{"id":666,"date":"2018-08-14T14:45:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T18:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clearwatersexcrimeslawyer.com\/?p=233"},"modified":"2026-01-31T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T18:08:15","slug":"sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexual Battery Conviction Can Stand, Says Florida Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Under the laws of the United States, defendants have a right to act as their own counsel if they so choose. However, the state still has a responsibility to make sure that the defendant is competent enough to make these choices. In a case heard by the Florida First District Court of Appeal, a defendant who refused to cooperate with his counsel and then represented himself appealed his conviction for sex crimes. If you or a loved one is charged with a sex crime, you should contact a skilled Clearwater sex crime attorney as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Facts of the Case<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The defendant in this case was charged with three counts of sexual battery. The prosecutors provided DNA evidence that corroborated the testimony of the victim. He decided to represent himself during most of the proceedings. However, the judge did appoint his public defender to be his standby counsel during the proceedings. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. On appeal, he alleged that the trial court\u2019s verdict should be overturned. The defendant argued that the court should have performed a competency hearing to make sure that he was competent to waive his right to counsel. He also argued that the standby counsel was ineffective.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading Sexual Battery Conviction Can Stand, Says Florida Court\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading \u2192<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under the laws of the United States, defendants have a right to act as their own counsel if they so choose. However, the state still has a responsibility to make sure that the defendant is competent enough to make these choices. In a case heard by the Florida First District Court of Appeal, a defendant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sex-crimes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Case Update: Sexual Battery Conviction Stand<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dealing with sex crime charges? See how this ruling on sexual battery conviction stand your defense in Clearwater. Find out what this means right away?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Case Update: Sexual Battery Conviction Stand\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Dealing with sex crime charges? See how this ruling on sexual battery conviction stand your defense in Clearwater. Find out what this means right away?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hanlon Law, PA\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Case Update: Sexual Battery Conviction Stand","description":"Dealing with sex crime charges? See how this ruling on sexual battery conviction stand your defense in Clearwater. Find out what this means right away?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Case Update: Sexual Battery Conviction Stand","twitter_description":"Dealing with sex crime charges? See how this ruling on sexual battery conviction stand your defense in Clearwater. Find out what this means right away?","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Hanlon Law, PA","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/"},"author":{"name":"Hanlon Law, PA","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/03dc1d8f0e988aa69b0efe5d06eeb939"},"headline":"Sexual Battery Conviction Can Stand, Says Florida Court","datePublished":"2018-08-14T18:45:44+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-31T18:08:15+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/"},"wordCount":654,"articleSection":["Sex Crimes"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/","url":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/","name":"Case Update: Sexual Battery Conviction Stand","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-08-14T18:45:44+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-31T18:08:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/03dc1d8f0e988aa69b0efe5d06eeb939"},"description":"Dealing with sex crime charges? See how this ruling on sexual battery conviction stand your defense in Clearwater. Find out what this means right away?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/sexual-battery-conviction-can-stand-says-florida-court\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Sexual Battery Conviction Can Stand, Says Florida Court"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/","name":"Clearwater Criminal Lawyer Blog","description":"Published by Florida Defense Lawyer \u2014 Hanlon Law","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/03dc1d8f0e988aa69b0efe5d06eeb939","name":"Hanlon Law, PA","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/28c5c60eb08894e1f2f27e2e759788e24587bda0a815ed045456f272f44b2849?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/28c5c60eb08894e1f2f27e2e759788e24587bda0a815ed045456f272f44b2849?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/28c5c60eb08894e1f2f27e2e759788e24587bda0a815ed045456f272f44b2849?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Hanlon Law, PA"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/"]}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1385,"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/1385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criminalattorneyclearwater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}