Ana Karen Galdamez v. The State of Florida

• Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida
• Decided: July 17, 2024
• Docket: 2023-0908
• Status: Published

Opinion

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

Opinion filed July 17, 2024. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

No. 3D23-0908 Lower Tribunal No. F20-16482

Ana Karen Galdamez, Appellant,

vs.

The State of Florida, Appellee.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Michelle Delancy, Judge.

Carlos J. Martinez, Public Defender, and Nicholas A. Lynch, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Sandra Lipman, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Before FERNANDEZ, LINDSEY and LOBREE, JJ.

PER CURIAM. Affirmed. See Statham v. State, 239 So. 3d 196, 197 (Fla. 1st DCA

2018) (standard of review for burden of proof and rule shifting objections is

abuse of discretion; “[T]he State’s comments responded to defense

arguments that lacked evidentiary support. . . . Rather than suggest

[defendant] needed to put on exculpatory evidence, the comments explained

why there was no reason to doubt the evidence that had already been

presented.”); Banks v. State, 46 So. 3d 989, 997 (Fla. 2010) (“Under the

abuse of discretion standard of review, a ruling will be upheld unless the

ruling is ‘arbitrary, fanciful, or unreasonable, which is another way of saying

that discretion is abused only where no reasonable person would take the

view adopted by the trial court.’”) (citation omitted); Kirby v. State, 625 So.

2d 51, 54 (Fla. 3d DCA 1993) (“It is well established under Florida law that a

prosecutor may comment to a jury during closing arguments on the absence

of evidence on a particular issue.”); Harrell v. State, 894 So. 2d 935, 941

(Fla. 2005) (holding that fundamental error is error that must “reach down

into the validity of the trial itself to the extent that a verdict of guilty could not

have been obtained without the assistance of the alleged error.”) (citation

omitted); King v. State, 89 So. 3d 209, 226-27 (Fla. 2012) (Court found the

prosecutor’s statements during closing were invited by the defendant’s

comments made during opening statements and stated, “In telling the jury to

2 ask defense counsel for the evidence that demonstrated someone other than

[defendant] committed the murder, the prosecution was not arguing that

[defendant] was required to show beyond a reasonable doubt that someone

else shot [the victim]. . . . [T]he prosecutor only sought to demonstrate that

the defense . . . had failed to provide any evidence that someone other than

[defendant] shot [the victim].”); Guzman v. State, 214 So. 3d 625, 636 (Fla.

2017) (finding “the State did not invite the jury to convict [the defendant] for

some reason other than that the State proved its case beyond a reasonable

doubt by arguing that there was no evidence of contamination introduced

during the trial And even if we were to assume that the State improperly

. . . commented on the defense’s failure to produce evidence of

contamination, any such impropriety would not constitute fundamental error

rising to the level that the conviction could not have been obtained without

the assistance of the alleged error.”).