In the Florida legislature there is a legal difference between repeat violence, sexual violence, and dating violence. These terms are defined in statute 784.046.

Violence Defined

According to the statute, the term violence in Florida is defined as any of the following:

• Assault or aggravated assault
• Battery or aggravated battery
• Sexual assault or battery
• Stalking or kidnapping
• And any other offense resulting in physical injury

Repeat Violence means 2 incidents of violence committed by a single person within 6 months of each other.

Sexual Violence

Simply put, sexual violence is any act defined as “violence” committed in a sexual context. Specifically, sexual Violence includes any of the following:

• Sexual battery
• A lewd act committed upon or in the presence of someone under the age of 16
• Sexual performance by a child
• Any felony in which a sexual act is committed

Dating Violence

Dating violence includes any violent act between 2 people who are in a romantic relationship. In order to be charged with dating violence, there are several qualifying characteristics:

• The relationship between the 2 parties in question must have existed within the past 6 months.
• There must have been an expectation of affection amongst the parties in the relationship.

Basically dating violence has to involve 2 parties who are or have recently been in a significant romantic relationship. This type of violence does not apply to people in casual social relationships.

Being pulled over by a police officer is a terrifying experience. Even if you’ve done nothing wrong, it is still nerve wrecking. 

Here are a few quick pieces of advice to follow if you are ever pulled over for drunk driving in Florida:

• Keep quiet. Remember – you have the right to remain silent! You’ve no doubt heard it before in TV shows and movies, but it’s absolutely true. All citizens have the right to remain silent so they do not accidentally incriminate themselves. Do not answer any questions about how much you’ve had to drink or where you’ve been. These questions are used to find probable cause that you’ve been drinking and driving.
• Cooperate. Even though you have the right to keep your mouth shut, you shouldn’t go completely mute. You are compelled to give the officer the necessary means to identify you. Give them your driver’s license and vehicle insurance. Politely respond to the officer’s questions. If he asks you how much you’ve had to drink, politely respond with: “I’m sorry officer, but I’m not going to answer that.”
• Call a Florida DUI Lawyer. Your greatest chance of beating a DUI charge in Florida is hiring a criminal defense attorney who specializes in driving while intoxicated cases. If an officer places you under arrest for DUI, tell them you demand to speak to your defense attorney.

Follow these tips if you have been pulled over for DUI in Florida. They may just help you avoid a drunk driving charge. 

On Saturday the George Zimmerman trial officially ended with a verdict of “not guilty.” Since then, there has been a lot of noise from every corner or the media regarding the verdict.

The verdict in the George Zimmerman trial signifies neither a travesty of justice nor a waste of taxpayer money. It was simply, as occurs across this nation every day in various courtrooms, the jury finding reasonable doubt in the state’s case.   Period.

As a citizen and a Floridian, I was admittedly disheartened that an all white jury acquitted a white man in the killing of an unarmed black youth. I am bothered by the fact that the jury was selected from a very conservative rural white slice of Florida. However, as an attorney, officer of the court, and a lawyer educated and experienced in American jurisprudence, I certainly accept the jury's finding. Sometimes there is simply more to the evidence than its aroma and that would appear to be what happened in the rendition of this particular verdict.

Both Al Sharpton and Sean Hannity need to pipe down and as President Obama decreed, all Americans white and black, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, old and young need to continually observe the racial divide in our society as evidenced

by the many emotions elicited by this trial. We must resolve to do better, march forward and reach out. For Pete's sake we need to replace hating and baiting with teaching and reaching.

My mother Helen Hobson, now 92 who was widowed in 1971 and subsequently raised nine children by herself, used to tell me that a smile is the same in any language.

Now let’s get back to the important stuff like Pakistan.

In Florida, if you a police officer pulls you over and suspects you of drinking and driving, they will likely ask you to perform one or more field sobriety tests. These are physical and mental tasks that the officer uses to determine whether or not you are intoxicated. 

The most common field sobriety tests are:

• One Legged Stand. Pretty self-explanatory. The officer will ask you to stand in one place, then left a leg off the ground and balance yourself. If you cannot balance yourself on one leg properly, the officer may interpret this as a sign of intoxication.
• Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus. This one has a fancy name, but it’s relatively simple. The officer will take a handheld object such as a pen and have you follow its movements with your eyes without moving your head. They are looking for any “jerky” motions in your eyes. This is often an involuntary effect of alcohol intoxication.

• Walk a straight line and turn. You’ve seen this one in countless TV shows and movies. The officer will make you walk heel-to-toe in a straight line, then turn around at a specified point. Any fumbling, or stepping off of the line can be seen as a sign that you are drunk.
• Touch your Finger to your Nose. Again, this one speaks for itself. The officer will ask you to extend your arms out to your sides, and tough one of your fingers to your nose with your eyes closed. 
• Alphabet recital. This test can be administered in several ways. The officer may ask you to say the alphabet backwards from z to a, or they may have you recite a portion of the alphabet (from D to T for example). This is to test your cognitive abilities, which may be slowed under the influence of too much alcohol.

The problem with field sobriety tests is that they are incredibly subjective. A person’s performance on these tests can be impacted by environmental conditions (if it’s really windy, it will be more difficult to balance on one leg), or a person may simply have poor balance.

One has the power but not the right to refuse to take these tests in Florida. While some think that the less evidence against you, the stronger the evidence for probable cause, the prosecution will always argue consciousness of guilt in all refusals.

The trial of George Zimmerman moved into week two of testimony this week.

Last week, Judge Nelson granted a defense motion, which sought to exclude the testimony of two witnesses who were prepared to testify that screams heard in a 911 call belonged to Trayvon Martin. This was a huge blow to the prosecution. The screams allegedly were screams for help.  The testimony would have helped the prosecution because if Trayvon Martin were screaming for help, Mr. Zimmerman could not have believed that he himself was in danger, thus negating his self-defense argument.  

The two witnesses the State sought to examine at trial are experts in the field of voice recognition.  They would have testified that they performed scientific tests on the 911 recording and were able to determine as a result of those tests that the screams were those of Trayvon Martin.  The defense objected that the tests used to analyze the recordings are not techniques which are generally accepted within the scientific community.  The Judge agreed.

The Frye Rule

Known as the Frye Rule, the rules of evidence provide that expert witnesses may testify about tests performed only if the tests are those which the scientific community accepts and uses.  The Judge noted in her decision that there are currently three employed methods of voice identification: 

1. Auditory phonetic analysis
2. Acoustic-phonetic analysis
3. Gaussain Mixture Model analysis 

After hearing from various experts about these three techniques, she decided that the techniques used by the two witnesses in this case did not fit within any of these three generally accepted methods.  

The Judge ruled that the tests had not been “sufficiently tested and accepted by the relevant scientific community” and that testimony about these tests would therefore confuse issues and mislead the jury.

This week Zimmerman is supposed to recount his description of the events to the jury. We will be tracking this case as it progresses.