Mike Caruso Arrest: The Charges, the Real Penalties, and Where a Defense Begins

By Alan S. Bernstein

Florida Bar No. 327778  |  FloridaCriminalDefensePro.com

Almost every account of the Mike Caruso arrest has led with the same two ingredients: the office he held and the possibility of execution. Neither one tells you much about what is actually going to happen in an Orange County courtroom.

I have defended sex offense cases in Florida since 1981. What follows is not a take on whether Caruso did anything. He has pleaded not guilty, no evidence has been tested, and an arrest affidavit is a one sided document written by an investigator to persuade a magistrate. What follows is the thing that gets skipped: what the five counts actually are, what the Florida Statutes actually authorize as punishment, what has and has not been reported, and where a competent defense lawyer would start.

What Happened

Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Michael Caruso, 67, was arrested on the morning of August 18, 2026, on an arrest warrant and affidavit filed in Orange County Circuit Court. Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the arrest, saying that "Being in a position of public trust provides no shield from accountability." The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Office of Statewide Prosecution ran the investigation, and the warrant reflects a judicial finding of probable cause on all five counts.

Governor Ron DeSantis suspended Caruso from office by executive order the same day, barring him from performing official duties, drawing pay, or exercising the privileges of the office, and directing FDLE to ensure that no files, records, computers, or storage media left the Clerk’s office. That order is an exercise of the Governor’s suspension power under Article IV, Section 7(a) of the Florida Constitution. It is an administrative act premised on the fact of a felony charge. It is not a finding of guilt and carries no evidentiary weight in the criminal case.

Caruso appeared before a judge in Palm Beach County on Wednesday, was denied bond, and was extradited to Orange County that afternoon. He appeared in an Orlando courtroom Thursday in a hearing that lasted roughly two minutes, was ordered to have no contact with the alleged victim or witnesses, and remains held without bond. He entered a not guilty plea, and a hearing on his custody status is set for August 25.

Caruso served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2018 until 2025, when DeSantis appointed him Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller.

The Five Charges Against Mike Caruso

The five felony counts are kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse causing mental injury. The alleged victim is a male relative under 12 years old, and the affidavit describes conduct beginning in 2024 and continuing into 2025.

Here is what those five counts are under the statutes, with the caveat that the specific subsection charged on each count controls the exposure and has not been publicly confirmed:

Count	Statute	Classification	Statutory maximum
Lewd or lascivious molestation, victim under 12, offender 18 or older	§ 800.04(5)(b)	Life felony	Life imprisonment, § 775.082(3)(a)4.
Kidnapping	§ 787.01(2)	First degree felony punishable by a term of years not exceeding life	Life
Kidnapping of a child under 13 with an enumerated offense in the course of it	§ 787.01(3)(a)	Life felony	Life
Lewd or lascivious exhibition, offender 18 or older	§ 800.04(7)(b)	Second degree felony	15 years, § 775.082
Luring or enticing a child	§ 787.025(2)(a)	Depends on the version of the statute in effect	See below
Child abuse without great bodily harm	§ 827.03(2)(c)	Third degree felony	5 years, § 775.082

Two of these deserve attention right away.

The molestation count is the case. Section 800.04(5)(b) provides that an offender 18 or older who commits lewd or lascivious molestation against a victim under 12 commits a life felony punishable as provided in section 775.082(3)(a)4. That is a life sentence. Everything else on the charging document, in sentencing terms, is noise stacked on top of a count that already reaches the ceiling.

The luring count has a timing problem. The current version of section 787.025(2)(a) makes it a third degree felony for an adult to lure or entice a child under 14 into or out of a structure, dwelling, or conveyance for an unlawful purpose. The history line credits chapter 2025-132. That amendment came from House Bill 777 and took effect October 1, 2025. Before that date, a first offense involving a child under 12 was a first degree misdemeanor. The conduct alleged here is said to have occurred between Thanksgiving week 2024 and a cruise in August 2025. Every bit of that window closed before the felony version of the statute existed.

