Clearwater Criminal Defense Law Blog

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. Originally charged with first-degree murder, Biraghi pleaded guilty earlier this year to a reduced charge of murder in the second degree. The reduction in charge was likely the result of plea negotiations between Biraghi's defense attorneys and prosecutors. Sentencing guidelines called for a minimum prison term of 25 years and a maximum of life. If she had been...

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 are all accused of defrauding the Medicaid program of more than $30 million. Their defense attorneys argue that the men did not break the law, blaming Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration for misreading state law, failing to specify what it wanted on WellCare's expense reports and concealing information on how it calculated...

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 to arrest him.Back in January 2012, an 84-year-old woman was driving west on Gandy Boulevard in a 1996 Lincoln Town Car when she attempted a left turn onto 35th Street N. According to the police report, she drove into the path of the car McClendon was driving. The elderly woman did not survive the resulting collision. McClendon was treated for minor...

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.Douglas Gabriel Cevallos Jr. picked up a gun off the ground and waved it just before it went off, killing killed White. Cevallos, now 23, was sentenced to six years in prison and nine years of probation for manslaughter as part of a plea agreement.According to media reports, White's family was part of the plea discussions and had compassion for Cevallos's situation...

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 was done in self-defense.The prosecutor told the jury that Routenberg stabbed Shanessa Lynn Chappie in the neck about 18 months ago. He put her body in a trash can. He eventually told a friend that he had killed her. Then, according to the state, Routenberg asked the friend to help him lift Chappie's body into the bathtub so he...

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 the baby's death, Dampier was 18 years old, single, unemployed and without a permanent home.Dampier was recently interviewed by the Tampa Bay Times. According to investigators, the baby was burned by scalding water on his head, face, lips, ears, chest and back. They reported that the baby's skin bubbled, his clothes and diaper were soiled.Authorities...

Former schoolteacher Robert McCraw was sentenced last week in Hernando County's circuit court for the DUI manslaughter of Ludolf Breymann in Spring Hill. The accident occurred on January 3, 2011. McCraw was sentenced to five years in prison for driving under the influence of legal prescription drug Xanax.McCraw drove his Cadillac through a red light at U.S. 19 and Pepper Street in Spring Hill and collided with Ludolf and Christa Breymann's Toyota. Ludolf Breymann was driving and passed away later in the ER. Christa Breymann was severely injured.At his sentencing hearing, McCraw apologized...

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 sentence, Seaborne was ordered to forfeit $4,269,886.55 in proceeds from the offense.According to court documents and information presented in court, prosecutors allege that Seaborne and others conspired to commit bank fraud from as early as March 2003 through July 2008. Throughout that time, they say, Seaborne used several corporate entities to perpetuate the...

Trial began this week in Hillsborough County against 46-year-old Chunping Lin, who is charged with second-degree murder in the 2011 death of his wife Lixin Tian. Tian died in July 2011 after being removed from life support, following a May 2011 beating by Lin. Tian's cause of death was determined to be brain damage as a result of blunt-force trauma.The couple's 12-year-old son testified at trial that he woke in the early morning hours of May 25, 2011 to the sounds of Lin yelling at and beating Tian over money. The boy said he watched his father slap his mother, then start punching her in the...

Hillsborough County law enforcement used DNA evidence and technology to identify Otano Anton Leggett, currently a Florida state prison inmate, as a suspect in an early 2012 Tampa murder. Leggett is serving a two-year sentence at the Liberty Correctional Institution outside Tallahassee for unrelated drug offenses. He has now been charged with first-degree murder.Just before noon on February 12, 2012, Nancy Grooms was found dead in her bedroom at 920 122nd Ave., Apt. B, Tampa, according to the Hillsborough County sheriff's office. Detectives went to the scene and the Medical Examiner's Office...