Just a note to say that South Florida’s criminal defense lawyers are still in the “wait and see” mode for opinions to issue in two important cases.  First is State v. Adkins, SC 11-1878.  There, the Florida Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of Florida’s drug possession statute, section 893.13.  According to the Florida Supreme Court docket, the last significant activity was oral argument and the filing of an amicus brief by the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (FACDL, for short) last December.  If you’d like to read my comments on the oral argument, you can view them here.  Some of my other posts on the case can be seen here, here, and here.

Next is Evans v. Tucker, (originally filed as Evans v. McNeil), where the federal appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, may be addressing the constitutionality of Florida’s death penalty scheme.  (I say “may” because the parties’ briefs are not publicly available).  Although the public can access opinions released by the Court, the Eleventh Circuit court docket is not electronically available to the public, so information on that case is much more limited.  And, since a notice of appeal was filed in October of 2011, it may still be several months until an opinion issues.  If you care to monitor the Eleventh Circuit’s opinions as they are issued, you can click here.  (You can either look for the case style, Evans v. Tucker, or the lower court case number, 08-14402-Civ-JEM).  For some of my previous posts on the Evans case, click here and here.

A final note: if you are an attorney who is a member of FACDL, and you’re interested in these cases, you may want to check out an article I wrote in the Winter 2011 edition of the FACDL magazine, Florida Defender.  The article is printed at page 34 of Volume 23, No. 3.  You can also view it from my website by clicking here. (My article has been reprinted with the permission of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.)