What the Affidavit Reportedly Says

According to the arrest affidavit, the alleged victim is a boy who lives in Orange County with his parents and younger brother, and the alleged conduct began in the fall of 2024 and ended aboard a cruise ship in August 2025. The boy’s father reportedly became aware of a possible problem in October when he observed concerning behavior between his sons, and the child then described two incidents to Orange County law enforcement.

The affidavit reportedly states that Caruso had regular and unsupervised access to the child as a family member. It describes a February confrontation in which the boy’s father wore a recording device at FDLE’s direction, and during which Caruso is said to have argued that the allegations were impossible because sexual deviation is directed toward only one sex and he is attracted to women. The affidavit also reports that Caruso acknowledged a prior accusation by his daughter of sexually inappropriate behavior. He is reported to have denied showering with the alleged victim, and to have raised the possibility that his former wife fabricated the allegations to poison the child against him.

FDLE Special Agent Reuben Roach wrote that there was probable cause to believe the conduct began in Orange County in 2024 and culminated during the cruise in international waters.

Read that last sentence again, because it does most of the work in the next section.

Where a Defense Begins

None of what follows is a prediction. These are the issues that get litigated in a case with this shape, and any one of them can reorder the whole thing.

The bond posture is not settled

Because the molestation count is a life felony, Article I, Section 14 of the Florida Constitution permits the court to deny release, but only on a showing that "the proof of guilt is evident or the presumption is great." That is a higher burden than probable cause. Under State v. Arthur, 390 So. 2d 717 (Fla. 1980), the defendant is entitled to an adversarial evidentiary hearing at which the State must carry that burden, and the trial court retains discretion to grant bail even where the State meets it. An Arthur hearing is also the first real look defense counsel gets at whether the State’s proof matches the affidavit’s confidence.

Jurisdiction over the shipboard allegation

If the most serious conduct allegedly occurred in international waters, Florida has to establish authority to prosecute it. Section 910.006 creates a special maritime criminal jurisdiction, but it is not open ended. Subsection (3) extends jurisdiction only under enumerated circumstances, and subsection (4) conditions punishment on federal law prohibiting substantially the same act aboard United States registry ships outside the territory of the United States. The Florida Supreme Court upheld section 910.006(3)(d) as applied in State v. Stepansky, 761 So. 2d 1027 (Fla. 2000), a Brevard County prosecution for conduct roughly 100 nautical miles offshore aboard a Liberian flagged vessel that sailed from and returned to Port Canaveral. Stepansky rested on the effects doctrine, which requires that the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction not conflict with federal law and be a reasonable application of the doctrine.

Stepansky does not decide this case. It sets up the questions. Which subsection of 910.006(3) applies, what the embarkation and disembarkation facts are, where the ship was registered, and whether federal authorities have an interest are all live and all factual.

Ex post facto on the luring count

Article I, Section 10 of the Florida Constitution and Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution both prohibit ex post facto laws. If the luring count is charged as a felony under the post October 2025 text of section 787.025, and the underlying conduct is confined to the period the affidavit describes, that is a straightforward challenge. The remedy is not academic. It is the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor, and it carries a statute of limitations consequence that follows from the reclassification.

Whether the kidnapping count survives Faison

Florida does not let the State convert every offense involving a child into a second life felony by relabeling proximity as confinement. In Faison v. State, 426 So. 2d 963 (Fla. 1983), the Florida Supreme Court recognized that a literal reading of felony facilitation kidnapping would apply to any criminal transaction inherently involving unlawful constraint, and adopted a three part test to prevent that. Under Faison, confinement or movement done to facilitate another crime must not be slight, inconsequential, or merely incidental to that crime; must not be of the kind inherent in the nature of that crime; and must have independent significance in making the other crime substantially easier to commit or substantially reducing the risk of detection.

Whether a shower on a cruise ship or an outing with a relative clears that bar is exactly the sort of question that gets resolved on a motion for judgment of acquittal, not in a press release.

