PUSH TO REDUCE FLORIDA'S MINIMUM MANDATORY SENTENCES FOR MANY NONVIOLENT DRUG CRIMES

Florida has 118 state crimes that trigger tough minimum mandatory sentences, which is close but not yet outdone by the 145 federal criminal laws that have harsh minimum mandatory sentences. Minimum mandatory sentences are an unfair punishment because they take away the sentencing judge's discretion to make the best sentencing decisions. This is especially true for the many Florida drug crimes that result in arrest such as possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, oxycodone, prescription pain pills, prescription fraud, steroids, xanax, hydrocodone and codeine. 

More Discretion well fits your
Favorite Judge

Possession of only a small amount of any of these drugs can trigger a minimum mandatory term of many years imprisonment ruining the lives of not only the defendant, but his family, friends and loved ones. Drug charges are inherently nonviolent felonies that should not result in arrest or jail sentences. Even cases that involve the sale of drugs should not result in long prison sentences. Yet in Florida sale or possession of even the smallest quantities of illicit drugs can require judges to give harsh punishment of years of prison.

Recently a group of conservative and liberal Florida lawmakers unanimously agreed to send a prison diversion bill out of committee for a vote in the Senate. The goal of the bill is to end minimum mandatory sentences in Florida for nonviolent offenses and to give Florida judges the discretion they need to create fair sentences with better sentencing options.

As citizens we need to make our representatives understand that we want all of these state and federal unfair minimum mandatory sentencing laws changed. Nonviolent people our spending too much time needlessly imprisoned in Florida and throughout our country to the point that federal prisons wrongly hold thousands of prisoners beyond their release dates.

AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS DESTROYS ANOTHER LIFE WITH THE ARREST OF A PROMINENT FLORIDA SURGEON

Even eminent Surgeons are not immune to the lure of drugs nor to drug's destructive power. Yet America's war on drugs and harsh mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws have ruined many more lives than have the drugs themselves.

The Tampa Bay Surgeon, Dr. Carpenter, was arrested by Pinellas County Sheriff's Deputies for multiple counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. And as absurd as this sounds under the prevailing Florida law the Doctor is fortunate in how the offense was charged. 

Van Gogh, Prescription Fraud Doctor

In many cases involving Prescription Fraud the total number of pills sheer weight is added together. In this case there were "at least 500 valium pills" according to deputies. Based on weight even as few as thirty pills is often sufficient to trigger a Drug Trafficking charge with a minimum mandatory sentence in Tampa Bay, Florida. 

It would be interesting to know the criterial, if any, which law enforcement officers use to determine when it's appropriate to file Drug Trafficking charges. Shouldn't there be written law enforcement policy as to what factors officers should take into account in how to charge or not charge Drug Trafficking cases? At least Tampa Bay Judges have some understanding that drug treatment at the Pinellas County Drug Court is a better answer than forcing addicts to spend useless prison time.

Needless to say, the prosecutors will use the threat of a Trafficking charge to leverage a forced plea of guilty. It's as easy as amending the Information, which is the formal charging document filed by prosecutors, to include a Drug Trafficking charge should the Doctor attempt to fight the charges. No wonder a recent study established to the shame of the American Criminal Judicial System that over 96% of those charged with a crime plead guilty in this country.

Doctor Carpenter's arrest for valium prescription fraud came about when he allegedly passed prescriptions for himself using the name and the DEA number of another doctor apparently without that Doctor's permission according to press accounts:

Pinellas County Sheriff's investigators received information that Dr. Richard Carpenter had been calling in prescriptions for Valium (Diazepam) for himself since October 2012. 

Authorities say Carpenter used the name of a doctor he knew and his DEA number to get the prescriptions illegally using his health care insurance to pay the cost of the prescription.
Investigators say Carpenter obtained at least 500 Valium 5mg pills.

Somehow that using of the insurance really bothers me, but a juror might see things differently. If the Surgeon fights this case all the way to a jury trial, the insurance might just be what sets him free. After all Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorneys could successfully argue that the Surgeon wouldn't involve the insurance company unless he thought the prescriptions were valid.

NEW STUDY DETAILS FLORIDA PRISON & CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM FAILURE TO DETER CRIME IN TAMPA BAY

A new study by the Pew Public Safety Performance Project finds that soaring prison budgets do not provide the best path to public safety. The study singles out Florida as having wasted vast sums of money destroying lives with longer prison terms than were necessary for deterrence in averting future crime. Your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Lawyer wonders who did benefit from the enormous amount of prison overbuilding in Florida, which came at the expense of Florida funding for education, health and safety. 
The tragedy detailed in this report is much more than merely lost money. It represents thousands of lost lives in Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Largo and Tampa Bay especially for those unfortunates incarcerated for long prison terms or mandatory minimum prison sentences for nonviolent crimes such as fraud, forged hydrocodone or oxycodone prescriptions, possession of marijuana, conspiracy and trafficking in drugs or  possession of cocaine. 
The report states as follows:

Cezanne, The Opium Smoker

...extended prison sentences came at a price: prisoners released from incarceration in 2009 cost states $23,300 per offender--or a total of over $10 billion nationwide. More than half of that amount was for non-violent offenders.

