Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Police Arrest Man After Finding Three Pounds Of Cannabis Products In Yulee House
How much trouble you will get in for possessing a small bag of weed depends on what part of Florida you are in. In several counties and cities, most of them centered on the metropolitan areas of Orlando and Miami, possession of a small quantity of cannabis is a civil infraction, and you will… Read More »
Citrus County Teacher Faces Drug Trafficking Charges After A Search Of His Residence Yields Drugs And Paraphernalia
The police do not have the right to search your residence without first obtaining a warrant. In order to get a warrant, they must state compelling reasons for believing that a search will yield evidence of a crime. You probably learned about this right either during a lesson or an impromptu lecture in middle… Read More »
Much Ado About 13 Grams Of Weed
Florida’s cannabis laws vary from one jurisdiction to another; while marijuana possession remains illegal at the state level, except for licensed medical cannabis patients, possession of small quantities of cannabis has been decriminalized in some counties and cities. In some parts of Florida, the penalties for possessing 13 grams of weed amount simply to… Read More »
Two Florida Police Officers Sentenced To Prison After Pleading Guilty To Transporting Cocaine Across Miami-Dade County
Floridians can agree that the characters played by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the Bad Boys movie franchise are the coolest buddy cops ever to grace the silver screen; this is obvious even to people who are too young to feel nostalgia for the 1980s. The Bad Boys cops were probably not the… Read More »
Titusville Woman Arrested For Drug Possession After Telling Police She Left Baby At Publix
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects you against being coerced into making statements that incriminate you. That is why you have the right to remain silent if you are arrested. Even if you are not under arrest, the police do not have the right to force you to say anything. Therefore,… Read More »
Judge Revokes Home Detention For Defendants Accused In Darknet Opioid Trafficking Conspiracy
When you are charged with a crime, it is up to the judge’s discretion to set your bail amount. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits excessive bail, but it is not specific about what counts as excessive. The judge can decide to keep you in jail until the trial if the… Read More »
Can You Get In Trouble For Alkyl Nitrites In Florida?
Drugs that the law universally considers “bad” are the exception rather than the rule. For every big bad heroin, there are dozens of other drugs that have some accepted medical uses, even though their abuse potential is very high. Some of the most widely abused drugs, including fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, are Schedule II… Read More »
Tampering With Evidence In Florida Drug Cases
In terms of legal consequences, there is a big difference between getting convicted of drug possession and getting convicted of drug trafficking or any of the other crimes that indicate that you were participating in other people’s drug use instead of just your own. Much of what determines which drug crime you get charged… Read More »
Wesley Chapel Man Pleads Guilty To Distribution Of Fentanyl Resulting In Death
A recent development in a years-long drug trafficking conspiracy case serves as a reminder that it is possible to get a sentence of life in prison for drug distribution. The defendant has yet to be sentenced, so it is not yet possible to know how long his sentence will be or when, if ever,… Read More »
New Clinical Trial Brings MDMA One Step Closer To Approval As A Treatment For PTSD
Before there were Ecstasy and Molly, there was MDMA. Before there was PTSD, there was shell shock, the term used to describe the chronic, debilitating anxiety and other psychological symptoms experienced by veterans returning from trench warfare during the First World War. The disease got different names after each war as soldiers experienced similar… Read More »
