Sexual crimes in the state of Florida are very serious and must be thoroughly investigated by your attorney either prior to being charged or arrested or after you are charged or arrested. The first question we look at is what the State Attorney’s process is in deciding who gets investigated for a sex crime and who ultimately gets charged or arrested.

The short answer is the state attorney will charge someone with a sex crime from the evidence or facts they believe to be true at the time. An investigation can start when a citizen calls or files a complaint against a person who may have committed a sex crime. An example would be an adult inappropriately touching a minor and another person saw this and called the police. In this scenario, the police will immediately contact the potential wrongdoer either by phone or in person. Another example would be photographs of illegal sexual activity that were discovered and someone turned them over to law enforcement.

In either scenario, at this point, if you agree to speak with law enforcement, your testimony will be used against you, and you can be misinterpreted or tricked into making a confession. Once this is done it is very difficult to undo it. It is more beneficial for the accused to have an attorney to act as a go-between the accused and law enforcement. Your attorney may be able to relay information through an investigation to the State Attorney with the goal of not being charged at all or receiving a lesser charge.

Someone who has been convicted of a sexually related crime will be required by the court to register as a sex offender or sexual predator. Those crimes can include child pornography, sexual misconduct, lewd or lascivious offenses with a minor, etc. A sexual offender and sexual predator are two different terms, depending on the number of convictions on your record. A sexual predator is typically the more dangerous of the two, having committed and been convicted of at least two 2^nd-degree sexual felonies or at least one 1^st-degree sexual felony.

The sex offender registry is a public list that displays your name, picture, address, and criminal offense. In some cases, the list will also provide date of birth, weight, and height, among other things. This information is made available to the public on a law enforcement-managed website. All of this information is provided to your local law enforcement when you register, and when required to register, your name remains on that list for life. If you fail to register or re-register when required, you can be charged with a 3^rd-degree felony, punishable depending on the number of offenses. If your first offense, is punishable with six months of electronic monitoring by the police; a 2^nd offense requires a one-year minimum of electronic monitoring; a 3^rd offense requires a 2-year minimum of electronic monitoring.

Being charged and convicted with a sexually related criminal offense is not a situation you want to be in, but being placed on the registry after being released into the community will continue to have long-lasting, harmful effects. It may prove very difficult to find employment, you will have to follow state regulations on the distance you reside from schools and playgrounds, neighbors will be able to discover your crimes on the registry, and you can get in more legal trouble if you fail to update your registration yearly as required. In addition to being placed on the sex offender list, you will also be required to make the local police aware when in their county and to inform them of plans to travel to other Florida counties.

Articles Posted in Sex Offender Registry

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