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Supreme Court of Florida· 7/12/2007

Darling v. State

Citations

  • 966 So. 2d 366
  • 2007 WL 2002499

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • holding that trial court properly summarily denied claim that was only raised in written closing argument after the conclusion of the evidentiary hearing
  • explaining that counsel cannot be ineffective for failing to raise a meritless objection
  • finding no deficiency where “[t]he testimony presented during the postconviction evidentiary hearing may generally be described as only a more detailed presentation of the mitigation that was actually presented during the penalty phase”
  • finding no deficiency where trial counsel relied on the evaluation conducted by a qualified mental health expert and did not obtain neuropsychological testing, even if, in retrospect, the evaluation may not have been as complete as others desire
  • “[D]efense counsel is entitled to rely on the evaluations conducted by qualified mental health experts, even if, in retrospect, those evaluations may not have been as complete as others may desire.”
  • “Even if the evaluation by Dr. Hercov, which found no indication of brain damage to warrant a neuropsychological workup, was somehow incomplete or deficient in the opinion of others, trial counsel would not be rendered ineffective for relying on Dr. Hercov’s qualified expert evaluation.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Per Curiam

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

73 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

45 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

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