Criminal law, Society

Former Prosecutor Sentenced To Three Years For Accepting Drugs For Fees

Former Florida prosecutor Aaron Slavin, 34, has received a three-year prison sentence for accepting more than 200 oxycodone pills as payment for legal services in 2010. His wife Eryn Slavin, 34, was also convicted of drug possession, but under the deal with her husband she will avoid jail time. His mug shot sheet shows an arrest in 2010.


Slavin was nailed by a police informer and could have faced 30 years in prison. Slavin deserves the jail time, but the absurd potential sentence in this case is an example of how prosecutors can force pleas from people who are unwilling to risk an effective life sentence. Slavin knows that better than most people. He has handled cases as a prosecutor in Sarasosta and then later represented people charged with trafficking oxycodone, possessing marijuana and doctor-shopping.

Slavin was fired in 2002 after he was accused of obstructing a DUI investigation. He was a passenger in the car and told a friend how to answer questions from the officer and advised him to refuse a breathalyzer test. He was then hired by the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office.

According to news reports, police received a tip that Slavin was accepting drugs as payment. What I find intriguing is that, if Slavin had done this before, I assume that he or his wife were trafficking in drugs rather than just consuming all these pills themselves. However, no such charges were brought against him or his wife. If he was a drug user, one would expect that to have been mentioned as part of sentencing, including a drug rehabilitation program.

Slavin continued to represent defendants in oxycodone drug cases while he awaited his own trial. Ironically, he could have represented another attorney. Byron T. Christopher of St. Petersburg, was charged last year with trying to bring oxycodone pills into the Pinellas County Jail.

Slavin graduated from the University of Maryland College Park and earned his law degree from the University of Miami School of Law.

The next step for Slavin will likely be a bar proceeding if he does not surrender his license voluntarily.

Source: Tampa Bay as first read on ABA Journal

26 thoughts on “Former Prosecutor Sentenced To Three Years For Accepting Drugs For Fees”

  2. As one who has been there, I’ve no doubt that he and his wife are addicts. 200 pills sounds like personal use to me. Seriously. If they were both seriously addicted, then they could be taking 5 a day each easy.

  3. Hell, Rush only got probation for having over 1000 of those pills. I guess the guy did not have enough money to pay off the judge and prosecutor.

  4. I have a friend….Yes….I’ll say a Friend from NYC that is a bookie….They make a lot of money….that is all he does…..His boss also has another operation….that brings in more money….His boss’s boss was a well connected and staunch support of people in politics…To my knowledge they have never been arrested for Bookmaking or the other more lucrative business……With that, I agree with what Mike and others have said….

  5. I wonder where the paid off protection comes from. I have yet to have a clue who benefits from this ‘war’. You would hope (ironically) only the “bad guys”.
    How much taxpayer money is being wasted on this ‘war’ and why? Wish I knew to whom that question could be directed.

  6. I don;t know. seems if he pissed someone off he would not be getting a light sentence.
    As someone in chronic intractable pain it is people like these two who are making it harder for those of us who need these meds to get them. Because they have not been able to get the “big guys” the war on drugs is being taken out on us. (Many pain docs now require their patients to sign contracts stating they will, among other things, consent to random urine testing. That presupposes guilt and abuse.)

    1. “Because they have not been able to get the “big guys” the war on drugs is being taken out on us.”

      Carol,

      I agree with your point, but would add that the “big guys” usually have far too much paid off protection to be gotten. Besides the problems for people with legitimate pain needs, the over jailing of “users” and the repression of liberty, “The War on Drugs” has corrupted our legal system. Since it has totally failed in its intended purpose, we can only ask to what end is it still being prosecuted?

  7. Sounds Like Sheriff Joe A-hole or the one from AZ….has expanded his Jurisdiction….

    1. Dredd,

      To expand…..A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side; a compressed paradox. Plural: oxymora or oxymorons. Adjective: oxymoronic or oxymoric

  10. His blog:

    http://www.tampabaycriminaldefenselawyerblog.com/?page=1

    As to who he pissed off… I don’t know…, but he’s in “Bernie McCabe country” and worked for him at one time…

    Questions Surface About Pinellas County Corruption
    By North Country Gazette On May 16, 2008

    http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2008/05/09/pinellas_turf_war/

    PINELLAS COUNTY—Over the past several weeks, The North Country Gazette has been taking a look at the operations of the office of Pinellas-Pasco state attorney Bernie McCabe. There is evidence that McCabe may have intentionally blocked investigations into public corruption in Pinellas County.

    The recently released report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that discloses that Moses Jordan, a high level FDLE agent assigned to the Tampa office, was forced to resign after McCabe and others filed a complaint against him for a three year old incident in which Jordan challenged jurisdiction at a crime scene involving a state officer, gives a troubling inside look at McCabe and his egotistical power.

  15. Ok, this is Florida right? Where is Rush in the picture? Why wasn’t Rush charged?

    raff, I am with you….

  16. Pingback: How long does weed stay in your system? : Solved Misconceptions

  18. Did he cut the deal with his wife or a deal in which both he and wife were defendants? The drug laws are way to stringent. Life sentence was possible for having some drug which would have been legal had he been a doctor instead of a lawyer? They advertise these stupid drugs in magazines and on televsion 24/7. You go to jail if you have some of this garbage if you do not have a prescription from a Doctor of Medicine. Notice that they do not term these doctors as Doctors of Health. They are annoited as a Doctor of Medicine. No wonder the prisons are over crowded. The society vastly encourages humanoids to buy and consume these drugs and then puts them in prison if they do not buy or consume them according to prescribed methods of humanoid engagement. They do not care if he smokes tobacco in society or in prison. The big drug picture and the big prison picture are quite ugly. The platoon halts after a struggle through the jungle and John Wayne orders the squad to Smoke em if ya gottem. The big corporations pay the movie producer and John Wayne to promote this garbage. All the guys in the platoon from that Vietnam war are dying or infected with lung cancer which John Wayne has long since died of. The next prosecutor will run for governor on the strength of his tough on crime reputation and this county and this state will spend billions on this whole schmele called Democracy in Action.
    Sorry for the rant, or the howl, its hard to be a dog over here on the sidelines and see all this unfold on television day after day. I get an hour of Animal Planet and after that its Fox News all day and night as my owner smokes cigartettes, takes oxycotten and rants about welfare cheats. I wish cotten was a monkey. Its a dogs life. But hey, last reincarnation I was a human.

  19. For anyone else on the entire planet, 30 years is outrageous for this crime.

    For a prosecutor, 30 years is outrageous too. Outrageously short.

  20. Whether its harmful or not, what business is it of the governments what we put in our bodies. I don’t have a property of U.S. Government sticker on my ass, do you?

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