MAY v. STATE (2023)

Thomas May appeals his judgment and sentence for petit theft.¹ He raises one issue: the trial court erred when it excluded multiple witnesses’ testimony as hearsay. Because this argument was not preserved, we affirm.

We find that this issue was not properly preserved because May never proffered the testimony he sought to elicit from the witnesses, and the substance of that testimony is not apparent from the record. See Blackwood v. State, 777 So. 2d 399, 410 (Fla. 2000) (noting that in order for appellate court to consider whether trial court erred in excluding testimony, party seeking to introduce evidence must “proffer the contents of the excluded evidence to the trial court”); Finney v. State, 660 So. 2d 674, 684 (Fla. 1995) (“Without a proffer it is impossible for the appellate court to determine whether the trial court's ruling was erroneous and if erroneous what effect the error may have had on the result.”). Failure to proffer what the excluded evidence would have revealed precludes appellate consideration of the alleged error. Bogle v. State, 213 So. 3d 833, 854 (Fla. 2017) (first citing Blackwood, 777 So. 2d at 410–11; and then citing Lucas v. State, 568 So. 2d 18, 22 (Fla. 1990) (requiring proffer of evidence to preserve claim of error in its preclusion)). Because there was no proffer of the testimony May believes should have been allowed, we cannot determine that the testimony, if disallowed in error, would have had any effect on the result. Therefore, we must affirm.

AFFIRMED.

FOOTNOTES

1.   This case was transferred from the Second District Court of Appeal to this Court on January 1, 2023.

WOZNIAK, J.

COHEN and MIZE, JJ., concur.