Croft v. State

• Decision Date: 22 November 1932
• Citation: 144 So. 663,107 Fla. 724
• Parties: CROFT v. STATE.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

144 So. 663

107 Fla. 724

CROFT v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court

November 22, 1932

En Banc.

Error to Circuit Court, Pinellas County; John U. Bird, Judge.

Criminal proceeding by the State against Elbert Croft. To review an adverse judgment, defendant brings error.

Writ of error dismissed conditionally.

TERRELL J., dissenting.

COUNSEL George W. Dayton, of Dade City, for plaintiff in error.

Cary D Landis, Atty. Gen., and Roy Campbell, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

Plaintiff in error's brief is a very good brief and shows a commendable investigation of the authorities, but it fails to comply with Supreme Court Practice Rule 20 as amended November 5, 1930.

It does not begin with a concise statement of the prime or controlling questions involved, stated in the form of a question for decision, each question being so phrased that the point of law intended for solution may plainly appear. For instance, the first question is stated as follows 'Was it error on the part of the court below to deny plaintiff in error's motion to quash the indictment? The court below overruled plaintiff in error's motion to quash indictment.' Question 7 reads: 'Did the court below err by incorrectly charging the jury on the law applicable to circumstantial evidence? Plaintiff in error insists that the court below incorrectly charged the jury on the law applicable. This error is embraced in an assignment of error 8, 9, 10, 10a, 17 and 19 (transcript 201, 202 203).' Question 9: 'Did the court below err in admitting and/or rejecting certain evidence material and relevant over the objection of the plaintiff in error? The court below did admit and/or reject certain material and relevant evidence over the objection of plaintiff in error. Etc.'

These are a few samples of the twelve purported statements of questions involved. Aside from the use of the very indefinite and frequently misleading term, 'and/or,' in one of the above-purported statements of questions involved, the brief in other respects utterly fails to comply with amended rule 20, as explained with some care in St. Andrews Bay Lumber Company v. Bernard (Fla.) 135 So. 831. None of these statements suggests what legal proposition is in dispute, and none of them show the precise point of law at issue as applied to the facts of the particular case.

The rule does not require references to pages of the transcript or to the numbers of assignments of error in stating the questions involved. These are taken care of by those provisions of the rule dealing with the 'History of the Case' and the 'Argument.' It will be observed by reading that portion of the rule pertaining to the argument section of the brief that it permits a grouping of assignments of error which go to raise a particular question. This grouping of assignments, under the questions to which they relate, will prove quite a convenience to the bar, as well as to the...