McCoy v. State

Citations

• 40 Fla. 494

Syllabus

<p>¡I. If a pfLrty desires to avail himself of the omission of the trial court to charge the jury on any point of law in the case, he must ask the court to give the instruction desired, and except to its refusal; otherwise he will not be permitted to assign the omission as error.</p> <p>2. Assignments of error based upon instructions given by the court to the jury, not excepted to in the court below, will not be considered by an appellate court.</p> <p>3. Where the record shows that the court’s written charge was delivered to the jury and filed upon the day of the trial of a case, the fact that the charge purports to bear a previous date is immaterial.</p> <p>4. Where the record shows that the jury was empanelled partly from the regular venire and partly from the names of persons drawn upon a special venire previously ordered in the case, and no objections to empanelling any juror appear to have been made by defendants, a judgment of-conviction upon the verdict of such jury will not be reversed because the record fails to show that the special venire actually issued as ordered, or that was served and returned by the sheriff-</p> <p>5. It is sufficient if it appears by necessary and reasonable implication from record entries that the defendants and the jury were present at all necessary “stages of the trial.”</p> <p>6. In order to hold one guilty of murder in the first degree who is not the actual perpetrator of the crime, he must not only be present when the crime is committed, but he must be aiding, abetting, advising, encouraging or assisting another to commit it, having himself a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed, or knowing or believing that such other person intends to kill the deceased.</p> <p>7. An erroneous instruction applicable only and confined to the offense of murder in the first degree, is not available to reverse a conviction for murder in the third degree, where all the instructions as to offenses less than murder in the fi