SURPRISED FLORIDA THIEVES SNORT CREMATION URN ASHES BELIEVING IT WAS COCAINE OR CRUSHED PILLS

Your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney isn't surprised that one may choose to spend a rebellious youth seeking ever greater risks and ever higher highs. 
But let me give some unsolicited advice. 

Monet, Feral Florida Youth, 1886

If you happen to find yourself in another person's home uninvited, say while committing the crime of burglary, it's very unlikely that those fancy gilt urns up on the mantle next to the flowers over the marble fireplace really contain cocaine, heroin or crushed oxycodone. 


Yet three feral youth of Florida made some bad decisions after burglarizing an Ocala home by taking the cremated ashes of the victim's father and two Great Danes, then optimistically mistaking the ashes for drugs and ingesting them. 

A Florida Circuit Judge in Ocala has sentenced the three snorters to eight years of prison, good thing those two dogs were already dead as the Judge might have given an even harsher sentence. 

Press reports noted that:
Detectives investigating the case said the accused men told them they thought the urns contained heroin, cocaine or crushed pills and decided to taste and snort the contents. After the men saw a story published in the newspaper, they realized what they had allegedly snorted were the remains of the victim's woman’s father and her two dogs.

The eight year sentence is on it's face unfair and unconscionable. Deep in the press reports hides the fact that the three youths were just that, only aged 19, 20 and 21. A Clearwater Criminal Defense Lawyer assumes that the sentencing Judge did not grant any Defense Motions for a Reduction of Sentence based on Florida's Youthful Offender Statute due to the nature of the offense, prior unlawful conduct or other pending burglaries and grand thefts. Invoking the Youthful Offender statute would have allowed the Judge to go under the Florida Sentencing Guidelines to give a fair and reasonable sentence.