Jacksonville Criminal Defense Attorney Blog

A FAMU band member whom a judge said played a “minimal role” in the 2011 hazing and beating death of Robert Champion was sentenced last week to probation and community service. Brian Jones had pleaded no contest to felony hazing charges, a third-degree felony in Florida punishable by up to five years in prison. He…

The credibility of a Jacksonville police officer is in serious doubt after he admitted in a court hearing he lied to a Jacksonville criminal defense attorney in a case where police destroyed key evidence. The testimony came in a hearing last week about the Jacksonville police destroying a metal pipe Duval Countycriminal defense attorneys say…

A Jacksonville jury did not think Duval County state attorneys proved Thomas James Moore was the person who killed and raped Donna Morris in 1990, finding Moore not guilty last week. What the jury didn’t know, though, was that Moore has already been sentenced to death for a 1993 murder where robbed, killed and set…

A Jacksonville father finally caught a man his 15-year-old daughter had been saying was looking at her from outside the family’s Jacksonville home. After the daughter said she saw a silhouette in the lawn, the father ran outside and found James Lowery standing outside, according to a report in the Florida Times-Union. The father tackled…

Jacksonville defense attorneys are asking that charges against a Jacksonville man be dropped now that key pieces of evidence in the case have been inexplicably destroyed. A metal pipe and a tent that could have been used to prove an alternate theory in the case against Robert Lewis were discovered to be destroyed when the…

A woman who was a month away from being released from jail on two St. Johns County misdemeanor charges is now facing felonies after being pegged as the mastermind of a drug smuggling ring inside the St. Johns County jail. Police say Hana Marie Colson, 29, was receiving strips of Suboxone that were hidden behind…

Four months after a Clay County teen was hit by a car leaving a beer pong party, five people were charged for their role in hosting the party and providing the alcohol. Hollee Marie Krueger, 19, was killed after she stepped into the road while walking home from the party, according to a report in…

A Jacksonville newspaper reporter is a key player in the illegal taping case involving Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll and the paper is trying to block prosecutors from questioning the reporter. Carletha Cole, a former aide to Carroll, is charged with secretly recording a conversation she had with Carroll’s former chief of staff and giving…

A Chicago Bears fan died after his throat was slashed this month and a man police have described as a jealous husband has been charged with murder. Chris Pettry’s neck was slashed with a pocketknife by a man who he’d been speaking with earlier in the evening, according to a report in the Florida Times-Union.…

Despite the prosecutor’s push for a life sentence, a Jacksonville judge sentenced a local teen to 35 years in prison for shooting another teen in 2010. Ernest Thomas Bell, 16, was just 14 at the time of the shooting and pleaded guilty to Jacksonville second-degree murder, according to a report in the Florida Times-Union. Bell…