By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. 

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties.

“We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors,” said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that “in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage.”

One crucial, if unheralded, effect of this shift is now coming into sharper view, according to academics who study the issue. Growing prosecutorial power is a significant reason that the percentage of felony cases that go to trial has dropped sharply in many places.

Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts.

Cases like Florida v. Shane Guthrie help explain why. After Mr. Guthrie, 24, was arrested here last year, accused of beating his girlfriend and threatening her with a knife, the prosecutor offered him a deal for two years in prison plus probation.

Mr. Guthrie rejected that, and a later offer of five years, because he believed that he was not guilty, his lawyer said. But the prosecutor’s response was severe: he filed a more serious charge that would mean life imprisonment if Mr. Guthrie is convicted later this year.

Because of a state law that increased punishments for people who had recently been in prison, like Mr. Guthrie, the sentence would be mandatory. So what he could have resolved for a two-year term could keep him locked up for 50 years or more.

The decrease in trials has also been a consequence of underfinanced public defense lawyers who can try only a handful of their cases, as well as, prosecutors say, the rise of drug courts and other alternative resolutions.

The overloaded court system has also seen comparatively little expansion in many places, making a huge increase in plea bargains a cheap and easy way to handle a near-tripling in felony cases over the past generation.

But many researchers say the most important force in driving down the trial rate has been state and federal legislative overhauls that imposed mandatory sentences and other harsher and more certain penalties for many felonies, especially those involving guns, drugs, violent crimes and repeat offenders.

Stiffer punishments were also put in place for specific crimes, like peddling drugs near a school or wearing a mask in certain circumstances. And legislators added reams of new felony statutes, vastly expanding the range of actions considered illegal.

These tougher penalties, by many accounts, have contributed to the nation’s steep drop in crime the past two decades. They have also swelled the prison population to levels that lawmakers in some states say they can no longer afford, and a few have rolled back some laws.

The ‘Trial Penalty’

In the courtroom and during plea negotiations, the impact of these stricter laws is exerted through what academics call the “trial penalty.” The phrase refers to the fact that the sentences for people who go to trial have grown harsher relative to sentences for those who agree to a plea.

In some jurisdictions, this gap has widened so much it has become coercive and is used to punish defendants for exercising their right to trial, some legal experts say.

“Legislators want to make it easy for prosecutors to get the conviction without having to go to trial,” said Rachel Barkow, a professor of law at New York University who studies how prosecutors use their power. “And prosecutors who are starved for resources want to use that leverage. And so now everyone acts with the assumption that the case should end with a plea.”

“When you have that attitude,” she said, “you penalize people who have the nerve to go to trial.”

Prosecutors say they are giving defendants options and are merely charging them based on what is allowed under the law for those who turn down pleas.

While legal experts say the effect is clear in persuading more defendants to forgo trials, the trial penalty is hard to quantify without examining individual cases and negotiations between prosecutors and defense lawyers.

That is because threats of harsher charges against defendants who reject plea deals often are the most influential factor in the outcome of a case, but this interplay is never reflected in official data.

“How many times is a mandatory sentence used as a chip in order to coerce a plea? They don’t keep records,” said Senior Judge John L. Kane Jr. of United States District Court in Denver, who believes that prosecutors have grown more powerful than judges. But it is very common, he added. “That’s what the public doesn’t see, and where the statistics become meaningless.”

But one result is obvious, he said: “We hardly have trials anymore.”

In 1977, the year Judge Kane was appointed to the bench, the ratio of guilty pleas to criminal trial verdicts in federal district courts was a little more than four to one; by last year, it was almost 32 to one.

Here in Florida, which has greatly toughened sentencing since the 1990s, felony defendants who opt for trial now routinely face the prospect of higher charges that mean prison terms 2, 5, or even 20 times as long as if they had pleaded guilty. In many cases, the process is reversed, and stiffer charges are dismissed in return for a plea.

