A Tallahassee man has pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, after officers recovered a handgun from him following a late-night police pursuit and crash in Florida's capital city in January. Etavious J. Milton, 27, of Tallahassee, entered the guilty plea in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, and he now faces up to 15 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in the new year.
Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Florida, via NewsWK
The plea was announced on November 12, 2026, by John P. Heekin, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida. By pleading guilty, Milton admitted the federal charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, a charge that prosecutors brought after the January incident rather than leaving the case to a jury trial.
What happened on January 17
According to court documents described in the plea report, the case began in the early morning of January 17, 2026, at approximately 3:00 a.m. in Tallahassee. Milton committed a traffic violation and attempted to flee from police, the documents say. During the pursuit he narrowly avoided hitting another vehicle before crashing the car he was driving.
Officers who reached the crashed car stabilised Milton while waiting for an ambulance. While doing so, they spotted a black Beretta 9mm pistol near his waist, according to the court documents. Law enforcement secured the handgun at the scene, and emergency medical personnel then transported Milton to a hospital. No other injuries from the pursuit or the crash were described in the plea report.
From an indictment to a guilty plea
The guilty plea is the second major step in the case. Milton had earlier been indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, the Justice Department said in its earlier announcement of the charge, when he was 26. In that announcement, the department said an indictment is merely an allegation and that a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty — the standard warning that applied until this week's plea changed the position in the case.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, known as the ATF, together with the Tallahassee Police Department. Assistant United States Attorney Eric Welch is prosecuting the case. The plea report said the prosecution was brought under Project Safe Neighborhoods, a federal initiative that brings law-enforcement agencies together to reduce violent crime and enforce the firearm laws.
The law behind the charge
Federal law prohibits a person who has been convicted of a felony from possessing a firearm or ammunition. Cases of this kind are prosecuted in federal court, in this instance in the Northern District of Florida, whose Tallahassee division covers the state capital and the surrounding part of the Florida Panhandle and Big Bend region. The maximum penalty stated by prosecutors in this case is 15 years in federal prison; the actual sentence is for the judge to decide at the sentencing hearing, within that limit.
For readers in Tallahassee and across Leon County, the case is a worked example of how a local police pursuit can become a federal prosecution: a city police stop and crash produced a recovered handgun, and because the driver was a convicted felon, the firearm allegation was taken up by federal prosecutors and the ATF rather than remaining only a state traffic and weapons matter.
A guilty plea ends the question of trial on this charge. Milton no longer faces a jury deciding the felon-in-possession count; instead, the case moves directly to sentencing, where U.S. District Judge Mark Walker will set the prison term, up to the 15-year maximum prosecutors have stated.
What happens next
United States District Judge Mark Walker has scheduled the sentencing hearing for January 22, 2027, in Tallahassee. Until then, the court process turns to the sentencing phase, in which the judge considers the facts admitted in the plea and the applicable federal limits before imposing the term. Awaaz Punjab will report the sentence when the court hands it down.