Drug offenders served 36 percent longer in 2009 than those released in 1990, while violent offenders served 37 percent longer. Time served for inmates convicted of property crimes increased by 24 percent. 

Almost all states increased length of stay over the last two decades, though that varied widely from state to state.  In Florida, for example, where time served rose most rapidly, prison terms grew by 166 percent and cost an extra $1.4 billion in 2009.

A companion analysis Pew conducted in partnership with external researchers found that many non-violent offenders in Florida, Maryland and Michigan could have served significantly shorter prison terms with little or no public safety consequences.

NEW DRUG TEN TIMES STRONGER THAN HYDROCONE (aka VICODIN) WILL SOON INVADE & DESTROY LIVES IN CLEARWATER FLORIDA

Four international pharmaceutical companies are developing drugs that will for the first time make the most addictive ingredient in the drug hydrocodone available in a pure form, making the risk of addiction to Tampa & Pinellas Floridians that much greater, according to a recent article in the British press, which also states that the companies plan to make a pain killer called Zohydro which will be ten times stronger than vicodin. Will there now be ten times more arrests in Clearwater, St. Petersburg & Tampa that a Pinellas Drug Attorney will need to clean up in the arbitrary hope that law enforcement doesn't destroy more lives than the drugs?
Here's an excerpt from the British News Article:

Between 2003 and 2007 in the state of Florida alone, hydrocodone caused 910 deaths and contributed to 1,803 others.......Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing told CBS: 'You've got a person on your product for life, and a doctor's got a patient who's never going to miss an appointment, because if they did and they didn't get their prescription, they would feel very sick...it's a terrific business model..."
Pinellas County has an effective drug court discussed in earlier blog entries with other solutions or decriminalization. The Courts are already overwhelmed with Defendants who are addicted because of misuse and abuse of the drugs being shoveled in their direction by the pharmeceutical companies. 

Haven't the drugs already available to Floridians destroyed enough lives? The companies insist that the patients can be monitored more closely in the future to avoid drug addiction. How? Look at the recent efforts by Floridian law enforcement to clamp down on prescription fraud and Pinellas Pain Doctors who give inappropriate prescriptions even at current lower levels of drug effectiveness. 
Ever harsher drug laws are not the answer. Nor is it the answer for companies to knowingly make these drugs ever more addictive and available. The only priority of the pharmaceutical companies is to make more money.

A painting of a number of pleasantly satisfied Pharmaceutical Reps at a Tampa Bay Conference.

Rembrandt The Anatomy Lesson, 1662

FLORIDA DRUG MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCES RUIN LIVES

You might think Florida drug laws for hard street drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin are the only drugs where Defendant receive significant punishment, but even drugs like oxycodone from prescription fraud and prescription drug abuse often trigger mandatory minimum sentences for surprisingly small amounts of the drug. A mandatory minimum sentence is one in which the Judge overseeing a criminal case has no discretion other than to sentence the Defendant to a significant amount of time over objections and hopes for leniency from your favorite Clearwater Criminal Defense Attorney.

Many years ago in the mid 1980's when I was a prosecutor in Pinellas County, Florida, I handled what was then the first major twenty-five year mandatory minimum heroin case in the state of Florida. Yet there was no confidential informant, no wire tap, no large scale law enforcement investigation in apprehending the defendant.
Instead a car was stopped by officers in St. Petersburg, Florida late at night with an inoperative tail light. The driver and passengers were told to get out of the vehicle.

Incident to a search of the vehicle a small packet of heroin was found under the seat. Everyone in the car was arrested and eventually everyone pled to three years - a reduced offer made by the State Attorney's office because no one had yet been convicted of a twenty-five year minimum mandatory sentence in Florida. Everyone pled that is, but one man, a man who was in the back seat, passenger side of the vehicle.

I will never forget at trial in the ugly gray Criminal Court Complex in Clearwater holding the neatly tight-wrapped heroin foil packet in front of the jury and thinking even as I was speaking to them - urging them to convict because the Defendant was in close proximaty to the drugs and therefor must have known about it - that it was a very, very small packet that seemed to weigh so little.

Yet the jury did convict. The next day at sentencing the wise old (he's no longer on the bench where judges are always young when writing about them) judge said he'd been unable to sleep the night before. He granted a new trial to avoid having to sentence the man to the twenty-five year minimum mandatory sentence.

With the judge's prodding three years was again offered for him to plea. He refused. I took it to trial again, convicted him a second time. On the spot the judge sentenced him to a twenty-five year prison term.

I've often wondered how the judge slept that night and suppose that like me he had little problem. The very impersonal nature of the judicial system helps to forestall any notions of absolute justice instead merely fostering a fealty to the Law even when the results are unjust. Are we really better off as a society because that the young man spent the better part of his life in jail?

Yet even more surprising than the harshness of the law in Florida for street drugs is that the drug laws are no less brutal when the drug is obtained through uttering a fraudulent prescription or by forging a script at a local pharmacy. The minimum mandatory applies to many of these drugs, some with common brand names such as tylenol 3 that may unexpectedly contain codeine or one of the many other pain killers not available directly over the counter. Offenders often find themselves looking at three, fifteen or twenty-five year mandatory minimum sentences with Clearwater Criminal Defense Lawyers doing whatever is possible to find ways around the harsh sentences.