The Florida Supreme Court has thrown out the armed-robbery conviction and 50-year prison sentence of Cedric Tyrone Smallwood after ruling that Jacksonville police illegally looked at photos on his cell phone.

The case, decided by a 5-2 vote, has statewide implications because the court ruled that police cannot look at information on a cell phone without getting a search warrant first.

“It’s a huge decision,” said Rod Sullivan, a professor of constitutional law at Florida Coastal School of Law. “Police have been looking through the cell phones of people they arrest for years.”

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2013-05-02/story/court-throws-out-conviction-over-cell-phone-search-jacksonville-police?utm_source=feedly#ixzz2SEflkzZK

Florida Coastal School of Law professor Rod Sullivan says not having that insurance puts Rosado’s employer at huge legal and financial risk.

“In exchange for purchasing workers compensation insurance, the employer gets immunity from suit by the employees. So that, at the end of the day, if this employer actually has money, the employee would actually get more money because they didn’t have workers comp. But, they’d have to go through litigation to get that money.”

… read more at WJCT.

“I think that there’s a big breach of personal privacy by using any medical records at all for the purpose of assembling a list of people who might have guns, and consequently, I would consider that to be a very important constitutional question,” said Rod Sullivan, professor at Florida Coastal School of Law.

Read more at News4Jax.

Professor Rod Sullivan joins News 4 Jax for a segment on gun rights in America.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. –  You know the saying ‘Big Brother is watching?’  He may soon be reading too.

A new bill working its way through Congress could give the government unwarranted access to your email.

“I have to admit I’m not very careful about what I put in my emails,” said Rod Sullivan.

He emails constantly for business and pleasure.  And he knows the legal ins and outs.  He is a professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law.

… read the entire article at Action News Jax.

According to Rod Sullivan, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, Amendment 1 has become a non-issue.  The Amendment would “prohibit laws or rules from compelling any person or employer to purchase, obtain, or otherwise provide for health care coverage.”

Read (and watch) more at First Coast News.

“We know today for a virtual certainty that if you burn a Quran and you put it on YouTube, somewhere somebody in the world is going to die as a result of violence caused by that YouTube video,” said Rod Sullivan, a constitutional law professor at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville. “Therefore it’s sort of an emerging question as to whether or not the courts can prohibit that kind of speech because it does incite violence someplace else.”

Read more, and watch the video, at News4Jax.com.

Cooper can rely on prior case law to help as a guide, but her job is to focus on the evidence presented in the cases before her, said Rod Sullivan, a constitutional law professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law.

“Everything in her ruling has to be based on her factual findings,” Sullivan said. “She has to make specific findings concerning the development of his level of intelligence at the age of 12, the amount he was actually free to cooperate or not with police” and other factors.

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2012-08-06/story/critical-ruling-cases-against-cristian-fernandez-due-tuesday#ixzz22sBT7igp

“JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — There’s a new ad on the airways right now that gives credit to Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney for saving the Olympics and turning the games around in 2002.”

Professor Rod Sullivan is asked about the legalities of the ad and if any copyright law may have been broken by using Olympic footage. Click here to view the ad and read the full story at First Coast News.

“As part of the Times-Union’s book club, the T-U Book Blog, we arranged a conference phone call with Tim O’Brien and three members of our club.

“They are Rod Sullivan, professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law, retired physician Peter McCranie and businessman Lou Rose. Mike Clark moderated.”

- Read the entire transcript at the Times-Union.