An attorney for condemned killer Joseph Smith is asking the Florida Supreme Court to overturn his death sentence. Smith was sentenced to death for killing 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in 2004. His abduction of the middle school student was captured on security cameras and broadcast nationwide. ...more

January 7, 2009 |

Jurors returned a guilty verdict Thursday against a man accused of molesting his teenage relative. ...more

December 19, 2008 |

Robert Nowak of Polk County was convicted today of hiring a hit man called "Reaper" to bump off an Internal Revenue Service tax auditor. ...more

December 18, 2008 |

Trial opened Wednesday for a man accused of molesting a girl when she was 14. ...more

December 18, 2008 |

TAMPA - Prosecutors called a parade of police officers and crime scene investigators to the witness stand this morning, hoping to establish the forensic foundation to convict Amos Mequel Busby of kidnapping a woman and repeatedly raping her for three hours. ...more

December 16, 2008 |

A man found guilty of murdering his girlfriend's 2-year-old argued Tuesday in court that medical evidence proves he is innocent. ...more

December 16, 2008 |

TAMPA A 78-year-old mental health therapist faces up to life in prison after being convicted this afternoon of a federal charge that he drove to the Tampa area to sexually and physically abuse two boys he thought would be made available by their father. After the verdict was read, Charles Friedlander was overcome with emotion, according to his attorney, George Tragos. He was led away to jail in a wheelchair. ...more

December 16, 2008 |

As Randy Nowak was meeting with an undercover agent he thought was a hit man, the Internal Revenue Service officer Nowak wanted dead went into hiding, according to evidence presented this morning in Nowak's trial. ...more

December 16, 2008 |

Charles Friedlander is "a 78-year-old lonely man whose only social life is on the Internet," and not a pedophile who attempted to sexually and physically abuse two boys, Friedlander's lawyer told a jury today. ...more

December 15, 2008 |

Randy Nowak's own words will be the most important evidence in his trial on charges he tried to hire a hit man to kill an IRS officer, a federal prosecutor told jurors this morning. Nowak, 49, of Mulberry, is accused of hiring a man he knew as "Reaper" to kill an IRS revenue officer for a total of $20,000 because he was afraid of going to prison for tax evasion. ...more

December 15, 2008 |