Police Stops, Searches & Your Rights

Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 is the main vehicle for attacking a conviction or sentence after the direct appeal is over — a motion to vacate, set aside, or correct. It is where claims like an involuntary plea or ineffective assistance of counsel get litigated. The grounds Rule 3.850(a) allows relief where: the judgment […]

Florida codified the entrapment defense in section 777.201. Here is what you must prove, what the State must prove, and why the defense matters in Polk County undercover sting cases.

As of November 2022, four Polk County police departments have body cameras or are weeks away from using them — and the county’s largest law enforcement agency has none. Here is where every agency stands, and why it matters to your defense.

The government has been secretly ordering Google to identify everyone who typed certain search terms — no suspect required. Attorney Rodriguez explains why keyword warrants and geofence warrants are an end-run around the Fourth Amendment.

A Google search or a phone’s location history can now put a name in a police file before a single detective ever knocks on a door. A landmark 2026 Supreme Court ruling just changed how far that reach can go.

Ring, Nest, and Wyze cameras now sit on millions of Florida porches, and law enforcement has taken notice — here’s how that footage actually makes its way into a criminal case, and what rights homeowners and their neighbors keep once it does.

Investigators in the Tiger Woods crash executed a search warrant for his SUV’s event data recorder. Your car keeps the same records — here is how prosecutors use that data in Florida, and when police need a warrant to get it.

Police made more than 20,000 requests for Ring doorbell video last year, and home surveillance footage now shows up in criminal cases of every kind. Here is how it gets in — and what camera owners in Polk County should know.

Body camera and dash camera policies vary widely from one Polk County police department to the next, and that patchwork can matter a great deal when footage becomes evidence — or when there isn’t any.

Florida law lets an officer pull you over on surprisingly little — but “surprisingly little” is not “anything at all.” Here is what the law actually requires, and what happens when police skip that requirement.