Pruitt v. State

• Decision Date: 08 December 1966
• Docket Number: No. H-132,H-132
• Citation: 194 So.2d 656
• Parties: Woodrow PRUITT, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 656

194 So.2d 656

Woodrow PRUITT, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. H-132.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

Dec. 8, 1966.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 20, 1967.

A. K. Black, Lake City, for appellant.

Earl Faircloth, Atty. Gen., and George R. Georgieff, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

CARROLL, DONALD K., Judge.

The appellant, a police officer who was tried for and convicted of grand larceny and breaking and entering with intent to commit grand larceny, has appealed from the judgment of conviction and sentence entered by the Criminal Court of Record for Duval County.

The principal question raised by the appellant for our determination in this appeal is whether the said court committed reversible error at the trial by failing to give certain jury instructions that had been requested by the appellant. The ultimate question, of course, as is true in most criminal appeals, is whether the trial was conducted in accordance with law and justice under law.

The instant case is one of many cases arising in Duval County and involving alleged criminal acts on the part of police officers of the City of Jacksonville in the said county. See, for instance, our recent decision in Duggan v. State, 189 So.2d 890 (1966). The climate of such cases characteristically includes an aroused public opinion, in which cases the defendants' rights are naturally neither greater nor less than those of other defendants. In such cases the courts, both trial and appellate, should be especially alert to see that neither the prosecution nor the defense attempts to take advantage of that climate by injecting improper influence into the proceedings. As we shall hold below that the trial court measured up to this standard and was thus alert and that the appellant's trial was conducted in accordance with law and justice under law.

The appellant, Woodrow Pruitt, and one Claude Bryant, who subsequently died, were informed against in the Criminal Court of Record for Duval County by a two-count information. The first count charges that on January 12, 1965, Pruitt and Bryant broke and entered the property of a certain corporation in the said county with intent to commit a felony, to-wit: grand larceny. In the second count the defendants are charged with committing grand larceny on the said date by feloniously taking certain property of the said corporation (including 40 gallons of paint, 120 paint brushes, an air compressor, and several other items, all having a total value of $248).

After Bryant's death, the appellant was tried on these two counts before a jury, who returned a verdict of guilty on both counts. After denying the appellant's motion for a new trial, the trial court entered the final judgment appealed from herein, adjudging him guilty of both counts and sentenced him on the first count to five years' imprisonment in the State Prison and deferring sentence on the second count. Later the appellant, on the second count, was released on his own recognizance.

The evidence at the trial, including the direct testimony of several city policemen and county patrolmen, was amply sufficient, in our opinion, to justify the jury's verdict that the appellant was guilty of the two crimes charged against him in the information--that the appellant, while on patrol duty, broke and entered a warehouse owned by the corporation named in the information and feloniously stole therefrom the items enumerated in the information.

In four of the nine points on appeal raised by the appellant in his main...