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First: deal with it NOW! Call your Florida criminal defense lawyer and do the following:

1) Read your “Final Disposition” issued by the Judge at your sentencing hearing: note all ‘special conditions’ that were imposed.
2) Read the Florida criminal statute which lists the standard conditions of probation.
3) Have your Florida criminal defense lawyer obtain a copy of your violation of probation warrant and see exactly what violations are alleged in the warrant.
4) Have your criminal lawyer deal with the probation officer and the prosecutor to work towards a resolution.

Not all violations are major enough to send you to jail. But being an absconder (away for a long time) is almost always enough to get you a jail term. Your first court appearance is where you either admit or deny the alleged violations. If you deny the prosecutor has ten days to prepare for a violation of probation Evidentiary Hearing. At that hearing the prosecutor has to prove the violations with witnesses or evidence. Sadly, Florida criminal law permits hearsay to be admitted at violation of probation evidentiary hearings. Call your Florida criminal defense lawyer for an opinion on the violation. Some violations of probation are technical or minor and will not expose you to a jail sentence.

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Our national government in Washington, D.C. duplicates many Florida criminal laws. Florida criminal laws are enforced by the State of Florida in our State criminal courts. The U.S. government enforces its own set of federal criminal laws in federal criminal courts. Criminal defense attorneys have to be licensed to appear in each court. Florida criminal courts are conducted under the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure. Federal criminal courts have their own Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The rules are very different and being familiar with them is essential for criminal defense lawyers. Filing dates and times, rules of evidence, motion practice; all differ significantly. Federal criminal cases have different views of search and seizure, confessions, proper and improper police procedures than Florida criminal laws. Florida has its own constitution which differs from our U.S. federal constitution. Although Florida constitutional rights can give greater protections and safeguards from governmental reach into the lives of Florida residents it cannot lessen or diminish those rights guaranteed by our federal constitution..

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Criminal prosecutions, like skirt heights, seem to go up and down with the economy. White collar crimes, such as money laundering, telemarketing fraud, embezzlement, counterfeiting, kickbacks and honest services fraud cases are increasing in federal court. Criminal law doesn’t change, but prosecutors in federal court focus on certain crimes when the economy changes. And things have changed. Derivatives dissolved but security fraud cases have gone up, as have other federal prosecutions. Criminal defense lawyers have seen federal court white collar crimes become an increasing focus of federal prosecutors in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. If you are a “person of interest” in a federal or state criminal inquiry, call for a consultation. Know your rights and understand the process and gain some insight into how your constitution works and how the police can twist the constitution until most criminal lawyers can’t believe we are all in the same country under the same constitution. Knowledge is power.

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Violation of Probation problems start with a warrant request from a probation officer. If you, or someone close to you, is on probation in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood or Palm Beach, start with knowing the terms and conditions of your probation. A Violation of Probation warrant must list the condition and how it was violated. Some probation conditions are considered “technical” others are “substantive”, i.e. some are not important enough to get one violated, others are. The conclusion of a technical vs. a substantive violation is made by a sentencing judge at a violation of probation hearing.

Step One: KNOW your probation conditions. They appear in your sentencing order, in the probation statute, or ask your probation officer. Step Two: keep close contact with your probation officer. Most violations are merely a matter of bad communication or missed check-ins. A violation of probation warrant means you will be picked-up and held in jail until a judge can hold the first of two hearings. At your first hearing you admit or deny the allegations contained in the Violation of Probation warrant. If you deny them you will be held over (usually a minimum of ten days) and then you can have a Violation of Probation Evidentiary Hearing. The State must prove the condition was in your probation and that it was violated. An experienced South Florida Criminal Defense lawyer from Miami or Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Davie or most of the towns in Broward County usually has his law office near the Courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Like a surgeon needs to be close-by his hospital, a real criminal defense lawyer is located near to the Fort Lauderdale jail and courthouse. Call for a free consultation if you have any questions or issues related to probation or a violation of probation warrant from courts in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, West Palm Beach or South Florida.

