Opinion
Case No. 4D99-1770
Opinion filed October 4, 2000 July Term 2000
Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; James I. Cohn, Judge; L.T. Case No. 99-1928 CF10B.
Richard L. Jorandby, Public Defender, and Ian Seldin, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Daniel P. Hyndman, Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
We affirm appellant's conviction and sentence, concluding that the error was not preserved for appeal. Appellant made a Neil/Slappy challenge to the juror, but when the state offered a race neutral explanation, appellant did not challenge it as a pretext or suggest that the same reason applied to other unchallenged jurors who were similarly situated. Thus, appellant did not contest the genuineness of the explanation. See Melbourne v. State, 679 So.2d 759, 764 (Fla. 1996).
State v. Neil, 457 So.2d 481 (Fla. 1984), and State v. Slappy, 522 So.2d 18 (Fla. 1988).
Affirmed.
TAYLOR, J., and LENDERMAN, JOHN C., Associate Judge, concur.