Stalking & Cyberstalking Defense

Stalking is the criminal charge that lives closest to ordinary life: breakups, custody wars, neighbor feuds, and group-chat drama all generate accusations that someone “won't stop.” Florida's statute is broad — it covers following, harassing, and cyberstalking, which includes not just messages but accessing someone's online accounts or home smart-devices without permission. Broad statutes invite broad charging, and these cases are regularly filed on conduct that the law, read carefully, does not criminalize.

If you've been charged — or warned by a detective to “stop contacting” someone — the next message you don't send matters. Call or text 407-846-8008.

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The Charges Under § 784.048

• Stalking: willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly following, harassing, or cyberstalking another person. First-degree misdemeanor — up to 1 year.

• Aggravated stalking — third-degree felony (up to 5 years) when any of these is added:

• a credible threat placing the person in reasonable fear for their safety or their family's;

• stalking after an injunction or no-contact order protecting the victim;

• a victim under 16;

• stalking a victim after sentencing in certain sex-offense cases.

• Judges can also impose no-contact orders up to 10 years at sentencing, and a stalking arrest frequently arrives alongside a civil stalking injunction petition — a separate case with its own hearing and lifetime record (see Injunction Defense).

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What the State Must Actually Prove

The statute's definitions are the defense:

• “Harass” requires a course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress and serves no legitimate purpose. Each element has teeth: a handful of texts in a live dispute, contact about shared children, attempts to retrieve property, or communications about a genuine business disagreement all have legitimate purposes — and courts have reversed convictions and dissolved injunctions on exactly that ground.

• “Repeatedly” means a series of acts showing continuity of purpose — not one ugly message, not two calls in one night.

• Substantial emotional distress is measured by a reasonable-person standard, not the accuser's say-so.

• Constitutionally protected activity is expressly excluded — and a credible threat must be more than hyperbole, rudeness, or venting.

• In cyberstalking cases, the State also faces identity and attribution problems: shared accounts, spoofing, mutual block-evasion games, and group pile-ons rarely map cleanly onto one defendant's “course of conduct.”

Context wins these cases. The accuser's own messages — invitations, responses, provocations — the full thread rather than the screenshots, and the timeline of who contacted whom routinely tell a two-way story the probable cause affidavit left out.

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The Felony Trap: Contact After an Injunction

Once any injunction or no-contact order exists, a single alleged contact can be charged as felony aggravated stalking — including indirect contact through friends, tags, likes, or “accidental” run-ins the accuser documents. If you are under any order: total silence, total distance, everything through counsel. The order is the whole game, and violating it hands the State a felony it otherwise couldn't prove.

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Frequently Asked Questions

She texts me constantly, then screenshots my replies for the police.

Mutual contact is the classic defense fact-pattern — and the full thread is discoverable. Stop replying today; preserve everything; let the records speak.

Is checking someone's public social media stalking?

Viewing public posts isn't a course of conduct directed at the person. Logging into their accounts, tracking their devices, or flooding them with messages is different — the line is real, and we hold the State to it.

I was just trying to get my belongings back after the breakup.

Property retrieval is a legitimate purpose — which defeats the harassment definition. It's also a task better routed through counsel than through midnight texts.

Can these charges be dropped before trial?

Often they can — through motions attacking the course-of-conduct and legitimate-purpose elements, and through negotiated outcomes when the State's full-thread evidence underwhelms. Early counsel shapes the filing decision itself.

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Say Nothing Else — To Anyone — Until We Talk

Call or text 407-846-8008 for a free, confidential consultation with former prosecutor Chad Seibel. Office visits are by appointment only.