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Florida has its own set of criminal laws. Each State has their own laws. In addition we are all subject to Federal (US government) criminal laws. Both Federal criminal drug trafficking statutes and Florida drug trafficking laws exist and we can be arrested in South Florida and be charged in either Federal Court for a violation of federal criminal laws OR Florida courts (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, or any other Florida jurisdiction) and charged with a crime in Florida. Federal drug trafficking punishments are different from those of Florida. A basic understanding of federal drug trafficking punishments is posted here on this website (press HERE to go to Federal drug trafficking punishment chart). For an understanding of what it means to be arrested in South Florida and charged with a drug charge, such as drug trafficking, delivery of a controlled substance, possession of cocaine, or possession of any controlled substance: call a South Florida criminal lawyer for more information.

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In these hard economic times it is a welcome gift for criminal defendants in Fort Lauderdale jails to be offered GPS bracelets and let out of jail without posting bail. The Pre-Trial Release Program, originally intended for indigent defendants, has broadened itself to embrace criminal defendants who have the financial resources to pay for their bond. The explosive growth of the government financed program has become the focus of a major political struggle. Supporters of expanding Pre-Trial Release are maligning Bail and Bond agents who insist they can do the job of getting criminal defendants to court for less money. Bond Agents say Pre-Trial Release should be pared back and limited to indigents only. State Senator John Thrasher (Republican from Jacksonville) has introduced a controversial bill in the Florida Senate that will curtail Pre-Trial Release. The bill would limit the program to the indigent. National Public Radio shined a national spotlight on this issue in a radio report aired in late January 2010 which did little to calm the waters. The broadcast inflamed the already heated fight by allegedly airing false statistics about the program’s success rate and cost.

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The chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government (our protectors/masters in DC) Attorney General Eric Holder announced his marching orders: Arrest all those who commit “economic crimes”. In his speech to the National Sheriffs’ Association’s at their 2010 Winter Conference he set out on his warpath to end economic crimes. (He omitted to address bankers and stock brokers). In his speech he said the Feds plan ….”To give particular emphasis to initiatives aimed at tackling economic crime, international organized crime, youth violence and the exploitation of children. “South Florida criminal lawyers, like your host, have been inundated with mortgage fraud, credit card fraud and identify theft cases. In fact the Office of the Statewide Prosecutor has a staff working fulltime on prosecuting mortgage fraud cases.

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Here are a few questions to ask when you are interviewing to hire a federal criminal lawyer:
1. Does he/she have a PACER CM/ECF number? If the answer is “what’s a PACER CM/ECF number? Hang up the phone and call the next lawyer on your list.
2. Does he/she have a subscription to the publication ‘Florida Law Weekly Federal’, it’s expensive and most lawyers won’t pay the $500.00 yearly cost, but if he/she doesn’t read it weekly then he/she is definitely NOT on top the law and federal criminal law IS CONSTANTLY changing.

3. How many federal cases are active in his/her office? Most competent and active federal criminal lawyers have, at a minimum, five active cases in federal court. Don’t bother to ask their success at trial because most federal trials end up in conviction because federal courts have become famous for railroading defendants into convictions.

Winning in a federal criminal prosecution is only a possibility if your federal criminal lawyer is a wiz on procedure, can nail evidentiary issues hard and fast, and has earned the respect (and fear) of Assistant United States Attorneys in the local federal criminal courts. Power in Federal court is earned by fighting and winning motions and procedural issues. Federal court can be a sinkhole if your Florida criminal lawyer isn’t a real federal criminal lawyer, and that means in court, in front of judges and dealing with federal court cases in a significant number of cases. At a minimum it should be 30% of a criminal lawyer’s practice before they can be a real federal criminal lawyer and not a local lawyer trying to grab-off a case that is beyond their capabilities.

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Federal criminal lawyers must be current with the explosive increase of Federal criminal laws, federal criminal procedures, federal criminal evidence and the inscrutable PACER Federal online document filing system. It is almost impossible to be an effective and competent lawyer in federal court unless the attorney devotes significant ongoing time keeping current with federal criminal law. Federal court is hobbled by arcane procedural rules, almost Byzantine local rules that overlay the federal criminal rules and procedures, and……it gets worse…… THIS ARTICLE CONTINUES ON PAGE TWO….

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Probation is a sentence, not a condition of pre-trial release or bond. If you have been placed on probation by a Judge in Florida you need to read and understand the standard conditions of probation. The standard provisions of probation in Florida appear in Florida Statute 948. [Press HERE to go to the statute]. A violation of probation is a serious matter. Most probationers in Florida violate at one point in the term of their probation. If you are on probation and have any questions that are not answered clearly by your probation officer call

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