What are some example Florida case wins you’ve had?
Answer: The two that stand out: the first one was a grow house case in Sarasota County. My client was alleged to have bought a piece of property—a house out in sort of the wooded area of Sarasota. A very rural area. The police officers were actually investigating something next door, but smelled the odor of marijuana. So they went to the door of where they claimed my client lived. No one was there. They knocked several times, and a few minutes later, my client was walking down the street. And they asked if he lived there, and he said, “yes.” They immediately placed him in handcuffs and put him in the back of the police car. At that point, they then entered the home without trying to obtain a warrant or anything of that nature. They tried to allege that there was an emergency and that evidence could have been destroyed. There were several, several marijuana plants in his home. I was able to file a motion to suppress in the case and convinced the judge—my client was looking at significant jail time—to throw out every piece of evidence in the case, including all the marijuana plants that were found in the home. So that was a pretty memorable one.With regards to DUIs, probably the best win that I’ve had was a 24-year-old girl. She had some significant medical problems. She was in an accident—probably like 6 or 7 years prior to the DUI—where she suffered some pretty serious brain injuries. On the DUI, she was actually on Interstate 75 in Sarasota County and was reversing her vehicle. She ended up getting stopped by the police. She was on the shoulder of the road. They stopped her, they did a DUI investigation. She took a breath test. I think she blew a .096 and didn’t do very well on the field sobriety exercises. I was able to get the breath test excluded in her case. And we took the case to a jury trial because the state would not make any offer to reduce the DUI. We presented all of her medical records, including her doctor. And the jury came back in probably less than an hour with a not guilty verdict.