Before new sentencing laws, the gap was narrower, and trials less risky, veteran lawyers here say. The first thing Denis deVlaming, a prominent Florida criminal defense lawyer, does with a new client is pull out a calculator to tally all the additional punishments the prosecutor can add to figure the likely sentence if the client is convicted at trial.

“They think I’m ready to charge them a fee, but I’m not,” he said. “I tell them in Florida, it’s justice by mathematics.”

No matter how strongly defendants believe they are innocent, he said, they could be taking dangerous risks by, for example, turning down a one-year plea bargain when the prosecutor threatens additional charges that carry a mandatory sentence 10 times as long.

A Power Shift

The transfer of power to prosecutors from judges has been so profound that an important trial ritual has become in some measure a lie, Mr. deVlaming said — the instructions judges read stating that the jury determines guilt or innocence, and the judge a proper sentence. The latter part is no longer true when mandatory minimums and, in many cases, sentencing guidelines apply, but jurors often do not know that.

Legal scholars like Paul Cassell, a conservative former federal judge and prosecutor who is now a law professor at the University of Utah, describe the power shift as a zero-sum game.

“Judges have lost discretion, and that discretion has accumulated in the hands of prosecutors, who now have the ultimate ability to shape the outcome,” Mr. Cassell said. “With mandatory minimums and other sentencing enhancements out there, prosecutors can often dictate the sentence that will be imposed.”

Without question, plea bargains benefit many defendants who have committed crimes and receive lighter sentences than they might after trial. It also limits cases that require considerable time and expense in court.

But many defendants who opt for trial effectively face more prison time for rejecting a plea than for committing the alleged crime.

In Mr. Guthrie’s case, he was initially charged with aggravated battery on a pregnant woman and false imprisonment. But after he rejected the plea bargains, the prosecutor, more than a year later, filed the more serious charge of first-degree felony kidnapping, based on the girlfriend’s accusation that he pulled her by the arm inside her home and, once outside, grabbed her hair and pulled her on her feet the distance of several parking spaces.

Nobody is suggesting that Mr. Guthrie, previously incarcerated for 18 months on gun, assault and drug charges, is a sympathetic figure. According to a police report, he punched and kicked his girlfriend, left her with a bruised and bloody nose and a face that “appeared to be swollen,” and threatened to cut her stomach with a knife.

The assistant state attorney handling the case, Frank Slavichak, did not return calls. The chief investigator for the office, Spencer Mann, said Mr. Guthrie’s choices dictated the course of the case.

But his lawyer, Craig DeThomasis, hired after the plea rejections, said he was “plainly being punished for exercising his right to trial.” According to Mr. Guthrie’s mother, Claudia Guthrie, the prosecutor told her son at a hearing this spring that if he did not plead guilty and take a five-year sentence, higher charges would be filed that mean “you’re going to get life.” Mr. Mann did not dispute that some sort of warning of new charges was presented.

Mr. DeThomasis said that there was no evidence the girlfriend was pregnant, and that she started the altercation by hitting him in the forehead with a pipe, landing him in the jail infirmary for a week. He pointed out that she was arrested in 2009 for attacking Mr. Guthrie after telling the police he had struck her, leading police to say in a report that she had “changed her story several times and could not explain her actions.” He also said she had a history of involuntary hospitalizations, which she declined to address in a 110-page sworn deposition in February.

Mr. Mann declined to comment on the girlfriend’s background but said none of it affected the credibility of the case.

Judges in many cases can set aside verdicts that they believe are unsupported by the evidence, but they generally have no power in mandatory-minimum cases to reduce punishments below levels established through legislation.

While the Guthrie case may be a particularly stark example of how much power one prosecutor can have over a defendant’s fate, many places have given district attorneys similar influence.

“There have been so many laws passed in the various states that just about always there is some enhancement available to the prosecutor that can be used as leverage in negotiations,” said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.

Mr. Burns, a former Utah prosecutor, did not dispute that sentencing-law changes had made trial riskier for defendants and helped drive down the percentage of cases taken to a verdict. He also acknowledged that the plea-bargain process “clearly is coercive” when defendants face harsher or more numerous charges for rejecting deals.

