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495 So. 2d 282

495 So.2d 282

11 Fla.L.Weekly 2110

Docket No. 86-2190.

Carr v. State

Steven Wayne CARR, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided October 3, 1986.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1986-10-03

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“Transcripts are not necessary for the preparation of a legally sufficient [Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure] 3.850 motion. . . . Appellant must first file a 3.850 motion setting forth his alleged grounds for relief in order to secure a copy of portions of his trial record. In preparing his motion, appellant must rely on his best recollection of the court proceedings. Only then may he secure those portions of the record relevant to his motion.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including Baldwin v. State, Cole v. State

Relies on 237 So. 2d 146 - Cassoday v. State · 483 So. 2d 851 - Dorch v. State · Griffith v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1986-10-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently October 2016

17 state decisions

1001986199020002010decided

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 →

¶1LEHAN, Judge.

¶2Steven Carr appeals the summary denial of his "motion for transcripts." Carr, an indigent prisoner, sought free copies of transcripts and other documents relative to his felony convictions to assist him in preparation of a motion for post-conviction relief. The trial court found that the motion "does not contain sufficient allegations to entitle movant [to the] relief requested." We affirm.

¶3Indigents who wish to appeal their convictions are not required to pay the costs of preparing the record on appeal. However, "[a] transcript of record need not be provided just for perusal or curiosity, nor for the purpose of merely enabling the prisoner to comb the record in hope of discovering some flaw." Cassoday v. State,237 So.2d 146, 147 (Fla. 1970). Rather, a prisoner seeking post-conviction relief must first prepare and file his motion before he may secure those portions of the record relevant to that motion. Dorch v. State,483 So.2d 851 (Fla. 1st DCA 1986); Griffith v. State,363 So.2d 622 (Fla. 1st DCA 1978). In preparing the motion "[h]e must simply do the best he can from his recollection of the trial." Dorch,483 So.2d at 852.

¶4Availability of a transcript is, accordingly, not necessary for the preparation of a legally sufficient motion for post-conviction relief. And Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 and the forms at Rule 3.987, are designed to assist pro se filings without the requirement of legally precise pleadings or detailed legal memoranda. Allegations which constitute a prima facie showing of entitlement to relief generally will require an evidentiary hearing unless refuted by the record; the burden of combing the record in that regard is, of course, not on the defendant.

¶5Affirmed.

¶6RYDER, A.C.J., and CAMPBELL, J., concur.

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