Florida DUI, criminal defense, and personal injury, explained by a forensic lawyer-scientist and former public defender. Celebrity cases, courtroom strategy, and the science behind the evidence, in plain English.
Every post here is written by Rory Safir, one of a handful of ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientists in Florida and a former Assistant Public Defender in Tampa.
About Rory →For many drivers, a DUI arrest is a legal problem. For a commercial driver, it is a payroll problem. The license in your wallet is the reason there is money in the account at the end of the month, and a Florida DUI arrest puts a one year disqualification of...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Headlines · · 4 min read A police officer is on the witness stand. He has spent forty minutes telling a jury that the way a woman's eyes moved on the side of a road proved she was impaired. And I am asking him...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Headlines · · 4 min read On the evening of Thursday, July 23, 2026, a Milwaukee County sheriff's deputy stopped a car on the I-43 high-rise bridge. The driver was Tony Romo, the former Dallas quarterback and, since 2017, the lead NFL analyst at...
Everyone who walks into a Florida breath testing room is carrying a transmitter. The operator has a portable radio. The arresting officer has a phone, a body camera on his chest, and more often than not a smartwatch. The instrument they are about to use was built to notice that,...
Every Florida DUI conviction rests on a number the State calls settled science: a breath reading, a blood result, or a score on a set of roadside exercises. It is not settled. Each one is a chain of assumptions the State has to prove and usually cannot. I wrote The...
My fourth book is finished, and it is the hardest one I have written. Hurt in a Florida Nursing Home: The Family’s Guide to Abuse, Neglect, and Wrongful Death Nobody Hands You is 340 pages, in plain English, for the daughter or son who suspects something is wrong and needs...
The same fall breaks a hip at seventy, a wrist at thirty five, and a kneecap at fifty, and the insurance company has a playbook for every one of them. The serious injuries section of the site just grew four new plain-English pages, on hip fractures, knee injuries, shoulder injuries,...
When you are attacked on commercial property, everyone points you toward one legal process: the criminal case against the person who hurt you. There is a second case, the one nobody assigns you a caseworker for, and for most crime victims it is the one that determines whether life gets...
If your DUI, or your boating DUI, happened in Sarasota, Manatee, or DeSoto County, your case sits in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit, and the Twelfth runs the most structured diversion program in the region. It is called DETER, and I just published a free plain-English guide to it: Safir Guide...
A first DUI arrest in Hillsborough County comes with something most counties cannot offer: a State Attorney program that can end an eligible case as reckless driving with no conviction at all. It is called RIDR, and I just published a free plain-English guide to it: Safir Guide No. 21,...
If your first DUI happened in Pinellas or Pasco County, there is a program that can end your case as reckless driving instead of a DUI conviction. It is called DROP, it is run by the State Attorney for the Sixth Judicial Circuit, and I just published a free plain-English...
Since July 1, 2026, a volunteer with a concealed weapon license can provide armed security at a Florida church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship without holding the state security licenses that used to be mandatory. Senate Bill 52 added an exemption to chapter 493, the private security licensing...
Florida’s domestic violence laws got their biggest overhaul in years on July 1, 2026, when House Bill 277 took effect. The Legislature passed it without a single no vote, and it changes the stakes on both sides of these cases: for people accused, for people seeking protection, and, notably for...
Buried in the stack of laws that took effect on July 1, 2026 is one that will quietly turn ordinary traffic tickets into felony cases. House Bill 35 added driving without a valid license, section 322.03, Florida Statutes, to the list of offenses that count toward habitual traffic offender status....
On July 1, 2026, the plea hearing in Florida changed. Under Missy’s Law, House Bill 445, a judge now has no choice: the moment a person pleads guilty or no contest to a dangerous crime, or a jury finds them guilty of one, the court must take them into custody...
Falls are the injury our culture laughs at. People apologize on their way down, wave off the ambulance out of embarrassment, and tell the story as a joke on themselves, right up until the shoulder needs surgery and the joke stops being funny. Meanwhile, the store or the property owner...
After a car crash, the hardest part is not always the injury. It is the not knowing. Is the adjuster really on your side? Should you give that recorded statement? Why did the emergency room say you were fine when you can barely move the next morning? What is your...
Every week someone sits across from me, a day or a week after the worst night of their year, and asks the same questions. They ask what really happened at the stop, whether the breath number is really the end of it, what the letter from the DHSMV means, and...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Criminal Defense · · 3 min read If a security guard walked you into a back office this week, or a deputy handed you paperwork with the word “theft” on it, you’re probably embarrassed, scared, and thinking: this is not who I am. My...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read If a nurse drew your blood after a crash, or an officer said “warrant” and “blood” in the same sentence, you know the feeling. Somewhere in a lab there’s a tube with your name on it, and...
One of the roughly ninety new Florida laws that took effect on July 1, 2026, is aimed squarely at a problem many injured drivers already know too well. Known as Isaiah’s Law, House Bill 35 adds driving without a valid license to the list of offenses that can push a...
Every so often you meet a law student and you know, within a week or two, that this profession is in good hands. That is how it has felt having Taylor Teeple with us this summer. She is spending the summer working alongside our team, and I want to tell...
