Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Southwest Florida Men Face Criminal Charges For Organizing Fraudulent Turkey Hunt
If you can tear yourself away from all the clickbait, you will find that not everyone is doom scrolling their lives away. Your own sons may be glued to their video games and their disturbing short form videos, but there are young men out there somewhere who are accompanying their fathers on hunting expeditions…. Read More »
The Tampa Bay Area Is Florida’s Best Hope For Problem-Solving Courts
If, after your arrest, you have the presence of mind to remain silent until you can meet with a criminal defense lawyer, your lawyer may tell you some things that come as a relief. For example, if you do not have any prior convictions, you might be eligible for a pretrial diversion program. In… Read More »
Kratom-Derived Drug Linked To Overdoses In Tampa
As with the word “vitamin,” it is harder than it seems to pin down a definition for the word “drug.” One person’s drug is another’s social lubricant. To the prohibitionists, alcohol was a dangerous drug, but to most ancient peoples, it was a source of nutrition and sociability. Tobacco is a drug according to… Read More »
Lake Wales Lawyer Faces Grand Theft Charges For Allegedly Embezzling Money From Client’s Trust
As much as financial planners promote them as a status symbol, trusts are a handy way of concealing shady financial dealings. When you establish a trust, the assets in the trust do not legally belong to you. Instead, they exist in a legal no man’s land; it is possible for them to disappear into… Read More »
Appealing A Criminal Sentence Based On A Change In The Law
Waiting for a sentence in a criminal case is one of the most stressful events in a person’s life, even if you pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal and almost sure that you will avoid the worst possible sentence that the court can hand down for the crime with which you were… Read More »
Man Faces Domestic Violence Charges After Injured Woman Seeks Help At Palm Beach International Airport
It makes for a dramatic story when an injured person suddenly appears, apparently the victim of an attack, and everyone else must figure out how it happened. Reconstructing events with enough certainty to convict a defendant of the attack in criminal court is not as simple as it seems, though. Case in point, earlier… Read More »
Florida Adds A New Traffic Crime To Its Law Books
You can break a lot of traffic laws without getting charged with a crime. It is possible to get so many traffic tickets that your car insurance company considers you a cash cow without having anything on your record that would show up on a criminal background check. Only the most serious of traffic… Read More »
Watch Your Emojis
Almost everyone agrees that communication has become a lost art, but we do not agree on where to place the blame? Is it the months of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic? If it is because of a social media platform, then which one? Did Tik Tok make us antisocial, or was it one… Read More »
Psilocybin Spores Are Illegal Because LSD Can Make You Freak Out, And Other Things In Florida That Don’t Make Sense
The more things change, Florida retains its unique identity. Florida’s demographics have changed, and the Internet has changed the illegal drug trade and almost every other aspect of life. Despite this, even as an increasing array of invasive species make Florida’s scenery ever more interesting, Floridian teens are bored out of their minds, and… Read More »
Florida Sexual Cyberharassment Laws
In earlier times, and even in some parts of the world today, laws used to criminalize types of sexual behavior that large segments of our society consider unremarkable, such as sexual intimacy between an unmarried couple. A series of court cases led to legislation based on the principle that almost all kinds of sexual… Read More »