The new law and recent lawsuit could change the legal landscape for former Florida criminals who are still facing charges of voter fraud.

TAMPA, Florida. The fate of former felons charged with illegal voting last summer, whose cases have yet to be solved, may have become a little more complicated.

Following the recent jury trial of one defendant and the passage of a new state law this week, pending defense attorneys may have reason to rethink their legal scenarios.

Last summer, almost 20 former Florida felons whose previous convictions disqualified them from voting were arrested. arrested for illegal voting in the 2020 elections

But almost as quickly as Gov. Ron DeSantis announced their arrests during a press conference touting his newly created Electoral Crimes Unit, election analysts discovered flaws in the state’s seemingly solid takeovers.

“The oversight bodies sent out voter registration cards and these people, as far as they know, did nothing wrong and their rights were restored to be able to vote,” University of Florida political science professor Dr. Dan Smith explained in August.

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After the arrests, a quarter of these cases were dismissed or dismissed. Most of them were related to jurisdictional issues, meaning that the judge ruled that the state’s attorney in Tallahassee did not have the authority to bring charges against a defendant in another county.

But that changed this week when DeSantis signed a bill clarifying that a public prosecutor has the power to prosecute if a crime is believed to have occurred in two or more counties.

Couple that with the recent jury trial of Hillsborough County defendant Nathan Hart, which ended in a split verdict, and defense attorneys are weighing how best to move forward and get a better deal for their clients.

“My client is scared to death of going back to jail,” Tampa attorney Stephen Crawford said.

His client is among the former criminals who thought their voting rights were restored when he voted in 2020. His case is still pending.

While Crawford said the state’s attorney’s office had already offered his client a plea deal that did not include additional jail time and fines, Crawford explained why his client still had doubts.

“He didn’t do anything wrong, and it’s hard to get someone to accept when you haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.

As Crawford and his client weigh their options, Miami defense attorney Ramon de la Cabada said the idea of ​​dropping those cases with a plea deal would likely be a more attractive proposition.

“I think you will continue to see people take the easy way,” he said.

Kabada also co-chairs the National Criminal Lawyers Association and has advised some of the lawyers defending these clients.

While he still believes the facts of these cases favor defendants who claim they voted without intent, de la Cabada expects most, if not all, of the remaining cases to end in plea bargains without punishment.

“It’s not about their innocence or guilt. I just can’t believe I was dragged into this,” he said.

A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, where the state’s Attorney’s Office is based, said in an email that the office is advancing cases in both lower courts and appellate courts.