my request and modifies the original no-contact order, my client is able to immediately move back into his home with his wife or girlfriend.

Florida assault and battery attorney Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing assault and battery in Florida since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida assault and battery lawyer as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal guidelines on sentencing for cocaine violations are advisory only, rejecting a lower court ruling that they are effectively mandatory. Judges must consider the Guideline range for a cocaine violation, the Court said, but may conclude that they are too harsh when considering the disparity between punishment for crack cocaine and cocaine in powder form.

In still another recent development, the United States Sentencing Commission unanimously voted today to give retroactive effect to a recent amendment to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines that reduces penalties for crack cocaine offenses. Retroactivity of the crack cocaine amendment will become effective on March 3, 2008. Not every crack cocaine offender will be eligible for a lower sentence under the decision. A Federal sentencing judge will make the final determination of whether an offender is eligible for a lower sentence and how much that sentence should be lowered. That determination will be made only after consideration of many factors, including the Commission’s direction to consider whether lowering the offender’s sentence would pose a danger to public safety. In addition, the overall impact is anticipated to occur incrementally over approximately 30 years, due to the limited nature of the guideline amendment and the fact that many crack cocaine offenders will still be required under Federal law to serve mandatory five- or ten-year sentences because of the amount of crack involved in their offense.

For the last several years, numerous groups and individuals have been saying that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are too severe when it comes to penalties for crack cocaine offenses.  It looks as if those who have been advocating this position are finally being heard.

Florida drug offense lawyer Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing drug crimes in Florida since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida drug offense attorney as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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I previously authored a post entitled "Disparity in Sentencing and Crack Cocaine."  Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this same issue in two different cases.  The result was a resounding win for both defendants. 

In his blog entitled "Sentencing Law and Policy," Professor Douglas A. Berman summarizes the two cases as follows:

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the federal guidelines on sentencing for cocaine violations are advisory only, rejecting a lower court ruling that they are effectively mandatory. Judges must consider the Guideline range for a cocaine violation, the Court said, but may conclude that they are too harsh when considering the disparity between punishment for crack cocaine and cocaine in powder form. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the decision in Kimbrough v. U.S. (06-6330)....

Ruling in a second Guidelines case, Gall v. U.S. (06-7949), the Court — also by a 7-2 vote — cleared the way for judges to impose sentences below the specified range and still have such punishment regarded as “reasonable.” The Justices, in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, told federal appeals courts to use a “deferential abuse-of-discretion standard” even when a trial sets sets a punishment below the range. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., announced the opinion in Stevens’ absence.

Florida drug offense lawyer Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing drug crimes in Florida since 1990.  You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida drug offense attorney as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Crimes Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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If you are arrested for domestic battery in Palm Beach County Florida, the good news is that you will probably be able to get out of jail either by paying a monetary bond or else by agreeing to be supervised by certain government employees who have been designated by the Court to perform that task. 

The bad news is that you may not get out of jail until the day after you have been arrested.  That is because people who have been arrested for the crime of domestic battery are not permitted to immediately bond out of jail but rather must go to what is called a first-appearance hearing which is typically held within 24 hours of a person being arrested. At that hearing, a judge determines whether the arresting officer had probable cause to arrest the person and if he did what amount bond is to be set at.  Typical bonds range from $500.00 to an indi vidual paying no bond but instead being placed on Supervised OR which means that the person will be monitored until his case is resolved in court.

Florida assault and battery attorney Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing assault and battery in Florida since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida assault and battery lawyer as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Crimes Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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By Sarah Prohaska

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 08, 2007

FORT PIERCE — A jury deliberated for more than four hours Wednesday and will return today to mull the fate of two men accused of orchestrating a complex scheme that prosecutors say defrauded elderly investors out of millions of dollars.

The jurors will meet at the federal courthouse at 9:30 a.m. to resume deliberations in the trial for Leonard Bogdan Jr. and John Brant, who investigators say created a so-called Ponzi scheme between 1998 and January 2001 that took more than $16 million from mostly retired investors. Some of those retirees say they lost their life savings when they invested in the Bogdan Financial Group or several other related companies.

