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STUPID PROSECUTOR TRICKS
COLLEEN JENKINS, ST PETERSBURG TIMES - Mark O'Hara left jail without
handcuffs two years after he went to prison and one week since an
appeals court ordered him a new trial. He was serving a 25-year sentence
for having 58 Vicodin pills in his bread truck. Jurors weren't told that
it is legal to possess the drug with a prescription, which he had.
The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office has not decided whether it will
seek a retrial in the Dunedin man's drug trafficking case.
O'Hara, 45, said he made the 168-mile trip back from a Dixie County
prison without knowing exactly why. His attorneys had alerted him of
their successful appeal but cautioned that it wouldn't become final for
30 days. . .
On Wednesday morning, he appeared before Circuit Judge Ronald
Ficarrotta, the same jurist who heard his trial and sentenced him to the
mandatory 25 years in prison on the trafficking charge. The hearing was
scheduled so quickly that O'Hara's attorneys didn't even know about it.
Prosecutor Darrell Dirks acknowledged that the state erred in leaving
out a jury instruction regarding prescriptions. He suggested O'Hara be
returned to the status he had before his August 2005 trial.
O'Hara piped up, saying he had been released from jail on his own
recognizance after his arrest.
Court records confirmed it. Dirks didn't object, and the judge ordered
O'Hara's release.
That isn't typical treatment for an inmate, but neither was the 2nd
District Court of Appeal ruling about his case. The opinion faulted
prosecutors' claims that Florida statutes do not allow a "prescription
defense" in drug trafficking cases. Using words like "absurd" and
"ridiculous," three appellate judges said the state's position would
make patients with valid prescriptions criminals as soon as they left
the drugstore.
Tampa airport police arrested O'Hara in August 2004 after they found the
hydrocodone and a small amount of marijuana in his illegally parked and
unattended bread truck.
He refused plea agreements from prosecutors before trial, one for three
years in prison. Instead, jurors heard from two doctors who said they
had been treating O'Hara since the early 1990s for pain related to gout
and auto accident injuries.
Prosecutors did not contend that O'Hara, who went to prison in the 1980s
for cocaine trafficking, sold any of the 80 Vicodin pills he had been
prescribed in the eight months before his arrest. Under the law, simply
possessing the quantity of pills he had constitutes trafficking.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/26/Hillsborough/Freed_man_still_in_li.shtml
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STUPID PROSECUTOR TRICKS
COLLEEN JENKINS, ST PETERSBURG TIMES - Mark O'Hara left jail without
handcuffs two years after he went to prison and one week since an
appeals court ordered him a new trial. He was serving a 25-year sentence
for having 58 Vicodin pills in his bread truck. Jurors weren't told that
it is legal to possess the drug with a prescription, which he had.
The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office has not decided whether it will
seek a retrial in the Dunedin man's drug trafficking case.
O'Hara, 45, said he made the 168-mile trip back from a Dixie County
prison without knowing exactly why. His attorneys had alerted him of
their successful appeal but cautioned that it wouldn't become final for
30 days. . .
On Wednesday morning, he appeared before Circuit Judge Ronald
Ficarrotta, the same jurist who heard his trial and sentenced him to the
mandatory 25 years in prison on the trafficking charge. The hearing was
scheduled so quickly that O'Hara's attorneys didn't even know about it.
Prosecutor Darrell Dirks acknowledged that the state erred in leaving
out a jury instruction regarding prescriptions. He suggested O'Hara be
returned to the status he had before his August 2005 trial.
O'Hara piped up, saying he had been released from jail on his own
recognizance after his arrest.
Court records confirmed it. Dirks didn't object, and the judge ordered
O'Hara's release.
That isn't typical treatment for an inmate, but neither was the 2nd
District Court of Appeal ruling about his case. The opinion faulted
prosecutors' claims that Florida statutes do not allow a "prescription
defense" in drug trafficking cases. Using words like "absurd" and
"ridiculous," three appellate judges said the state's position would
make patients with valid prescriptions criminals as soon as they left
the drugstore.
Tampa airport police arrested O'Hara in August 2004 after they found the
hydrocodone and a small amount of marijuana in his illegally parked and
unattended bread truck.
He refused plea agreements from prosecutors before trial, one for three
years in prison. Instead, jurors heard from two doctors who said they
had been treating O'Hara since the early 1990s for pain related to gout
and auto accident injuries.
Prosecutors did not contend that O'Hara, who went to prison in the 1980s
for cocaine trafficking, sold any of the 80 Vicodin pills he had been
prescribed in the eight months before his arrest. Under the law, simply
possessing the quantity of pills he had constitutes trafficking.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/26/Hillsborough/Freed_man_still_in_li.shtml
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