Earlier this month, criminal defense attorney Bjorn Brunvand of this office represented Delmer Smith in his Manatee County “Spencer hearing”. Smith was convicted of first-degree murder last August. A jury recommended that he be sentenced to death. A judge must...
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April 20, 2013
by
K. McKinney
Sylvester Johnson, a resident of Palace Mobile Home Park in Lealman, has been charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his neighbor last week. According to Pinellas County sheriff’s detectives, Johnson went to Unit 447, where William David...
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April 19, 2013
by
K. McKinney
Authorities allege Raynaldo Figueroa-Sanabria stabbed and killed an 75-year-old man and 74-year-old woman on their 72-foot-long houseboat last week in the Loggerhead Marina in St. Petersburg. He has been charged with first-degree murder in Pinellas County. The bodies of John...
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April 18, 2013
by
K. McKinney
A 22-year-old airman first class, stationed at MacDill Air Force Base, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend. Last weekend, officers responded to the Coves of Brighton Bay apartment complex after receiving a 911 call...
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April 17, 2013
by
K. McKinney
The body of Joseph M. Coney was discovered earlier this week facedown in a Lake Wales yard at about 4 a.m. Homicide detectives from the Polk County sheriff’s office and Lake Wales police opened a homicide investigation after determining that...
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March 31, 2013
by
K. McKinney
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Charles Anthony Foster of Seffner was charged with the murder of two Seffner roommates last week in a mobile home park near Interstate 4. Foster has been charged with two counts of first-degree...
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March 29, 2013
by
K. McKinney
Karen Biraghi shot and killed her husband Alan Biraghi as he lay asleep on the couch in their home on Christmas Eve 2011. Hernando Circuit Judge Daniel B. Merritt Jr. recently sentenced Biraghi to life in prison for the murder...
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March 22, 2013
by
K. McKinney
After three weeks of trial, testimony continues in a Tampa federal courtroom in the Medicaid fraud trial of four former WellCare executives. Former executives at the Tampa-based health care plan company, Todd Farha, Paul Behrens, William Kale and Peter Clay...
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March 20, 2013
by
K. McKinney
William Dion McClendon was arrested last week and charged with DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide, relating to a fatal January 2012 collision in Pinellas Park. A warrant was issued last May for McClendon but it took 10 months for police...
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March 19, 2013
by
K. McKinney
A federal district court judge in Tampa sentenced Russell B. Simmons, Jr. to 15 years in federal prison this week, almost the maximum sentence under federal guidelines. Simmons was accused of tax fraud which netted him almost $2 million. Simmons...
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February 28, 2013
by
K. McKinney
Seventeen-year-old Land O’Lakes High School student Dustin Sean White was shot and killed in a parking lot at a party in 2009. His acquaintance who fired the gun pleaded guilty to manslaughter as part of a plea agreement last week...
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February 24, 2013
by
K. McKinney
William Chad Routenberg went through three defense attorneys before advising a Pinellas County court that he would represent himself in a first-degree murder trial. The trial started this week. Routenberg claims admits killing his girlfriend in 2011 but claims it...
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February 20, 2013
by
K. McKinney
Authorities in Pasco County charged Chekayla Dampier with second-degree murder. They accuse Dampier of murdering her 7-week old son last April by holding him under a spout of blistering 142-degree water as a punishment for crying. At the time of...
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February 6, 2013
by
K. McKinney
The Pinellas Country capital murder trial of Ralph “Ron” Wright Jr. continues this week, the fourth week of trial. The case was submitted to the jury for deliberation and jurors in the trial deliberated for 12 hours before recessing for...
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January 31, 2013
by
K. McKinney
A Sarasota man was sentenced to five years in federal prison this month for his role in a complicated mortgage fraud scheme. Arthur R. Seaborne had previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit bank fraud. In addition to the prison...
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