Jacksonville Criminal Defense Attorney Blog

State Attorney Angela Corey publicly laid out her expectations of the consequences for two former Raines High School administrators accused of trying to protect students by giving police false information. Corey told the Florida Times-Union she expects former principal George Maxey and assistant principal Oscar Harris, who still works at the school, to “show up…

Police regularly use DNA and other high-tech forensic evidence to nab people accused of murder, rape and other violent crimes. But a jewelry heist? St. Augustine detectives have, and say DNA evidence has led them to Shawn Slattery, a former employee of Vaccaro Estate Jewelry, according to a report in the St. Augustine Record. When…

Jurors convicted a St. Augustine Beach businesswoman and philanthropist of running a Ponzi scheme to rip off more than $100 million from investors. Lydia Cladek, 67, was found guilty of four counts of wire fraud, nine counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy. She is expected to be sentenced within the next three…

Seventeen years ago the state let David Carpenter walk out of jail, saying conflicting witness statements and a lack of evidence was not enough to take him to trial on a murder charge. This week, Carpenter was arrested again in Jacksonville on the same murder charge and police are relying on jailhouse snitches to put…

Two Northeast Florida women were charged last week in separate employee theft cases and both appear to be fighting uphill battles – at least by what police have released so far. Betty Barnes, a 78-year-old wheelchair-bound Jacksonville church employee, was charged with stealing $167,000 from the church over several years by inflating her own paychecks…

Two adults in an apartment when a 3-year-old boy shot himself in the chest are facing Jacksonville felony charges in connection with the shooting. Barbara Anne Powell, 22, and Gregory Eugene Chisholm, 24, are both charged with child neglect and culpable negligence in Duval County, according to a report in the Florida Times-Union. Chisholm also…

Two Gainesville-area businessmen were sentenced last week for bribing top Department of Corrections brass to get a lucrative concessions contract – seven years after the scheme went down. Eddie Lee Dugger was sentenced to 26 months and Joseph Arthur Deese was given 14 months in federal prison for the conspiracy to pay up to $130,000…

A Jacksonville teen caught robbing a convenience store with a fake gun was shot and killed by police after he refused to drop the gun. Jacksonville robbery detectives had been staking out a Westside Kangaroo store, one of two that had been held up nine times in the last two months, according to a report…

Police arrested two people and have Jacksonville warrants for three more after at least $77,000 from grants targeted to help people pay their mortgages turned up missing. All five people worked for the Community Rehabilitation Center, which offers programs for mental health, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS prevention and job training. An internal audit last spring uncovered…

No one personified a Jacksonville drug kingpin quite like Henry Manns. Now, after one lengthy prison sentence, he’s on his way back behind bars – sentenced this month to 15 years in federal prison, according to a report in the Florida Times-Union. A federal judge called Manns a “serial drug dealer” in handing down the…