The recordings

Florida is a two party consent state. Section 934.03(1) prohibits interception of oral communications, with exceptions in subsection (2), including consent of one party where that party is acting under color of law. Section 934.06 provides that where a communication has been intercepted in violation of chapter 934, no part of its contents and no evidence derived from it may be received in evidence in any trial or hearing, and none of the statutory exceptions covers a crime victim recording a conversation when that victim is not acting at the direction of law enforcement. In State v. Walls, 356 So. 2d 294 (Fla. 1978), the Florida Supreme Court held a victim’s recording of an extortionary threat inadmissible under section 934.06.

The reporting distinguishes an earlier confrontation from a later meeting arranged and directed by FDLE. If any recording was made before law enforcement was directing the effort, its admissibility is contested, and so is the admissibility of anything derived from it.

The collateral act evidence

The reported prior accusation by Caruso’s daughter is not automatically admissible. Section 90.404(2)(b) allows evidence of other acts of child molestation where a defendant is charged with a crime involving child molestation, and McLean v. State, 934 So. 2d 1248 (Fla. 2006), held that the provision comports with due process when used to corroborate the victim’s account rather than to prove identity, with section 90.403 balancing doing the constitutional work. McLean sets out four factors: similarity of the prior acts to the charged act including location, victim age and gender, and manner; closeness in time; frequency; and the presence or absence of intervening circumstances. The trial court acts as a gatekeeper and must exclude or substantially limit the evidence where necessary to ensure a fair trial.

An accusation from decades earlier involving a victim of a different age and gender does not automatically clear those factors. That is a full evidentiary hearing, and it is often the single most consequential ruling in a case of this type.

The disclosure itself

Child hearsay comes in, if at all, through section 90.803(23), which requires a hearing and specific findings on the time, content, and circumstances of the statement. Counsel will want every interview, every forensic interview recording, and the full sequence of who asked the child what and in what order. The number of interviews, the presence or absence of suggestive questioning, and the context in which the first disclosure emerged are ordinary and legitimate subjects of cross examination in every case like this one.

The Death Penalty Question

This is where the public conversation and the statutes have come apart.

At a news conference, DeSantis said "We’re the first state to reintroduce the death penalty for pedophiles," adding that he was proud to have signed it and proud of Florida’s penalties for people who abuse children. He added that "if he’s convicted, he is going to be in for a world of hurt," and noted that Caruso voted for the 2023 legislation. Caruso is recorded as a "Yea" on the April 13, 2023, House vote on what is now the Florida Capital Sexual Battery law.

Here is what that law does. Chapter 2023-25 amended section 794.011 to authorize a death sentence for capital sexual battery, meaning sexual battery by an adult upon a child under 12, or an attempted sexual battery injuring the child’s sexual organs, and created section 921.1425 to require a separate sentencing proceeding, with the jury required to unanimously find at least two aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt before the defendant is death eligible. Section 921.1425(11) applies the procedure to capital felonies under section 794.011 committed on or after October 1, 2023.

Now compare that to the charging document. The five counts are kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse. Not one of them is a chapter 794 sexual battery count. The capital sentencing statute is keyed exclusively to section 794.011. On the charges as filed, the death penalty is not available. At least one national outlet noted the same thing, reporting that it is unclear whether the charges Caruso faces would qualify.

The State could seek an indictment or file an information adding a section 794.011 count. Until it does, capital exposure is a hypothetical about a case that has not been charged.

And if it did, the constitutional problem is not subtle. In Buford v. State, 403 So. 2d 943 (Fla. 1981), the Florida Supreme Court held that a death sentence is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for sexual assault and therefore forbidden by the Eighth Amendment, and in Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), the United States Supreme Court held that the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for child rape. The Florida Legislature wrote directly into section 921.1425 that both cases were wrongly decided, and directed in subsection (10) that a death sentence be imposed notwithstanding existing case law holding it unconstitutional, with a fallback requiring resentencing to life if a reviewing court reconsiders and reaffirms unconstitutionality.