But he said plea bargains were also “extremely lenient in many instances because prosecutors are taking several criminal acts off the table.” He emphasized that lawmakers time and again have given prosecutors more leverage and said it was “grossly unrealistic” to criticize district attorneys for enforcing laws that they are duty-bound to uphold — even those that are ill-advised.

“There are a lot of criminal laws that are passed that we all kind of roll our eyes at,” he said. “Sometimes they are just repetitive; sometimes they are knee-jerk responses to some high-profile case, and therefore politically motivated.”

Though national statistics are not readily available, the trend toward lower trial rates is evident in a number of places.

The National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., found that the percentage of felonies taken to trial in nine states with available data fell to 2.3 percent in 2009, from 8 percent in 1976.

The number of jury trials rose slightly, while nonjury trials, where a judge decides guilt or innocence, fell sharply — all while caseloads nearly tripled. The states account for more than a third of the American population, and most have mandatory minimums or sentencing guidelines or have passed toughened sentencing laws.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, after studying partial data on state-court felony prosecutions nationwide, found that from 1986 to 2006 the ratio of pleas to trials nearly doubled.

The shift has been clearer in federal district courts. After tougher sentencing laws were enacted in the 1980s, the percentage of criminal cases taken to trial fell to less than 3 percent last year, from almost 15 percent, according to data from the State University at Albany’s Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. The explosion of immigration prosecutions, where trials are rare, skews the numbers, but the trend is evident even when those cases are not included.

Nearly nine of every 10 cases ended in pleas last year, the federal data show, while one in 12 were dismissed (the percentage of dismissed cases was substantially higher a generation ago).

The number of acquittals dropped even further. Last year, there was only one acquittal for every 212 guilty pleas or trial convictions in federal district courts. Thirty years ago, the ratio was one for every 22.

More Plea Bargaining

Experts like Ronald Wright, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor of law at Wake Forest University, say they fear that the steep decline in acquittals stems partly from more defendants, who might have winnable cases, deciding not to risk trials and reluctantly accepting plea bargains instead.

Some federal prosecutors worried that their power would be weakened by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that made sentencing guidelines advisory only. But academics say the ruling had much less effect than what some predicted as many judges still largely follow the guidelines, and the ruling did not affect other laws that have given prosecutors more power.

While sentencing changes allowed legislators in this state to take credit for being tough on crime, they have also worked against their goal of trimming prison costs, leaving prosecutors caught in the middle.

“There is a big disconnect,” said Bill Cervone, the state attorney in Gainesville and the chief prosecutor in six counties that make up Florida’s Eighth Judicial Circuit. “There is subtle and not so subtle pressure” to reduce the numbers sent to prison.

Mr. Cervone, who was head of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, added, “Our position is, ‘Please don’t pass any new crime laws while you are also cutting our budgets.’ ” His budget has been cut 20 percent in four years.

The fiscal strains extend to judges, who face pressure to keep dockets moving. Some do not appreciate defendants who refuse pleas and then lose a time-consuming trial, he and other lawyers say.

“There are some judges who will punish you for going to trial,” Mr. Cervone said. “Legally, you cannot impose a longer sentence on someone because they exercised their right to trial,” he said, speaking of judges. “Factually, there are ways to do it.”

In some cases, he added, he wished judges had more discretion, instead of having to automatically impose an inflexible punishment.

So, too, do many judges faced with cases where legislatively mandated penalties do not square with their idea of justice.

Like the one in Polk County, Fla. that began when Orville Wollard said he fired his registered handgun into his living room wall to scare his daughter’s boyfriend out of the house after he repeatedly threatened his family.

In Mr. Wollard’s view, he was protecting his family and did not try to hurt the boyfriend, who was not hit, though the judge said the bullet missed him by inches. But after Mr. Wollard turned down a plea offer of five years of felony probation, prosecutors won a conviction two years ago for aggravated assault with a firearm. Because the gun was fired, a mandatory-minimum law required a 20-year term.

At his sentencing, Mr. Wollard said he felt as if he were in “some banana republic” and described the boyfriend as a violent drug dealer. But prosecutors said the judge had “no discretion” because of the state law.

