Thursday, August 9

Chameleon Raises Suspicions-

Last week, a 52-year-old Cuban-born man with family in Miami was pulled over on a traffic stop in Central Florida and charged with driving without a valid license and violating his probation in a grand theft case.

At the police station, a police officer observed that Roy Antigua's military ID looked fake, which prompted an investigation into Antigua's background.

Although there is no mention of a search warrant in the Tampa Bay Times article, Antigua was discovered to be keeping a wardrobe of diverse uniforms, law enforcement paraphernalia and costumes in his living quarters in
New Port Richey.

Detectives did not find a weapons cache there, but did find some ammunition and a pair of handcuffs. His vehicle, an Escalade, has a Department of Homeland Security registration sticker.

Law Enforcement would like to know more about him: is he a threat to society or merely an entertainer from a TV series like Burn Notice?

:: Erin Sullivan :: Tampa Bay Times ::

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Monday, August 6

A Trayvon Flurry (4#) -

The psychological warfare against residents of the gated community in Sandford within which George and Shellie Zimmerman lived continues. A new memorial to the teen visitor Trayvon Martin has been set up nearby, but we have not been given a context photo that gives us a sense of its whereabouts within that environment.

Trayvon Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, has applied for compensation benefits from a state fund which was established to help crime victims and their families pay for funeral and related expenses. A claims analyst with the Attorney General's Office notified Fulton that she had been deemed eligible for benefits from the Crimes Compensation Trust Fund.

Lawyers representing Sybrina Fulton have filed a claim for monetary damages against the Travelers insurance company which insures the Retreat at Twin Lakes homeowners association (HOA), but Travelers issued an insurance policy to the HOA effective March 30th, which commenced after the tragic events on that property. Travelers is seeking some clarification of its obligations.

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"Florida’s public-record law needs to bow to a defendant’s right to a fair trial," attorney Jose Baez said. "Some woman sitting behind her computer with nine cats knows more about the case than anybody."

Thank you to Jose Baez - I think - for the left-handed compliment. He was just kidding about the nine cats.

I am not exactly an unknown person. I used to blog for Harvard Law School, among other things. I agree with Jose that Florida's public-record law needs some tweaking in order to better preserve Due Process.

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Off the cuff . . . it used to be when there was an untoward death, relatives used to sue for things like: being denied the love and comfort of their spouse or being deprived of a sum of money for their relative's estimated earnings. In this light, the lawsuit going after the HOA's insurance company is not entirely unexpected.

But Trayvon Martin's parents threw in some new wrinkles here by trademarking some discreet parts of him which I haven't been keeping track of. Thus, I'm not really very clear what kinds of litigations we may be seeing.

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