That is a statute drafted to manufacture a test case. It is not a statute that produces an execution in the ordinary course. Any capital sentence under it would sit in appellate litigation for years while the defendant remained in custody, which is where a life felony conviction under section 800.04(5)(b) would already have put him.

The honest answer, then, is this. The maximum realistic exposure on the Caruso charges as they currently stand is life imprisonment, and it arrives through a single count under section 800.04(5)(b), plus mandatory sex offender registration under section 943.0435 for anyone convicted of a qualifying offense. Life is not a lesser outcome. It is simply not the death penalty, and the two should not be blurred because the political framing is more dramatic than the charging document.

What Comes Next

The August 25 hearing on custody is the first substantive proceeding. After that the case moves through formal charging, discovery, depositions of the State’s witnesses, and the evidentiary hearings described above. The Office of Statewide Prosecution’s involvement signals that the State is treating the alleged conduct as crossing circuit lines, which itself raises venue questions that counsel will address.

Whatever anyone believes about this case, the process does not change because the defendant used to run a courthouse. The State carries the burden. The affidavit is an allegation. A judge and a jury decide, on evidence, under rules, after cross examination. That is not a technicality or a courtesy extended to the well connected. It is the only mechanism we have ever had for telling the difference between an accusation and a fact, and it works the same whether the person in the chair was a state representative or a stranger.

Sources

Primary legal authority

•     Fla. Stat. § 787.01 (kidnapping); § 787.025 (luring or enticing a child); § 800.04 (lewd or lascivious offenses); § 827.03 (abuse of a child); § 775.082 (penalties); § 910.006 (state special maritime criminal jurisdiction); § 921.1425 (capital sexual battery sentencing); § 934.03, § 934.06 (interception of communications); § 90.404(2)(b), § 90.803(23) (evidence); § 943.0435 (registration)

•     Art. I, §§ 10, 14, Fla. Const.; Art. IV, § 7(a), Fla. Const.

•     Ch. 2023-25, Laws of Fla. (CS/CS/HB 1297); Ch. 2025-132, Laws of Fla. (CS/HB 777)

•     State v. Arthur, 390 So. 2d 717 (Fla. 1980)

•     Faison v. State, 426 So. 2d 963 (Fla. 1983)

•     State v. Stepansky, 761 So. 2d 1027 (Fla. 2000)

•     McLean v. State, 934 So. 2d 1248 (Fla. 2006)

•     State v. Walls, 356 So. 2d 294 (Fla. 1978)

•     Buford v. State, 403 So. 2d 943 (Fla. 1981)

•     Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008)

Reporting on the arrest and charging documents

•     Florida Politics, "Mike Caruso arrested on child sexual abuse charges" (Aug. 18, 2026)

•     Florida Politics, "Gov. DeSantis says former ally Mike Caruso ‘in for a world of hurt’ if convicted" (Aug. 18, 2026)

•     CBS12 (WPEC), coverage of the arrest warrant, the FDLE affidavit, and the Orange County first appearance

•     CBS Miami, coverage of the executive order and affidavit contents

•     WPTV, "Palm Beach County Clerk of Court arrested, faces charges of child sexual abuse"

•     NBC News, "DeSantis ally and appointee is arrested on child sex abuse charges" (Aug. 18, 2026)

•     Fox News, coverage of the Governor’s death penalty remarks

•     Newsweek, reporting on the April 13, 2023 House vote record

About the Author

Alan S. Bernstein is a Florida criminal defense attorney with more than four decades of trial experience, practicing primarily in Palm Beach and Broward Counties with an emphasis on sex offense defense, DUI defense, and constitutional criminal litigation. He is a member of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Alan S. Bernstein, P.A.

P.O. Box 8841, Coral Springs, FL 33075

(954) 925-3111  |  alanbernsteinlaw@gmail.com

FloridaCriminalDefensePro.com

This article discusses pending criminal charges. Michael Caruso has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Nothing here is legal advice or a prediction of outcome, and no attorney client relationship is created by reading it.