LIVIAN WHITE, APPELLANT,
v.
THE STATE OF FLORIDA, APPELLEE
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 court held that limiting defense counsel's voir dire questioning to approximately 31 minutes, after the State had used approximately 28 minutes, was an abuse of discretion.
The trial court limited each side to twenty minutes for voir dire questioning, though the State used approximately 28 minutes and defense counsel was …
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 Voir Dire Examination cases and more on FLexlaw
PER CURIAM.
Appellant appeals her conviction and sentence alleging error by the trial judge in unreasonably limiting voir dire questioning and, furthermore, in accepting the State’s explanation for striking a juror when, the appellant contends, the reasons given by the State were pretextual.
Prior to voir dire, the trial court gave each side twenty minutes to question the venire. Defense counsel objected and requested “a minimum of 30 minutes” to explore the potential jurors’ beliefs and theories. The trial court denied the motion and voir dire proceeded.
The State questioned the potential jurors for approximately 28 minutes without interruption from the court. Defense counsel then questioned the jurors, was given a five minute warning and, after a total of approximately 31 minutes, was cut off by the trial court.
Contrary to the State’s assertion that defense counsel got what she requested, defense counsel said she needed “a minimum of 30 minutes” which assumes at least 30 minutes and not that 30 minutes would be enough.
As set forth in Gosha v. State, 534 So. 2d 912 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988), “as a matter of law, it is unreasonable and an abuse of discretion to limit counsel’s voir dire examinations of each potential juror to one-to-three minutes” Id. (emphasis added). Accordingly, we reverse.
In view of the fact that we are reversing on the first issue, we need not reach appellant’s second issue.
Reversed.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
-
Carver v. Niedermayer, 920 So. 2d 123 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006)…ive. The time limit proved arbitrary. Counsel was given little more than 2-3 minutes for each prospective juror. See Gosha v. State, 534 So. 2d 912, 912 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988) (limit of 1 to 3 minutes for each juror abuse of discretion); White v. State, 717 So. 2d 1055, 1056 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998) (limit of 31 minutes for voir dire examination abuse of discretion). The court’s limitation operated to deprive counsel of a fair opportunity to identify prospective jurors for challenge. We also think it was an abuse of di…
-
Helton v. State, 719 So. 2d 928 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998)…ea of inquiry, and clearly the subject was not adequately explored. Thus, it was an abuse of discretion to limit the voir dire of a thirty-four-member venire in such circumstances to thirty-eight minutes. See White v. State, 23 Fla. L. Weekly D1868, 717 So. 2d 1055 (Fla. [*930] 3d DCA 1998); Gosha v. State, 534 So. 2d 912 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988). Moreover, it is “error to prevent a defendant from inquiring about the prospective jurors’ ability to accept an intoxication defense.” Lavado, 469 So. 2d at 920. On sever…
Authorities Cited
- Gosha v. State, 534 So. 2d 912 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988)