It’s not a “sex offender case” but another appellate court decision out of Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeals found that a probation officer must PROVE that a probationer moved without permission in order to for the individual to be convicted of a violation.
The case is Stratton v. State and in this case, probation officers came to the door of Anthony Stratton’s father’s home (where Anthony was living) and asked to see him. His father said he had not seen his son in 3 weeks. Stratton’s PO assumed that meant he moved away and attempted to violate his probation for moving without obtaining permission. His PO never actually proved that he moved anyplace.
The appellate court (note, Stratton was convicted for this) reversed his judgement and sentence and found that it was insufficient for probation to assume he moved away, but had to PROVE that he moved someplace else to violate his probation.
It’s notable that Stratton was actually living on a trailer on the Father’s property, not in his home, so maybe it wasn’t so unusual that he hadn’t seen him in 3 weeks.
The lessons learned: no proof, no violation and advise family members not to speak about you with law enforcement unless there’s an attorney present.
A frightening thought just entered my mind: This individual’s victory in court will be viewed by his officer and the department at large as a b**** slap to the face. When have any of you ever known of these people with their mindset to ever be graceful losers in this situation? They think their position should always be the prevailing position and that probationers and parolees should just lay down, shut up, tow the line, and question their authority in no way whatsoever.
I hope I’m wrong, but after thinking on this carefully, I believe now the parole dept. and his officer will now make this man their “pet project” and find any and every excuse to violate him. An honest mistake may well be turned into a provable “violation” that will put him back behind bars yet again. The officers will do so with a smug grin of satisfaction that will ooze of the following sentiment: “You lose! This is what happens and what you deserve when you make fools of us. Maybe this will teach you to keep your worthless mouth shut!”
Or it could go the other way— they will need to be careful about violating him for fear that it will appear in court to have been a reprisal.
Awesome! A victory for the cherished principle “Accusation alone does not equal guilt and conviction”. It’s great to see that some judges still have a modicum of honesty about them.
Who will be the first naysayer to claim that probationers/parolees are somehow “victimizing” their officers by forcing them to prove they actually violated a term of probation and parole?
FAC, does this mean that RCs on probation as shown in registration information will be automatically removed from the registry by FDLE?
No, it does not mean that. I’m not sure how you made that assumption.
It appears RCs post is in the wrong location. I read it to question whether the new ruling from the 2nd DCA of Florida will automatically remove folks on probation in any jurisdiction from the Florida SO registry. His/her post doesn’t seem to be addressing the issue of probation needing to prove a violation per this blog.
Finally ! Something went in our favor. It’s about time law enforcement had to actually prove something. A step in the right direction.
It seems to me that the po was trying to boost his/her monthly stats for job justification but got burned instead.
Unfortunately, even though he won, the probationer was arrested, charged, convicted by a trial court and went through a LONG and COSTLY ordeal before he was proven right. Even though he was ultimately successful, it is he who got burned 🙁
And now he set a binding precedent for all those authorities to follow. So again, they got burned even though it cost him a lot to get it done. Freedom is not free…it costs dearly. Good for him to keep up the fight and vicariously help us all!!!
Of course, that assumes that the other courts will actually follow this allegedly binding precedent at least until such time as the legislature “fixes“ the offending statute and Retroactively applies it to everyone
Can’t help wondering how many probation cases are reversed by CoAs. Most revocations never get appealed because of the inability of most probationers to afford attorneys, procedural difficulties, general tendency of CoAs to ignore pro se petitions, and (in some cases) the restrictions placed on pro se litigants by county jails.
When I was on probation, I was told you have no rights and the rules are different between a normal citizen not on probation and someone on probation. She told me plain and simply that there does not need to be a reasonable doubt but just suspicion of violation and between me and the judge to work it out.
The reason I say this even though I am no longer on probation, they seem to be using this same tactic to arrest registered folks so they never get a chance to get off registry. The way I read the statue, any arrest even if found no guilty negates any chance of getting removed from registry.
Additionally, they false claims do not go away for free. Lawyer and other court fees even for a simple case these days can be in the 1000s of dollars. Not many on the registry has mad money just laying around to waste on fake charges.
