What are the pros and cons of the Florida pretrial intervention program?
Answer: So the biggest pro about successfully completing an intervention program in most instances, not all, but in most instances it results in a complete dismissal of the charges against you, and under the law there’s no better result than having a complete charge dismissed against you because depending on your previous criminal history, you may qualify to then have your record either sealed or expunged depending on the facts of the case. So that is an absolute pro. There is nothing better than having a prosecutor dismiss a charge against you.The con if you will is, you know, it often will involve you having to do some terms that might be more egregious or more difficult than had you just resolved the case in court and not had an opportunity to drop the case. So for example, in a—we’ll take a misdemeanor possession of marijuana. You might be able to go to court and maybe get no conviction and maybe just pay a fine and be done with your case, you know, relatively quickly, but the case is not dropped, and if you get a withhold of adjudication which means the best you’re going to be able to do is potentially seal your case. Well, if you successfully complete an intervention program the charge gets dropped, then you would be eligible to expunge the case and that’s the best result you can ask for under the law. However, it’s going to involve you doing some terms that are going to take a lot of time potentially. But the carrot at the end of the stick is complete dismissal of the charges. So that’s the pros and cons of intervention programs in Florida.
