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469 So. 2d 924

469 So.2d 924

10 Fla.L.Weekly 1325

Docket No. 84-551.

Hutchens v. State

William Frank HUTCHENS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided May 28, 1985.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1985-05-28

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Even if, as the State suggests, a translation of the recording would reveal that the conversations thereon are totally admissible, we nonetheless must conclude that the potential of some members of the jury interpreting the otherwise incomprehensible testimony for other members of the jury is so fraught with the danger of prejudice that what is actually on the recording can serve only to exacerbate the prejudice." ( 469 So.2d at p. 925 .)”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 230 Cal. App. 3d 300 - People v. Cabrera

“without having such recording translated into English for the jurors by an interpreter sworn to give a faithful and accurate translation, despite the defendant's clear, but overruled, request that he do so.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 721 So. 2d 350 - Ortega v. State

Relies on Kelly v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1985-05-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently November 2009

6 state decisions

40198519902000decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1*925 Joel Kaplan, Miami, for appellant.

¶2Jim Smith, Atty. Gen. and Charles M. Fahlbusch, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

¶3Before HENDRY, DANIEL S. PEARSON and FERGUSON, JJ.

¶4DANIEL S. PEARSON, Judge.

¶5We reverse the defendant's conviction and remand the cause for a new trial. We hold that the trial judge erred in allowing the jury (which, without dispute, was made up of two persons who understood Spanish and four who did not) to listen to approximately forty minutes of a tape recording in Spanish, which recording purported to recount conversations relevant to the charges in this case between an undercover drug agent and others (sometimes the defendant) without having such recording translated into English for the jurors by an interpreter sworn to give a faithful and accurate translation, despite the defendant's clear, but overruled, request that he do so. See Kelly v. State,96 Fla. 348, 118 So. 1 (1928). Even if, as the State suggests, a translation of the recording would reveal that the conversations thereon are totally admissible, we nonetheless must conclude that the potential of some members of the jury interpreting the otherwise incomprehensible testimony for other members of the jury is so fraught with the danger of prejudice that what is actually on the recording can serve only to exacerbate the prejudice.

¶6Reversed and remanded for a new trial.

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