Today, I’m joined by my good friend, trial lawyer and former County Court Judge, Cliff Barnes. Cliff talked with me about what it was like to be a County Court Judge in Florida. CB: It’s just the most fun you can have. You can help people. You’re not dealing with robbers, rapists, child molesters, killers. ... more

I want to talk about prosecutors. Prosecutors have a tough job. Defense attorneys, our responsibility is to zealously represent our client. The prosecutors’ job is to seek justice. These are not mirror images. I’m fond of telling young lawyers, “You can’t count on prosecutors to do the right thing.” Now let me explain that. I ... more

I recently participated in a round table discussing jury trials in the COVID age. And here’s what I learned from that. The judge on the panel, one of our local judges who’s conducted a few jury trials, basically let it be known that, as long as there are cases to try, as long as there ... more

Writing this as we’re waiting on the results of the Derek Chauvin trial in Minneapolis. Everybody is calling this the Trail Of The Century. It made me think about all of the other “trials of the century” because very few years there’s another “trial of the century”. Certainly in the mid-90’s, O.J. SImpson was the ... more

I’m joined today by my good friend Cliff Barnes. Cliff, as you might recall, was a longtime criminal defense lawyer in town and spent way too many years as a county court judge here in Fort Pierce. Now, he’s back in the saddle, defending the wrongly accused, and sometimes the rightly accused. Cliff’s going to ... more

People ask me, “Do you limit your practice to the courthouses in your neighborhood? Do you stay in Fort Pierce or do you go all over?” I have briefcase, will travel. I love taking my show on the road. Early in my career, I traveled all the way to Dayton, Ohio to protect a family ... more

Post Conviction Relief is an avenue to overturn a bad result at the trial court level. There are two basic kinds of Post Conviction Relief. There’s the direct appeal. At a direct appeal, a person who’s been convicted appeals to the next higher court and tries to convince that court that the trial judge screwed ... more

I was feeling nostalgic on the way into work this morning, thinking about my old vinyl records and going to ball games in person and other things we don’t get to do any more. That got me to thinking about the right to a speedy trial, another right that we don’t have any more (but ... more

As you may or may not know, every state has its own set of rules or procedures for how, mechanically, a case goes through the criminal court system. Today, I’m going to give you a look under the hood of Florida’s system. We’ll start with the point of arrest and go all the way through ... more

More people are wrongly accused of DUI every year than every other crime on the books. Why do you suppose that is? There’s a couple of reasons. One is, in Florida, we don’t have any pre-arrest chemical testing. We don’t have pre-arrest breath-testing. So, when a police officer decides to make an arrest, he doesn’t ... more