I was told the same, but still challenged them at most turns and laughed when they caved.
Most POs count on the perception that they could revoke at will, and judges don’t do much to dissuade either POs or their probationers. They have their limits, but most don’t know enough about how to hold the POs to them (judges included). Like you said, private attorneys help, but most registrants can’t afford that. Lord knows the public defender’s office won’t help.
The closest I came to getting violated, one of my neighbors who did not like me living on the street, called in and said I had
“MASSIVE” amounts of child porn on my computer. The doorbell rang and I saw it was my PO so I opened the door.
As soon as I opened the door, 3 Deputies and 2 FDLE agents knocked me to ground and almost broke my jaw. They raided my home and broke 40% of my stuff. The PO put some sort of tracer on my computer and ran it for 45 minutes. When it was done, the only thing she found she printed off and showed it to me. It was an ad for woman’s panties. I do not wear nor buy them so probably something that was a pop up and stayed in my history before I got good with computers.
Anyway she took the printout and left with law enforcement. No Apologies. When I asked who was going to pay for all the damages, one of the deputies came back in and pushed one of my lamps over and broke it then left and slammed the door.
Just sick that they acted worse than some of the people they arrest.
BTW, when I finally got a chance to get early termination of sentence, my lawyer spoke with my PO about keeping that incident quiet and we wouldn’t sue her and law enforcement for the 1000s of dollars in damages. She and the lady prosecutor both spoke against letting me off even though when asked by the judge if the PO had ever had any issues with me ( This is where she could have brought up the BS raid ) She said no and the judge ruled for early termination.
* Now there is this matter of the registry that we need to talk about
@ cherokeejack:
I’d have pressed charges against the lady that tipped them off. Unless she broke into your house and/or computer or was lurking at your windows, how in God’s name could ahe possibly “know” you (supposedly) had “massive amounts of child porn”? Either she’d have to admit to breaking and entering or that she made it all up to get you off her block.
It was a crime line anonymous tip is what they told me. But I pretty much knew who did it but couldn’t prove it. If you call in a tip, they have to follow up on it regardless of how the person came by the info.
Crime line became a way to bypass hard evidence to investigate someone. PLUS when you are on probation, they do not need a search warrant if they are with your PO when they enter.
Also funny, child porn had nothing to do with my charges and when I was arrested for the charges to begin with, I did not even own a computer. Only after I got put on probation did I get a computer.
In which case, call that same line and drop the same anonymous tip on her. Or that she’s “grooming” someone in the house. Or that she’s stalking. ENDLESS possibilities.
Good for the goose…
Any arrest even for a misdemeanor…
Wow. POs actually having to prove their allegations? Who came up with that nonsense? (/sarc)
Trial courts never rule against their own POs, in part because judges don’t want to undermine them and in part because they don’t want to be bothered with the details of probation supervision (having more important things to do like rubber-stamping the DAs whims and fancies on active case dockets).
Probations are still revoked even when the POs allegations are not only unproven, but defeated by counter-evidence (i.e., Bearden showings). They tend to stand for several reasons:
Appealing takes too long, and often the revoked sentence is served before the appellate court evens dockets it;
Appealing is an extraordinarily difficult procedure that most pro se individuals cannot meet;
Many jails have local rules making pro se litigation impossible (no ink pens, no paper, no law library, or severe restrictions on them)
Most probationers can’t afford attorneys, and no public defender will submit one (not surprising as they won’t do much in an active case anyway).
Actually, I did have a judge kind of overrule a PO not on a violation but on a situation where the PO was trying to use information obtained from a polygraph session (“constructive contact with children” because I took my 9 year old son to an amusement park in Texas for his birthday ) to deny motions for travel and such. The judge says no way to get out of here, but, like other people have said, it took me a lot of time and a lot of money to prove that I was right And I have not been able to travel to see my children as permitted in my orders
Sounds like a sit down rather than an actual, reported hearing. Even so, circumstances like that are the exceptions, not the rule. The apparent rule is “Revocation petitions will not be ruled in the probationer’s favor, no matter how weak the accusation or evidence is.”