Reluctantly, the judge agreed. “If it weren’t for the mandatory minimum aspect of this, I would use my discretion and impose some separate sentence,” he told Mr. Wollard, adding that he was “duty bound” to impose 20 years.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 26, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Sentencing Shift Gives New Clout to Prosecutors.

CacheBack software showed 84 searches for “chloroform” on Anthony computer.

Defense attorney Jose Baez called them a part of the state’s “fantasy of forensics” — computer searches for “chloroform” prosecutors said showed Casey Anthony had planned to kill her daughter.

Now, the man whose software investigators cited when they claimed the term had been searched for 84 times on the Anthony computer has cast doubt on the legitimacy of that key evidence in the case.

Asked for comment, sheriff’s Capt. Angelo Nieves said that the Sheriff’s Office has already acknowledged “discrepancies” in the CacheBack results.

A veteran Orlando police officer is under investigation after a videotaped incident in which he threw a woman to the ground, WKMG-Channel 6 is reporting.

The woman said her front teeth were broken in the incident, which happened in February in downtown Orlando.

Read more at ClickOrlando.com

Reporting from Washington— The Supreme Court gave police more leeway to break into homes or apartments in search of illegal drugs when they suspect the evidence otherwise might be destroyed.

Ruling in a Kentucky case Monday, the justices said that officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs.

Residents who “attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame” when police burst in, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. for an 8-1 majority.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she feared the ruling gave police an easy way to ignore 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. She said the amendment’s “core requirement” is that officers have probable cause and a search warrant before they break into a house.

“How ’secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and …forcibly enter?” Ginsburg asked.

An expert on criminal searches said the decision would encourage the police to undertake “knock and talk” raids.

“I’m surprised the Supreme Court would condone this, that if the police hear suspicious noises inside, they can break in. I’m even more surprised that nearly all of them went along,” said John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense lawyer in Little Rock, Ark.

In the past, the court has insisted that homes are special preserves. As Alito said, “The 4th Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house.” One exception to the search warrant rule involves an emergency, such as screams coming from a house. Police may also pursue a fleeing suspect who enters a residence.

The Kentucky case began when police in Lexington sought to arrest a man who had sold crack cocaine to an informer. They followed the man to an apartment building, but lost contact with him. They smelled marijuana coming from one apartment. Though it turned out not to be the apartment of their suspect, they pounded on the door, called, “Police,” and heard people moving inside.

At this, the officers announced they were coming in and broke down the door. Instead of the original suspect, they found Hollis King smoking marijuana and arrested him. They also found powder cocaine. King was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

The Supreme Court ruled in Kentucky vs. King that the officers’ conduct “was entirely lawful,” and they were justified in breaking in to prevent the destruction of the evidence.

“When law enforcement officers who are not armed with a warrant knock on a door, they do no more than any private citizen may do,” Alito wrote. A resident need not respond, he added. But the sounds of people moving and perhaps toilets being flushed could justify police entering without a warrant.

The ruling was not a final loss for King. The justices said the Kentucky state court should consider again whether police had faced an emergency situation in this case.

david.savage@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

LAKELAND, Florida — A Florida law making it illegal to blast loud music or other audio from a car stereo system has been declared unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland ruled Wednesday in a pair of Pinellas County cases. Both motorists were cited for playing their car radios too loudly.

The judges found the law is an unconstitutional suppression of free speech because it arbitrarily exempts vehicles used for business or political purposes.

They also ruled a provision making it illegal for sound to be “plainly audible” from 25 feet or more away from a vehicle was unconstitutionally vague.

The panel, though, agreed to certify the vagueness issue to the Florida Supreme Court for further review as a question of great public importance.

Debra Oberlin, a former president of a defunct chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, was arrested recently by the Gainesville, Fla. police - for drunk driving, according to the Gainesville Sun.

Maybe that’s why she’s a “former” president?

Oberlin, who’s 48, was arrested after she had difficulty on a field sobriety test, according to the Sun. She registered a .234 and .239 on breath alcohol tests, nearly three times Florida’s legal limit for driving.

