Under Florida law, the State can charge a defendant with felony murder if a person dies during the defendant’s commission of a felony offense. A conviction for a felony is an essential element of felony murder, and if the State cannot establish the defendant committed a felony crime, the defendant…
Criminal cases involving multiple defendants can be complicated. When defendants conspire to commit a crime, what crime each defendant is charged with depends on the original intent of the defendants, and whether the crimes ultimately committed fell within the scope of the initial plan. Under Florida law, the independent act…
Some people mistakenly believe that circumstantial evidence is insufficient to convict a defendant of a crime. Direct evidence a defendant committed a crime is not required to support a conviction, however. In certain cases, what seems like trivial evidence can support a conviction for serious crimes. For example, in a…
The United States criminal justice system is based on the idea that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The court wants to make sure that when someone is found guilty by a jury, they are actually guilty. There are safeguards built into the criminal justice system to protect innocent defendants…
In Florida, people convicted of certain crimes may be sentenced to death for those crimes. However, there are some people who are constitutionally protected from the death penalty due to their status or characteristics. For example, the United States Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional to sentence someone to death…
When a person commits a felony, he or she is on the hook not only for that crime but also for any other crime that happens during the commission of the felony. A recent case out of Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeals is a good example of how a…