"The reason we are here today is because the investors who gave close to $17 million, at the end of the day, had nothing to show for it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Acosta said Wednesday morning during her closing argument. "The picture all this paints is: This company and these two defendants would do anything, and did do anything, to get this money."

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All police interrogations should be tape recorded so that there is an accurate record of what was said both by the suspect and by the police.  The following story about one particular interrogation illustrates this point: 

NEW YORK (AP) -- A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.

Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess - at times with vulgar tactics.

Once the transcript was revealed in court, prosecutors asked for a recess, defense attorney Mark DeMarco said. The detective was pulled from the witness stand and advised to get a lawyer.

Perino, 42, was arraigned Thursday on 12 counts of first-degree perjury and faces as many as seven years on each count, prosecutors said. He was released on $15,000 bail.

His attorney did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment Thursday. A New York Police Department spokesman declined to comment.

The allegations "put the safety of all law-abiding citizens at risk because they undermine the integrity and foundation of the entire criminal justice system," District Attorney Robert Johnson said in a statement.

Perino had arrested Crespo on New Year's Eve 2005 while investigating the shooting of a man in an elevator. While in an interrogation room at a station house, Crespo, then 17, stealthily pressed the record button on the MP3 player, a Christmas gift, DeMarco said.

After Crespo was charged with attempted murder, his family surprised DeMarco by playing him the recording.

"I couldn't believe my ears," said the lawyer, who decided to keep the recording under wraps until he cross-examined Perino at the trial.

Prosecutors then offered Crespo, who had faced as many as 25 years if convicted, seven years if he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. He accepted.

Certainly the police officer in this case would not have lied under oath had this interrogation been tape recorded. Moreover, if all interrogations were tape recorded, juries would not have to decide who to believe if a defendant testifies that he said one thing while the police testify that he said something else. Fortunately, some states, such as Minnesota, have seen the need for reform and now require that all interrogations be tape recorded. Hopefully, other states will require the same in the near future.

Florida criminal lawyer Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing crimes since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida criminal attorney as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Crimes Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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Federal drug laws can sometimes lead to paradoxical results.  Consider the following story from the Drug Law Blog:

The United States Gets Tough on Methamphetamine By Locking Up All Its Cold Medicine, Forcing Tweakers To Import Speed From Mexico Instead and Messing Up the Formula For Nyquil. In March, President Bush signed the renewal of the Patriot Act, which included the Combat Methamphetamine Act. As a result of that piece of legislation, drugs like Sudafed that contain pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make methamphetamine, had to be put behind the counter of pharmacies. The result is that domestic meth production has indeed fallen, but much of the slack has been taken up by skyrocketing production of meth south of the border. Not only that: they changed the formula in Nyquil to take out the pseudoephedrine so they wouldn't have to put it behind the counter! As the blog The Consumerist noted: "Nyquil has ditched the decongestant pseudoephedrine in favor of phenylephrine and doxylamine succinate. Neither apparently works as effectively as the pseudoephedrine, either on a sick person's nose, or in the crusty coffee machine carafe of the apocryphal neighborhood meth cooker."

Florida drug offense lawyer Ronald Chapman has been representing people accused of committing drug crimes since 1990. You can read more about Mr. Chapman’s experience as a Florida drug offense attorney as well as review news articles about some of his cases.  Some of the types of cases and issues that Mr. Chapman has handled since 1990 include:

• Death Penalty Cases
• Assault and Battery Cases
• DUI Cases
• Drug Cases
• Sex Crimes Cases
• Sealing & Expunging Criminal Records
• Bond|Bail
• Mistaken Identification and Wrongful Conviction
• Police Interrogations
• Sentencing

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Where can convicted sex offenders live?  This is becoming an increasing problem as laws are continually being passed that limit where convicted sex offenders can live.  For instance, in Florida, persons convicted of certain sex offenses are not permitted to live within 1,000 feet of any school, day care center, park, or playground. 

The following story appears on the blog entitled Sex Offender Issues and vividly describes the plight of a sex offender who lives in Tampa and who is trying to find a place to live:

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