David Edelstein is an AV® Peer Review Rated criminal defense attorney
representing clients in state and federal criminal matters across the State of Florida.

Broward Circuit Judge Matthew Destry’s recent foray into the Twitter social networking site has ruffled the feathers of Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, who is questioning whether a judge should be tweeting from the bench. Read more..

Describing what it called a “damning indictment” of representation for poor criminal defendants, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Miami-Dade County public defender’s office could withdraw from a large chunk of felony cases because of excessive workloads. Read more..

A cellphone is different from a cigarette pack, the Florida Supreme Court says in a ruling requiring police to get a warrant before searching cellphones seized during an arrest. The ruling deepens the split on the constitutionality of cellphone searches incident to arrest, according to the Volokh.. Read more..

A Michigan judge will be suspended for 30 days for jailing a lawyer who asserted his client’s Fifth Amendment rights when the judge asked questions about past drug use. Judge Kenneth Post of Hudsonville will begin the unpaid suspension on May 22, report the Grand Rapids.. Read more..

Florida justices just made it harder for police to seize your cell phone and riffle through the contents. Read more..

A elderly Palm Beach, Fla., widow with a high school education got “effectively five seconds” of probation from a federal judge in an offshore tax-evasion case after paying a $21.6 million penalty and back taxes. Mary Estelle Curran, 79, had inherited $43 million in Swiss bank accounts from her husband,.. Read more..

It rarely registers as news anymore when a federal appeals court denies a request for relief made by a death row inmate. It happens all the time, every week, in every jurisdiction that still recognizes capital punishment as a sentencing option. But there is nothing typical about what two federal judges of the 11th U.S. [...]

Citing the famous Gideon v. Wainright case, in which a prison inmate’s pro se petition, handwritten in pencil, resulted in U.S. Supreme Court ruling recognizing a defendant’s constitutional right to counsel, the top judge in California said a lack of public funding for the state’s courts threatens to turn back? Read more..

A federal appeals court is nullifying a Mississippi law that forbids phone spoofing of any type, ruling that Congress has authorized so-called “non-harmful” spoofing. Read more..

An appeals court ruled that a 1986 law used to convict four suspected drug smugglers arrested in Panama waters is illegal. Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/02/3124078/us-law-targeting-drug-smugglers.html