THOMAS C. MAY
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA
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.
The appellate court affirmed a conviction for petit theft because the defendant failed to preserve the issue of excluded witness testimony for appeal by not making a proper proffer. This case highlights the importance of preserving evidentiary rulings through formal proffer for appellate review.
The appellate court held that the issue of excluded testimony was not preserved for appeal because the defendant failed to make a proffer of the excluded testimony. Therefore, the trial court's ruling is affirmed.
“Because this argument was not preserved, we affirm.”
States the primary reason for affirming the lower court's decision.
Previewing 1 of 3 key quotes on this case — the court’s exact language, pinpointed for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceThomas May was convicted of petit theft. On appeal, he argued that the trial court erred by excluding testimony from multiple witnesses as hearsay. Ho…
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.
Explore caselaw by topic → Browse Proffer Of Evidence cases and more on FLexlaw
WOZNIAK, J.
Thomas May appeals his judgment and sentence for petit theft.1 He raises one issue: the trial court erred when it excluded multiple witnesses’ testimony as hearsay. Because this argument was not preserved, we affirm.
We find that this issue was not properly preserved because May never proffered the testimony he sought to elicit from the witnesses, and the substance of that testimony is not apparent from the record. See Blackwood v. State, 777 So. 2d 399, 410 (Fla. 2000) (noting that in order for appellate court to consider whether trial court erred in excluding testimony, party seeking to introduce evidence must “proffer the contents of the excluded evidence to the trial court”); Finney v. State, 660 So. 2d 674, 684 (Fla. 1995) (“Without a proffer it is impossible for the appellate court to determine whether the trial court's ruling was erroneous and if erroneous what effect the error may have had on the result.”). Failure to proffer what the excluded evidence would have revealed precludes appellate consideration of the alleged error. Bogle v. State, 213 So. 3d 833, 854 (Fla. 2017) (first citing Blackwood, 777 So. 2d at 410–11; and then citing Lucas v. State, 568 So. 2d 18, 22 (Fla. 1990) (requiring proffer of evidence to preserve claim of error in its preclusion)). Because there was no proffer of the testimony May believes should have been allowed, we cannot determine that the testimony, if disallowed in error, would have had any effect on the result. Therefore, we must affirm.
AFFIRMED.
COHEN and MIZE, JJ., concur. Howard L. “Rex” Dimmig, II, Public Defender, and Megan Olson, Assistant Public Defender, Bartow, for Appellant.
Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and James A. Hellickson, Assistant Attorney General, Tampa, for Appellee.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Finney v. State, 660 So. 2d 674 (Fla. 1995)
- Lucas v. State, 568 So. 2d 18 (Fla. 1990)
- Bogle v. State, 213 So. 3d 833 (Fla. 2017)