On Feb. 18 at 1:10 a.m., an officer spotted Oberlin driving erratically, swerving and crossing lanes, an arrest report states. She was pulled over, and the officer reported that Oberlin smelled of alcohol and had watery, bloodshot and dilated eyes. The report also states that Oberlin told the officer she had four beers, according to the newspaper.

The Sun says Gainesville’s chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving existed for several years in the 1990s before closing in 1996 because of a lack of financial support. Oberlin was the chapter president for three years.

Drunken driving cases across the state could be thrown into limbo now that the Florida Supreme Court has declined to review an argument over alcohol breath-test machines that originated in Sarasota County.

The state’s highest court said it will not consider past decisions that essentially halted Sarasota and Manatee county prosecutors from using alcohol breath-test results during DUI trials over the past few years.

Local prosecutors were hoping for a high court reversal because in recent years they have had to reduce charges or abandon hundreds of DUI cases where the breath tests were the most compelling evidence.

The company that makes the Intoxilyzer 8000, Kentucky-based CMI, also hoped the high court would overturn a 2nd District Court of Appeal ruling on a Sarasota case that required the firm to give DUI defendants and their attorneys information about how the machine works.

CMI has refused to comply with past subpoenas for the Intoxilyzer 8000’s computer code, allowing defense attorneys an avenue to attack the machine’s admissibility.

On Wednesday, the Florida Supreme Court handed a final blow to CMI, which now faces a choice: Either give defense attorneys the machine’s code, or risk more attacks on its product, the only machine approved for use in Florida.

Defense lawyers across the state are planning to use the same argument that was successful here, said Venice defense attorney Robert Harrison, who has led the fight against the Intoxilyzer 8000.

“The state has a real big mess on their hands,” Harrison said. “If they don’t give it to us, it’s going to be difficult to impossible for the state to use the breath test.”

For the complete article please go to: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110128/ARTICLE/101281048/2416/NEWS?Title=Court-decision-could-cast-DUI-cases-into-limbo

Outrage ran high in 2004 when an ex-con snatched an 11-year-old Sarasota girl off the street, then raped and murdered her.

Carlie Brucia personified innocence. That her killer was still on the street after recently violating probation seemed to confirm a widespread notion that courts and judges go easy on criminals.

So the Legislature passed the “Anti-Murder Act” to lengthen prison sentences and deny bail to certain felons who violate probation.

Like all broad-swath legislation, however, it exacted a cost.

Minor probation violations that judges once handled on the spot can now take weeks to wend through clogged court systems.

Worse, say some people who work in the system, the no-bail rule can create more crime than it prevents. Probation violators waiting weeks in jail for a hearing end up losing jobs and apartments, even though the judge eventually rules that their infraction was minor and they are no danger to society.

“They get out with no money, no job and no place to stay,” says Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender Bob Dillinger. “It’s not conducive to staying out of trouble.”

The no-bail rule doesn’t affect dangerous probationers who commit serious new crimes, Dillinger says. Judges never granted them bail in the first place. They sit in jail until their trial, then go to prison — just like always.

Instead, Dillinger says, the law mainly affects people who aren’t dangerous, as well as taxpayers who pay to keep them in jail pending a hearing.

“This is a knee-jerk reaction that is casting a net too wide,” Dillinger says. “It is slowing the criminal justice system down without adding any extra protection for the safety of the public.”

No bail, no school

St. Petersburg resident Erica Andrew — all 5 feet 2, 135 pounds of her — is hardly a hardened criminal. Nor is she an angel.

Last year at age 19, she and a friend broke into two houses. Then she violated probation by breaking her 10 p.m. curfew.

In years past, she might have received a notice to appear in court to receive her punishment for the probation violation. Or if police arrested her, she probably could have made bail within a week.

Under the Anti-Murder Act, Andrew was labeled a “violent felon of special concern,” which meant no bail.

