PATRICIA R. MOCK
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA
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Although a trial court errs in directly declaring a witness's expert status in front of the jury, such error is harmless when the State proves no reasonable possibility the error contributed to the conviction.
[1] A trial court errs when it directly declares a witness's expert status in front of the jury, but such error is harmless when the State proves there is no reasonable possi…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“directly declaring the expert status of a witness in front of the jury”
The court described the trial court's impermissible practice of declaring expert status directly to the jury.
Patricia Mock was convicted of enhanced driving under the influence following a jury trial. The trial court directly declared a witness's expert statu…
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DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
FOURTH DISTRICT
PATRICIA R. MOCK, Appellant,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.
No. 4D2024-2970
[May 13, 2026]
Appeal from the County Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; Phoebee Rebecca Francois, Judge; L.T. Case No. 062023CT003148A88810.
Gordon Weekes, Public Defender, and Sarah Elizabeth Wood Sandler, Assistant Public Defender, Fort Lauderdale, for appellant.
James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Deborah Gail Koenig, Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
PER CURIAM.
Appellant Patricia R. Mock appeals her conviction and sentence for driving under the influence (enhanced) following a jury trial. We affirm the judgment below in all respects but write, briefly, to address one issue. The trial court erred in “directly declaring the expert status of a witness in front of the jury," a practice we have squarely held to be “impermissible.” Osorio v. State, 186 So. 3d 601, 610 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016), rev. denied, No. SC16– 585, 2016 WL 1749455 (Fla. May 3, 2016). However, this error was harmless here because the State has met its burden of proving “there is no reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the conviction.” State v. DiGuilio, 491 So. 2d 1129, 1135 (Fla. 1986).
Affirmed.
KUNTZ, C.J., MAY and FORST, JJ., concur.
Not final until disposition of timely-filed motion for rehearing.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- State v. DiGUILIO, 491 So. 2d 1129 (Fla. 1986)
- Osorio v. State, 186 So. 3d 601 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016)