{"id":1711,"date":"2019-08-27T15:55:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T19:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=1711"},"modified":"2019-08-27T15:55:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T19:55:27","slug":"sao-drops-charges-in-irby-cases-pretrial-intervention-program-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/08\/27\/sao-drops-charges-in-irby-cases-pretrial-intervention-program-only\/","title":{"rendered":"SAO drops charges in Irby cases – pretrial intervention program only"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The State Attorney\u2019s Office dropped all charges this week in the domestic violence case involving estranged Lakeland couple Joseph and Courtney Irby.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Irby’s agreed to participate in a 12-month pretrial intervention program after prosecutors determined that Courtney Irby had committed a burglary of a conveyance and unlawfully installed a tracking device in her husband\u2019s car <\/strong>on June 14, according to the case disposition released by State Attorney Brian Haas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The couple, who were in the middle of a divorce, gained\u00a0national attention\u00a0after Lakeland police\u00a0arrested Courtney Irby\u00a0June 15 when she showed up at the department with two weapons she said she had taken from Joseph Irby\u2019s apartment. Irby told an LPD officer that\u00a0she feared her estranged husband\u00a0might harm her or their two children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph Irby was arrested the day before on a felony aggravated battery with a deadly weapon charge by Bartow police after his wife\u00a0called to report\u00a0that he was following her in his vehicle and had allegedly hit her vehicle with his from behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SAO also said it found new evidence regarding the two cases already filed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe State had reason to believe that Courtney Irby had surreptitiously placed a GPS tracker in Joseph\u2019s vehicle,\u201d read the case disposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investigators found the tracker inside the car, and when cell tower data was pulled, it placed Courtney Irby in Bartow, where Joseph Irby\u2019s car was parked, several hours after he was arrested, according to the SAO. She admitted to installing the tracking device, according to the case disposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen the facts and circumstances justify it, burglary charges between divorcing spouses will be filed,\u201d read the disposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SAO said cell tower data also confirmed that Courtney Irby was at Joseph Irby\u2019s apartment on June 15 around midday, and places her at the same location the night of June 14 \u2014 after she left Bartow, when she illegally entered his car, according to the state attorney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis evidence suggests she may have been inside his apartment prior to Saturday\u2019s First Appearance Hearing,\u201d read the disposition. Courtney Irby\u2019s sworn testimony that she started her day by getting coffee on June 14 was contradicted, said the SAO, by cell tower data that places her in Tampa \u201cbefore traveling to the Lakeland Police Department to misrepresent Joseph Irby\u2019s criminal history in an effort to have him arrested,\u201d according to the disposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SAO also says that Courtney Irby led investigators to believe that on the night of June 14 she was in bed with a gun under her pillow for protection. Cell tower data contradicts the accounts of her whereabouts, according to the disposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case disposition notes that \u201cCourtney Irby went to substantial lengths to be labeled a domestic violence victim. It appears that those efforts were, at least in part, focused on obtaining an advantage in the highly emotional contested divorce action between Joseph and Courtney Irby,\u201d and added that \u201cboth parties have shown the proclivity to let this highly contested divorce action get the best of their emotions and ability to use their best judgments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SAO wrote that the office believed that with the criminal charges resolved, the family law court can go ahead with the divorce and injunction proceedings to resolve the couple\u2019s issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach party should take advantage of this resolution and take steps to avoid becoming involved with the criminal justice system in the future,\u201d wrote the SAO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The State Attorney\u2019s Office dropped all charges this week in the domestic violence case involving estranged Lakeland couple Joseph and Courtney Irby. The Irby’s agreed to participate in a 12-month… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}