5D04-478 Anthony Arnold v. State

State: Florida

Court: Florida Fifth District Court

Docket No: 5D04-478

Case Date: 01/31/2005

Preview:IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA FIFTH DISTRICT JANUARY TERM 2005

ANTHONY ARNOLD, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. __________________________________________/ Opinion filed February 4, 2005 Appeal from the Circuit Court for Orange County, John H. Adams, Judge. Christopher J. Dale and Dana Friedlander, Tampa, for Appellant. A. Case No. 5D04-478

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Wesley Heidt, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.

MONACO, J. Anthony Arnold was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder, and sentenced to the custody of the Department of Corrections for a term of life. In this appeal from his judgment and sentence Mr. Arnold argues that no evidence of premeditated design was presented. From this premise he asserts that the trial court should have granted his motion for judgment of acquittal to the first-degree murder charge, and that he should,

therefore, have been convicted of no more than manslaughter. 1 We find no error in the denial by the trial court of the motion for judgment of acquittal. A de novo standard of review is applied to the denial of motions for judgment of acquittal. See Huck v. State, 881 So. 2d 1137, 1144 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004). We begin

our analysis with the proposition that a trial court should not grant a motion for judgment of acquittal unless the evidence adduced is such that no view that the jury may lawfully take of it favorable to the State can be sustained under the law. See Darling v. State, 808 So. 2d 145, 155 (Fla.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 848 (2002). The trial court's denial of such a motion, therefore, will not be reversed on appeal if there is competent substantial evidence to support the jury's verdict. See Chamberlain v. State, 881 So. 2d 1087, 1104 (Fla. 2004). The unlawful killing of a human being is murder in the first degree "[w]hen perpetrated from a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed or any human being." See

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