Benjamin Curry v. The State of Florida

• Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida
• Decided: January 24, 2024
• Docket: 2023-0529
• Status: Published

Opinion

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

Opinion filed January 24, 2024. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

________________

No. 3D23-0529 Lower Tribunal No. F14-24825A ________________

Benjamin Curry, Appellant,

vs.

The State of Florida, Appellee.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Miguel M. de la O, Judge.

Clayton R. Kaeiser, P.A., and Clayton R. Kaeiser, for appellant.

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

Before EMAS, HENDON and BOKOR, JJ.

PER CURIAM. Affirmed. See Shere v. State, No. SC15-1604, 2016 WL 3450466, at

*1 (Fla. June 23, 2016) (“Shere's argument that he cannot be convicted as

principal under section 777.011, Florida Statutes, for first-degree murder

because his codefendant was only convicted of second-degree murder is

completely without merit. Shere has not pointed to any case law, language

within the ‘principal in the first degree’ statute, or anything else to

demonstrate his claim that section 777.011 requires his judgment to be

revised once his codefendant is convicted of a lesser degree of crime.”); see

also State v. Powell, 674 So. 2d 731, 733 (Fla. 1996) (ruling that the rule of

consistency, which applies when conspirators are tried together, is not

applicable in Florida except “when verdicts against one defendant on legally

interlocking charges are truly inconsistent”); Eaton v. State, 438 So. 2d 822,

823 (Fla. 1983) (explaining that “a defendant tried separately from his co-

conspirators is not entitled to raise the conviction of a co-conspirator for a

lesser offense as a bar to his own conviction for a greater offense”).