Florida Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

Kathryn Kalikow, daughter of New York Post’s former owner, and Brian Whelan were charged Monday with possession of drugs with intent to sell after an alleged advertisement of the drug was posted on craigslist. The drug Kalikow allegedly attempted to sell was heroin.

On Sunday, undercover police detectives in the Bronx, New York, responded to the cragslist post as an interested buyer. Kalikow, Whelan and detectives agreed on an address, and the two sellers arrived in a blue Volkswagen.

Records show that Kalikow said to the undercover officer, “Yes I have drugs. He’s my boyfriend, I was holding on to it for him,” and she gave the detective three plastic bags, each containing 10 small bags of a tan, powdery substance.

Three people were arrested Sunday in connection with the helicopter escape by inmates in a Canadian prison. The two inmates that escaped are Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau and Dany Provencal. Hudon is already in police custody, however, Provencal is surrounded by authorities and are engaged in negotiations attempting to bring him back to prison peacefully. The whereabouts of Provencal remain unknown.

The escape took place at about 2:20 p.m. on Sunday at a prison in Quebec. The pilot who assisted in the escape was taken to a hospital for examination and will be interviewed by investigators. No information has been released indicating whether or not the pilot had been injured or his involvement, however, news reports say the inmates held a gun to the pilot’s head and forced him to fly the helicopter. The helicopter pilot is said to be a witness rather than a suspect.

Hudon, the escaped inmate that is now in police custody, was cleared on appeal of a double murder, but had returned to prison in connection with an attempted murder investigation. Provencal convicted is unknown.

Jodi Arias, who is being charged with first-degree murder in the killing of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, has spent two weeks on the witness stand answering detailed questions from attorneys about practically every aspect of her life including the day she killed Alexander.

Arias claimed she acted in self-defense when Alexander attacked her after a day of vulgar sex. However, authorities and prosecutors believe she planned it out of jealousy and rage.

Arias has had 3 stories since the incident: she initially told authorities she had nothing to do with Alexander’s death, she then changed her story and blamed it on masked intruders, and she is now settled on a self-defense argument. Arias argues she remembers very little from the incident and she acted violently because she feared for her life.

The Supreme Court decided an issue on appeal Tuesday and ultimately sided with authorities and Aldo the sniff dog in concluding that vehicle searches for drugs and contraband do not require anything more than a “totality of the circumstances” approach when deciding cases.

The justices of the court concluded that a positive alert from the trained sniff dog could establish probable cause for a vehicle search. “The question– similar to every inquiry intro probable cause– is whether all the facts surrounding a dog’s alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “And here, Aldo’s did.”

The aforementioned case involved defendant Clayton Harris, who was stopped by a sheriff’s deputy in Liberty County outside Tallahassee in 2006 for an expired license tag.