A crash with a fully loaded tractor trailer is not just a bigger version of a car accident, and treating it like one is how injured people leave the real case on the table. A loaded commercial truck can weigh twenty to thirty times what a passenger car weighs, so...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Personal Injury · · 3 min read If you fell in a store or a restaurant, I can probably guess what you did next. You looked around, hoped nobody saw, told the concerned employee you were fine, and got out of there as fast...
After a shooting at an apartment complex, a nightclub, or a parking garage, the coverage focuses on the person who pulled the trigger, and rightly so. But the criminal is often never caught, or has nothing to pay, and that is not where the story ends for the victim. Florida...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Criminal Defense · · 3 min read The case is over. The charges were dropped, or the judge withheld adjudication, and you walked out believing that chapter was closed. Then the apartment application comes back denied. The job offer goes quiet. Here is the...
The other driver’s story often changes between the roadside and the insurance claim, and by the time an adjuster is on the phone, a clear rear end or a plain failure to yield has somehow become your fault. The good news is that the physical evidence does not change its...
A rideshare crash is not an ordinary car accident, because the moment an Uber or Lyft is involved, who pays for your injuries turns on a corporate insurance structure the companies built to control what they owe. If you were hurt as a passenger, as another driver, or as a...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read The phone rang at a terrible hour, or the text landed in the middle of your workday, and now you’re managing a crisis from a kitchen table ten minutes from campus or a thousand miles away. I’m...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Personal Injury · · 3 min read Nobody plans to need a guide about car crashes. If you’re reading this, the wreck has probably already happened. Maybe your car is in a tow yard. Maybe you walked away feeling fine, and this morning your...
Early in 2026, the FDA announced a recall that swept up more than two thousand products from brands as familiar as Tylenol, Advil, and Coca-Cola, after a Minnesota facility was found operating under insanitary conditions. Recalls that large make national news, and they leave a lot of people asking the...
It surprises many people to learn that after a Florida crash, the first coverage to pay your medical bills is usually your own, even when the other driver was clearly at fault. Florida’s no fault system is built that way, and understanding the order of who pays helps you avoid...
This article first appeared in The Paraclete, the magazine of the St. Petersburg Bar Association, March/April 2026 edition, pages 40 and 41. Republished here by the author, with citation to the original. Florida residents regularly encounter law enforcement during traffic stops and other brief interactions. While many people know they...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Criminal Defense · · 3 min read Maybe it was a phone call from your probation officer. Maybe it was a letter with the word affidavit in it. However it arrived, the message is the same: the State says you broke a condition of...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read You have a court date you didn’t ask for, a paper permit where your license used to be, and a phone full of search results that all say the same three things. Aggressive. Experienced. Fights for you....
A settlement offer lands a few weeks after the crash, the bills are piling up, and the check would make the pressure stop. The pull to just take it is real. But a first offer is rarely a fair one, and once you sign the release that comes with it,...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read You already know what a booking area smells like at two in the morning. You did the DUI school, paid the fine, watched your insurance climb, and told yourself that chapter was closed. Now there’s a new...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read You got home from the jail, or from the tow yard, and the house went quiet. That’s when it hits you: somewhere across town, a group of strangers is already at work on your case. An officer...
The choices you make in the first hours and days after a crash can shape both your recovery and any claim you bring, and Florida has one deadline in particular that catches people off guard. Here is the practical order of operations, written for the person still sitting at the...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read When a machine prints a number about you, the number moves into your head and starts acting like a verdict. Some part of you has probably decided that everything from here is paperwork. I want to stop...
This article first appeared in The Paraclete, the magazine of the St. Petersburg Bar Association, May/June 2026 edition, pages 16 and 17. Republished here by the author, with citation to the original. Immigration enforcement has become an increasingly visible part of daily life across Florida and the rest of the...
On Court TV, February 19, 2026, discussing the Guthrie case forensics. On February 19, I joined Court TV to break down the forensic turning point in the Nancy Guthrie case: DNA recovered from gloves found near the scene was run through CODIS and came back with no match, and investigators...
It is the first question almost everyone asks after a crash, and the honest answer is that no one can hand you a number on day one. Anyone who promises a figure before the medical picture is clear is guessing. What a good lawyer can do is tell you what...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read If you were arrested for DUI in the last few days, I can guess where your mind keeps going: the court date. Everyone fixates on it. But the deadline that matters most this week is not on...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read If you were arrested for DUI recently, there is a police report out there with your name on it, and reading it is going to hurt. Weaving. Bloodshot eyes. Slurred speech. “Failed” roadside exercises. Here is what...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 2 min read If you were arrested for driving under the influence of a drug and never touched a drop of alcohol, you are not imagining how strange this feels. Maybe you took a medication your own doctor prescribed, exactly...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 2 min read If an officer recently asked you to walk a line, stand on one leg, or follow a pen with your eyes, you’re probably replaying every wobble and telling yourself you failed. I want to slow that tape...
