“A trial court is under no obligation to define terms in common use and generally understood by the average person.”
How later courts described this case
- “A trial court is under no obligation to define terms in common use and generally understood by the average person.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
STATE OF FLORIDA
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No. 1D16-2775
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SCOTT BROWN,
Appellant,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
_____________________________
On appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County.
Angela C. Dempsey, Judge.
February 19, 2018
PER CURIAM.
AFFIRMED.
LEWIS and WINSOR, JJ., concur; WETHERELL, J., concurs with opinion.
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Not final until disposition of any timely and authorized
motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or 9.331.
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WETHERELL, J., concurring.
I concur in the decision to affirm Appellant’s judgment and
sentence for violating section 847.0138(2), Florida Statutes (2014),
because the trial court did not abuse its broad discretion in denying
the special jury instruction Appellant requested and the other issue
raised on appeal is meritless. That said, for sake of consistency and
completeness, the Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury
Instructions in Criminal Cases might want to consider amending the
standard jury instruction for section 847.0138(2)—see Std. Jury Instr.
(Crim.) 11.21—to define the terms “prurient interest” and “morbid
interest” as is done in the instructions for other chapter 847 crimes in
which those terms are used. See Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 24.1 – 24.6.
Those terms are key components of the statutory definition of
“harmful to minors”—which is the crux of section 847.0138(2)—and,
even if it is not absolutely necessary to define those terms in the jury
instructions, see Russ v. State, 832 So. 2d 901, 911 (Fla. 1st DCA 2002)
(“A trial court is under no obligation to define terms in common use
and generally understood by the average person.”), there is certainly
no harm in doing so.
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Mark V. Murray, Tallahassee, for Appellant.
Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Samuel B. Steinberg,
Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.
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