MANUEL MARIN
v.
THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Fla. 3d DCA | 2024-12-04
No. 2023-1061
2024 FL 13621 Florida District Court of Appeal, Third District (2024) Positive Treatment

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.

Synopsis

This per curiam affirmance addresses appellate review of a trial court's management decisions, including juror removal and replacement with an alternate, admission of an excited utterance, and jury instructions on principal liability. The court affirmed the conviction, finding no reversible error.


Holding

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in removing the sleeping juror and replacing him with an alternate. The excited utterance was properly admitted. The principal liability instruction was appropriate where evidence supported that the defendant acted in concert with another. No mistrial was warranted.


Headnotes

[1] A trial court has broad discretion regarding the course of the trial, the conduct of the jurors, and the removal and replacement of a sleeping juror.

[2] A statement made while an exciting event is still in progress is likely to be considered an excited utterance.

Previewing 2 of 6 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Key Quotes

“If the statement occurs while the exciting event is still in progress, courts have little difficulty finding that the excitement prompted the statement.”

Establishes the standard for admitting excited utterances in criminal trials

Previewing 1 of 3 key quotes on this case — the court’s exact language, pinpointed for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Facts & Procedural History

The opinion does not provide detailed facts about the underlying case. It appears to involve a criminal trial where a juror may have slept, an excited…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court

PER CURIAM.

Affirmed.

Orosz v. State, 389 So. 2d 1199, 1200 (Fla. 1st DCA 1980) (noting the trial court’s broad discretion with regard to the course of the trial, the conduct of the jurors, and the removal of a sleeping juror and replacement with a duly-authorized alternate); Baity v. State, 277 So. 3d 752, 754 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019) (setting forth elements of an excited utterance); State v. Jano, 524 So. 2d 660, 662 (Fla. 1988) (“If the statement occurs while the exciting event is still in progress, courts have little difficulty finding that the excitement prompted the statement.” (quotation omitted)); Gosciminski v. State, 132 So. 3d 678, 695–96 (Fla. 2013) (“The granting of a motion for mistrial is not based on whether the error is ‘prejudicial.’ [R]ather . . . ‘the comments must either deprive the defendant of a fair and impartial trial, materially contribute to the conviction, be so harmful or fundamentally tainted as to require a new trial, or be so inflammatory that they might have influenced the jury to reach a more severe verdict than that it would have otherwise.’” (quoting in part Salazar v. State, 991 So. 2d 364, 372 (Fla. 2008))); Banks v. State, 219 So. 3d 19, 32 (Fla. 2017) (“Therefore, because there was evidence in the record supporting that Banks acted in concert with someone else, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in giving the principal theory instruction.”); Connolly v. State, 172 So. 3d 893, 914 (Fla. 3d DCA 2015) (“It now no longer matters whether the defendant hired (procured) a hit man, turned to his mob friends to murder Callahan, served as a lookout, provided the gun, or pulled the trigger himself, he is a principal in the first degree.”); State v. Delva, 575 So. 2d 643, 645 (Fla. 1991) (“Failing to instruct on an element of the crime over which the record reflects there was no dispute is not fundamental error . . . .”).


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw