One often overlooked element of a DUI (“driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs”) charge is the requirement that the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was either driving the vehicle or in actual physical control of the vehicle while impaired from alcohol or drugs.…
Despite the obvious and incomprehensibly expensive failure of the war on drugs, the United States government continues to expend time, resources and of course, money into making more and more drugs illegal. This time, the targets of the government are synthetic stimulants, or “bath salts”, and synthetic marijuana, or “fake…
A new study found that traffic fatalities declined in states that legalized medical marijuana. The study looked at the relationship among marijuana laws, alcohol consumption and traffic-related deaths. The results were an almost 9% decline in traffic fatalities and a 5% decline in beer sales in states that legalized medical…
The law firm of Lasnetski Gihon Law in Jacksonville, Florida handles all variations of white collar crimes. One of the cases for which our clients often request representation is the crime of mortgage fraud. As a result of handling a large number of mortgage fraud criminal cases, we have noticed…
In a recent criminal case south of Jacksonville, Florida, the defendant was charged with burglary of an occupied dwelling and other charges after the victim reported she was sleeping in an apartment and the defendant broke in and assaulted her. The victim had been staying at the apartment with a…
In Florida, in order for the police to stop a person and investigate him/her for a crime that is not a DUI, the police need “reasonable suspicion” that the person is involved in criminal activity. When the information comes from an ordinary citizen reporting the suspicious behavior to the police,…
With DUI cases in Florida, a lot of people assume that the defendant is arrested only after he/she has submitted to a breathalyzer test that showed the defendant was drunk driving or impaired by alcohol. Otherwise, people understand that an arrest before a high breathalyzer reading is likely to be…
As pain pill or pill mill cases become much more prevalent in Florida, one issue that we have looked at quite often is a person’s privacy rights in his/her pharmacy and medical records. In Florida, a person has clear privacy rights in his/her medical records. It requires a court order…
In Florida, an assault is an intentional verbal or physical threat to commit violence upon another person in such a way that it is apparent that the person making the threat has the ability to carry it out and the victim reasonably fears that the violence is imminent. An assault…
As we have discussed several times in the past, the old laws dealing with prison sentences were very different for crack cocaine crimes as opposed to powder cocaine crimes. Basically, a person charged with an amount of crack cocaine often faced a much more severe prison sentence than a different…