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I Got To Meet Melvyn Richardson

By Brian Tannebaum, Esq.

You don't know Melvyn Richardson. Google will tell you nothing about him, he's not on twitter, and he wouldn't draw a crowd at any event.But I got to meet him last night.Melvyn is a pretty hefty African-American guy with the demeanor of teddy bear. Seems a few months ago he was in traffic court in Pensacola and something important happened.In Florida, like other states, a defendant is required to provide a DNA sample upon conviction. Here, we run a q-tip around someones mouth, drop it in a ziplock, the whole process taking about 6 seconds.Melvyn wasn't in court to be convicted of a felony, he was there on a matter involving a traffic citation.This set of circumstances didn't seem to have any effect on the court security officers in the Escambia County Courthouse, who for a long while had been interpreting Florida's law as allowing them to take DNA from anyone sitting around without a nice suit...continue to full post

Full post as published by Criminal Defense on March 04, 2011 (boomark / email).