Florida

In California, Texas and Florida, advocates sent letters to district attorneys, demanding that they refuse to work with officers with histories of misconduct.

Offices across the state conduct operations under the guise of saving victims of human trafficking. But the vast majority of people detained, including sex workers, are charged with prostitution.

Lawyers and advocates in Miami-Dade County will roll out a new plan to counter the disenfranchisement of people with felony convictions.

Police in Ozark said they solved the 1999 murders of two teenage girls using a genealogy database. But Coley McCraney‘s attorneys say that the case against their client is far from certain.

Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, Florida, is one of the state’s most controversial lawmen.

Over a three-year period, Alachua County prosecutors closed 236 sexual battery cases: 115 were dropped, 92 were offered plea deals, and seven went to trial.

Thanks to the diligence of one assistant state attorney, 119 cases were thrown out and the officer is under state investigation.

A new court order allows the family’s lawsuit to proceed, and may lead to holding jail staff accountable.

Florida is poised to pass a law that imposes a ‘poll tax’ on thousands of formerly incarcerated people.

A scandal of falsified drug arrests is spreading at a Florida sheriff’s office that has also spent more than $1.33 million settling excessive force lawsuits and is at the center of the increasingly troubled Robert Kraft case.

Lawmakers are redefining certain crimes in order to carve out broad exceptions to who can regain the right to vote.

In 2017, over 2,000 homeless people were arrested on charges including drinking in public and panhandling. That same year, roughly 1,400 people were arrested in Miami-Dade County for rape, murder, and robbery.

A 22-year-old woman overdosed and died in jail. A 24-year-old faces first-degree murder charges. Did the system fail them both?

With Appeal staff reporter Kira Lerner

A Philadelphia-born man was detained by ICE and nearly deported. The agency’s mistake was caught, but the case exposes a new collaborative program that encourages jails to hold immigrants for ICE.

Critics say the state’s policy of keeping non-residents registered bloats the list—and harms public safety.

Claims including sexual assault of a woman with mental illness to lying in reports haunt the Miami Gardens police; payouts in federal lawsuits have cost the city’s taxpayers at least $3.5 million.

Defense attorneys say they were unaware of the practice and are unclear on how they can expunge the data of nonconvicted clients.

A Florida woman with substance use disorder allegedly brokered a drug sale that ended in a fatal overdose; she faces 15 years in prison.

The technology also allows authorities to mine call databases and cross-reference the voices of individuals prisoners have spoken with.

One commissioner wants the state Department of Corrections to show proof that his county isn’t just using prisoners as ‘slaves.’

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office stands accused of violating immigrants’ rights and dismissing a shocking number of jail deaths.

With privatization of the state’s prisons in full swing, this year is on track to be its deadliest on record.

In the ‘fentanyl’ bust at a ‘narcotics house,’ no opioids were seized at all.

Voters in Florida may soon get to decide whether to give victims of crime a bigger say in the criminal justice system.

Pam Bondi spent four years pursuing racketeering charges against the former president of the Jacksonville Bar Association.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle had “no basis in the law” when she threatened to prosecute a man for recording a conversation he had with the Chief of the Homestead Police Department. As a result, James Eric McDonough’s federal lawsuit against Fernandez-Rundle can proceed.

After almost a quarter century in the job, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle is facing criticism like never before.