Miami Personal Injury Law Blog

Infuse is a bone morphogenetic protein made by Medtronic Inc. for use in spinal surgeries. BMP's purpose is to induce bone and cartilage growth and limit the need for surgeons to harvest bone from elsewhere to use during spinal surgeries. Since Infuse's approval in 2002, it has been utilized in thousands of surgeries to help aid spinal fusion - but now there are indications that Medtronic provided inadequate warnings about its product.

"We've been running on a shoestring for years and we are minimally available to take care of all the guys on death row," says a death penalty attorney who works for a nonprofit legal aid organization. "But with this kind of funding loss, we're getting crippled."

As the Associated Press reports, state budget cuts and other forms of dried-up funding have left many organizations in the criminal justice system - from prosecutor and public defender offices to nonprofits - unable to provide adequate service to those who have been accused of crimes.

But, in our opinion, as long as there is a criminal defense lawyer - public or private - willing to defend the rights of those who have been accused of crimes, the criminal justice system does not face a crisis.

Guilty knowledge, as Kameel Stanley characterizes it in the St. Petersburg Times, is a pretty important concept in criminal law. In Latin, it's called mens rea, and it means that the prosecution must prove that the person charged with a crime actually intended on committing the crime. Mens rea literally means "guilty mind."

Prosecutors ordinarily have a higher burden of proof in the criminal justice system - hence the "innocent till proven guilty" thing.

At least it was that way until the Florida legislature got rid of the duty of a prosecutor to prove guilty knowledge in alleged drug offenses with its Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Law of 2002.

Good news for anyone ever caught by the red-light camera trap in Florida intersections.

According to Gray Rohrer of Sunshine State News, State Rep. Larry Ahern is back on track to get his bill, HB 149, through the legislature and on into law next year.

Ahern's bill would increase the length of time a light stays yellow based on the posted speed limit. As Rohrer reports, "a yellow light in an intersection with a 45 mile per hour speed limit should last five seconds," with a maximum of six seconds at intersections with higher speed limits.

In other words, drivers will have the luxury of actually getting through intersections before the light turns red and a ticket comes in the mail. Drivers will also not have to slam on their brakes and risk getting rear-ended by tail-gating traffic just to avoid a ticket.