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

Recently, we’ve talked about cases that we’ve been told “could not be won”. Let me tell you a story about a case that I told the prosecutor she could not win. The case ended up going to trial and I was right. She could not win. This was a repeat customer for me. This was ... more

We’ve been handling some fairly serious subjects lately, so my good friend Cliff Barnes and I thought we’d talk about a couple of our cases that were the most fun. CB: I’ve had quite a few funny ones but today we’ll talk about the great Oreo Cookie Case. CB: I had the pleasure many years ... more

I have people frequently come to see me that either have a Public Defender or are considering a Public Defender, and they want to air their grievances. They’ll tell me, “The Public Defender just works for the State.” Or they’ll say, “The Public Defender doesn’t care about my case, or doesn’t care about me.” Those ... more

One of the main focuses on our work at the Kessler Law Firm is DUI defense. I thought I’d take some time to talk about Formal Review Hearings (some people call Refusal Hearings). For this conversation, I’ll be talking to my good friend Joe Mancini. Joe was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1983, after ... more

Winning Cases That Others Say Can’t Be Won (with Attorney Cliff Barnes) I hear from lots of people, sometimes even lawyers, that criminal cases can’t be won. I’ve found that, most of the time, that’s not true. To further explore this, I talked to my good friend and fellow criminal defense attorney Cliff Barnes. Cliff’s ... more