Three Januaries, three letters. I have been selected to the 2026 Florida Super Lawyers Rising Stars list, which makes it three consecutive years: 2024, 2025, and now 2026. I will keep the speech short, because the third one is less about a moment and more about a pattern. The Rising...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist DUI Defense · · 3 min read If you blew into a machine and a number came up, I know what that number is doing to you. It sits in your head like a verdict. You’ve run the math on the drinks and the...
When a family loses someone to another person’s carelessness, the legal questions arrive at the worst possible time, and the answers are not obvious. Florida channels every one of these cases through a single statute, the Wrongful Death Act, and that statute decides who may recover, what they may recover,...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Criminal Defense · · 3 min read The night you’re arrested, someone reads you your rights in English. Then the system switches languages. Booking. Capias. Nolo. Withhold. Docket sounding. I stood next to hundreds of clients as an Assistant Public Defender in the Thirteenth...
A motorcycle crash is not just a car crash on two wheels, and a rider’s legal situation is meaningfully different in Florida, in ways that can cut for the rider. The trouble is that riders often walk into a claim carrying assumptions from car cases that do not apply, and...
Every so often a video or a news story out of a care facility goes viral, and families across Florida feel the same cold worry about the person they placed in someone else’s care. Pinellas County has one of the largest older populations in the country and a dense supply...
Within a day or two of a crash, the other driver’s insurance company often calls, friendly and helpful, asking for a quick recorded statement to process the claim. It sounds routine. It is not. That call is one of the most consequential moments in the early life of a claim,...
When a drunk driver injures someone, many folks assume the impairment will simply speak for itself. In a civil case it does not. The impairment has to be proven, and the proof lives in the same evidence a DUI prosecution runs on, the breath test and the machine’s records, the...
People walk all over Tampa Bay, and every year the roads here prove how dangerous that is. In Smart Growth America’s Dangerous by Design report, the Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater metro has ranked among the deadliest in the nation for pedestrians and the most dangerous in Florida. If a...
Some recognition comes from panels and peer committees, and I am grateful for those. This one is different, and honestly, it means more. Safir Injury & Criminal Defense Law has been named a 2025 Silver Winner in the Defense Law Firm category by Tampa’s Best, and the voters were not...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Criminal Defense · · 3 min read The first night is the worst part. I tell people that up front because it’s true. If you’re reading this a few hours after an arrest, or while someone you love waits in a county jail to...
Florida is one of the better states in the country to be a dog bite victim, because the law does not give the owner a free pass for the first bite. If a dog bit you, the owner is responsible whether or not the dog had ever shown a mean...
If your sense of the deadline comes from anything you heard before 2023, it is probably wrong, and that mistake can be fatal to a claim. Florida used to give injury victims four years to file. It does not anymore. A sweeping change in the law cut that window in...
The most useful thing to know after a bicycle crash in Florida is that the law is already on the rider’s side of the road. A cyclist is not an intruder in traffic. Under Florida law, a person on a bicycle has the rights and the duties of the driver...
Written by Rory Safir, Forensic Lawyer-Scientist Criminal Defense · · 3 min read Somewhere between the handcuffs and the holding cell, you noticed something missing. Nobody read you your rights. No card, no speech, nothing like the movies promised. And by now a friend, a cousin, or a stranger in...
Many people assume that if they were even a little to blame for a crash, they have no case. That is not how Florida works, though a 2023 change did raise the stakes. Being partly at fault reduces your recovery, and past a certain line it now ends it, so...
For years, Florida law put a hard ceiling on the pain and suffering a medical malpractice victim could recover, no matter how severe the harm. A patient left permanently disabled by a preventable error could see a jury’s award for their suffering slashed by hundreds of thousands of dollars, purely...
Florida leads the country in registered vessels and in boating accidents, and the risk peaks in exactly the weeks when the water is most crowded, the summer weekends and the holidays. Around Tampa Bay, the passes and sandbars fill with a mix of jet skis, rental boats, and first time...
The National Trial Lawyers has selected Rory Safir of Safir Injury & Criminal Defense Law PLLC for its Top 40 Under 40 list for criminal defense in Florida. What the Top 40 Under 40 recognizes Membership is by invitation and is limited to 40 attorneys under the age of 40...
Last January I shared that I had been selected to the Florida Super Lawyers Rising Stars list for the first time. This January the letter came again: I have been selected to the 2025 Rising Stars list, my second consecutive year. The second one means something different than the first....
Some news you get by mail still feels good in an email world. I am honored to share that I have been selected to the 2024 Florida Super Lawyers Rising Stars list in criminal defense and DUI defense. For those unfamiliar with it, Super Lawyers is a rating service from...
I wrote the book on Florida DUIFree to anyone facing a charge in Tampa Bay. Plain English, nineteen chapters, no law degree required.Get your copy →
Forensic Lawyer-ScientistOne of six attorneys in Florida with the ACS-CHAL designation from the American Chemical Society.What that means for your case →Acquittal, Pinellas County: DUI jury acquittal after the HGN eye test was challenged.
Past results are examples only and do not predict, promise, or guarantee the outcome of any other case.
“Rory rescued me. His professionalism and knowledge of criminal law turned what could have been a terrible situation into freedom. One of the best attorneys in the state, in my opinion.”
Daniel T.
