Thomas v. State

Citations

• 47 Fla. 99

Syllabus

<p>1. Where an assignment of error is not argued, further than by a bare assertion that the ruling complained of is erroneous, it will be treated as abandoned unless error in the ruling is so glaring or patent that no argument is needed to demonstrate it.</p> <p>2. A general exception to the entire charge of the court will not avail if the charge contains a single correct proposition.</p> <p>3. An instruction in a trial for murder that there is no evidence before the jury authorizing a conviction for a particular degree of unlawful homicide violates the spirit of the statute requiring the charge to be upon “the law of the case only,” but such a charge, though technically erroneous, will not constitute reversible error, if it relates to a degree higher than that of which the accused was convicted, or if it relates to a degree lower, but there was no testimony before the jury from which it could with any reason have formed a verdict of guilty of the excluded lesser degree. .</p> <p>4. If an accused be convicted of murder in the second degree at a trial had upon an indictment charging murder in the first degree he can not in the appellate court be heard to question the propriety of rulings giving or refusing to give instructions confined entirely to murder in the first degree and which had no relevancy to or bearing upon murder in the second degree.</p> <p>5. The court in .the absence of one charged with a felony whose case had been set, but not actually called, for trial on the day that a regular venire for jurors for the week as well as a special venire for jurors for that case is returnable, may have the sheriff make due return upon the venires and ascertain if the veniremen are present by having them called; and may likewise excuse jurors from the regular panel and supply deficiencies therein; such proceedings not being “steps in” or “stages of” the trial within the meaning of the rule requiring defendant’s personal presence.</p> <p>G. In order to secure review by