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420 So. 2d 903

Grant v. State

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided October 19, 1982

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1982-10-19

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[Larceny] means, stealing. It’s called, in some of the statutes, theft, but everybody understands what the word stealing means. They [Frederick and Inman] are charged with having the intent to steal. ... Now, what is theft? In Florida, theft or larceny is defined as knowingly and unlawfully obtaining or using or endeavoring to obtain or use, endeavoring to obtain or use the property of another and it must be done so with the intent to either deprive the victim of his right to the property or any benefit from it or to appropriate the property of the victim to the defendant’s own use or the use of any other person not entitled thereto.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 424 So. 2d 150 - Frederick v. State

“The elements of the underlying felony ... need not be explained with the same particularity that would be required if that offense were the primary crime charged. The true test is whether the underlying felony has been defined sufficiently to insure the defendant a fair trial.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 424 So. 2d 150 - Frederick v. State

Relies on 414 So. 2d 1171 - Green v. State · 386 So. 2d 825 - Taylor v. State · Baxley v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1982-10-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently April 2016

3 state decisions

101982199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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PER CURIAM.

¶1Grant appeals from his conviction, after a jury trial, of the crime of burglary of a dwelling with intent to commit a theft. § 810.02(3), Fla.Stat. (1980). He urges that the trial court erred when, in instructing the jury as to the elements of theft, it failed to make the requisite charge of intent to permanently deprive the owner of his property. We disagree.

¶2In support of his argument Grant cites Baxley v. State, 411 So.2d 194 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981), Faison v. State, 390 So.2d 728 (Fla. 5th DCA 1980), and Hilty v. State, 386 So.2d 1236 (Fla.2d DCA 1980). These cases, however, hold only that specific intent to permanently deprive an owner of property is an element of theft as defined in section 812.014, Florida Statutes (1981). Green v. State, 414 So.2d 1171, 1172 (Fla. 5th DCA 1982). They do not mandate that specific intent to permanently deprive an owner must be charged when instructing as to burglary or any other crime with an underlying crime of theft.

¶3We decline to extend the rationale of these cases to Grant’s situation. Rather, we find this appeal more appropriately governed by Taylor v. State, 386 So.2d 825 (Fla.3d DCA 1980). In Taylor, the state sought to prove the charge of felony murder by proving that the victim’s death occurred during the felony of robbery. The defendant contended that the instruction was deficient because it failed to inform the jury that intent to permanently deprive another of property is an essential element of the charge of robbery. The Third District Court of Appeal rejected this argument, holding:

The elements of the underlying felony . . . need not be explained with the same particularity that would be required if that offense were the primary crime charged. The true test is whether the underlying felony has been defined sufficiently to insure the defendant a fair trial.

¶4Id., at 829. There, the underlying robbery charged omitted any mention of specific intent and tracked the statutory language for robbery. Similarly, while the instruction in this case fails to charge intent to permanently deprive the victim of his property, the trial court’s instruction tracked the statutory language for theft, section 812.014(1):

Now, theft is defined as follows: That the defendant, Charles Grant, knowingly and lawfully used, obtained, or endeavored to obtain or endeavored to use the property of (the victim); *904And that he did so 'with the intent to deprive_ (the victim) of his right to the property or any benefit from it or to appropriate the property of (the victim) to his own use or to the use of any person not entitled to it. (Emphasis supplied).

¶5We conclude that the underscored phrase charges the underlying crime of theft with sufficient particularity to insure the defendant a fair trial.

¶6AFFIRMED.

McCORD, BOOTH and WENTWORTH, JJ., concur.
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