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470 So. 2d 851

470 So.2d 851

10 Fla.L.Weekly 1477

Docket No. AZ-494.

Barnes v. State

Don Wayne BARNES, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1985-06-13

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“Given the substantial evidence establishing Barnes' guilt, and the brief and abbreviated nature of the challenged hearsay, we find that the officer's references to the anonymous phone call were harmless error.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Kaseta v. State

Relies on Postell v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1985-06-13

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently June 2016

7 state decisions

301985199020002010decided

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 →

¶1Michael J. Minerva, Asst. Public Defender, Tallahassee, for appellant.

¶2John M. Koenig, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, for appellee.

¶3THOMPSON, Judge.

¶4Barnes appeals his conviction for grand theft of an automobile. The only alleged error of the trial court which we believe should be discussed is Barnes' allegation that the investigating and arresting officer's brief references to an anonymous *852 telephone tip implicating Barnes constituted impermissible hearsay. We affirm.

¶5Barnes argues that despite the fact that the testimony was cut short, once by the defense attorney and the second time by the judge, Barnes was unduly prejudiced. We disagree. The two statements were extremely brief, and neither was sufficiently concluded so as to form a complete sentence. The actual hearsay statement was never fully articulated. The hearsay in the instant case is far less egregious than that in Postell v. State, 398 So.2d 851 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981), which Barnes asserts is controlling. Given the substantial evidence establishing Barnes' guilt, and the brief and abbreviated nature of the challenged hearsay, we find that the officer's references to the anonymous phone call were harmless error.

¶6The judgment and conviction is affirmed.

¶7MILLS and SMITH, JJ., concur.

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