So she spent six weeks in the Pinellas County Jail, waiting for a hearing on her curfew violation. Unable to attend classes at St. Petersburg College, she failed the semester and lost her financial aid.

In December, when she finally got to court, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Frank Quesada extended her probation, this time with an ankle monitor and a warning that minimum sentencing will kick in if she messes up again, and she will face several years in prison.

By denying her bail, the Anti-Murder Act “seriously affected her chance of rehabilitation and seriously increased her chance of re-offending,” Quesada says. “You take someone who has finally got a job or is going to school. They are working eight hours a day — even if it’s in McDonald’s — and suddenly they lose that, they usually go back to their usual nocturnal behavior, sleeping during the day, going out at night to meet friends. The chances of them reoffending go way up.”

Andrew says she hopes to re-enroll in college if she can figure out how to pay for classes.

Fellow jail inmates were incredulous to discover she couldn’t make bail, she says. “I told them I had to stay in jail for an evidentiary hearing and they said, ‘They think you are dangerous?’ ”

“They were laughing about it.”

A label that sticks

The Anti-Murder Act lists dozens of offenses that label someone a “violent felon of special concern,” ranging from murder to “abuse of a dead human body.” The label sticks forever.

If those people are ever on probation for a felony — even a nonviolent one — then violate that probation, a judge must hold a formal hearing to determine whether they are dangerous.

In Pinellas, such “dangerousness” hearings take weeks to schedule to give the state and defense time to subpoena witnesses and prepare their case.

Soon after the law went into effect in 2007 a wayward fisherman created a stir in Quesada’s court. Neither the judge nor lawyers who practice before him can remember his name — just the details of the case.

The man had broken into an occupied dwelling as a teenager in the 1960s. A few years ago, he went on probation for driving with a suspended license — a new felony. Then he violated that probation by not having a warning whistle on his fishing boat.

Because the Anti-Murder Act wouldn’t allow bail, he spent almost two months in jail before his “dangerousness” hearing rolled around and Quesada let him back on the street.

Probation violations, particularly of a technical nature, are common. Probationers can get into hot water for failing to turn a job hunt report in on time or by dating other clients in a substance abuse class.

In December, the Department of Corrections listed about 118,000 people on active probation. About 30,000 probationers had violations pending.

Quesada’s court division processes Pinellas County’s “technical” probation violations, which means they don’t involve serious new crimes. He estimates that 400 to 500 violators a year carry the “violent felon” tag, which means no bail.

He ends up sending about half to prison. Their probation violations might be driving under the influence, a bar fight or a dirty urine test — not as serious as armed robbery but enough to show they’ve used up second and third chances.

That means 200 to 250 violators do return to the street, Quesada says, but not before spending four or five weeks in jail at $126 a day.

Getting the information

Chris Watson, felony division chief for the Hillsborough Public Defender’s Office, says the Anti-Murder Act did accomplish one goal: In the old days, a felon who violated probation might get arrested on the weekend or in another county. Judges decided on bail without knowing much about the felon’s violent past or current behavior.

Hillsborough now sends “violent felons” back to the judge who put them on probation so that judge can set punishment for violations.

“That was what the law intended, that people didn’t get released by a judge who didn’t have a dog in the fight,” Watson says. “The (original) judge can either say, ‘That violation wasn’t that serious,’ or ‘I’m not going to make that mistake twice.’ ”

Carlie Brucia’s killer, Joseph Smith, would not have fallen under the Anti-Murder Act because he committed drug crimes, not violent felonies. When he violated probation by not paying court costs, the judge who released him knew little of his background, including some violent encounters with women.

Since then, computerization of records has improved judicial decisionmaking, notes Pinellas prosecutor Beverly Andringa.

“More violent people slipped through in the past because the state didn’t alert the judge about (prior arrests), because of paperwork,” Andringa says. “Now I can sit at my desk and run a rap sheet. I don’t need to send for it somewhere and get it two weeks later.

“The system is so sophisticated there’s no reason for the court and attorneys not to know everyone’s record.”

Courtesy of tampabay.com

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/anti-murder-act-has-unintended-consequences/1144373