Opinion
No. 88-02501.
August 2, 1989.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Hillsborough County; Susan C. Bucklew, Judge.
James Marion Moorman, Public Defender, and Andrea Steffen, Asst. Public Defender, Bartow, for appellant.
Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Davis G. Anderson, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Tampa, for appellee.
We affirm defendant's convictions for trafficking in cocaine and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine. See Huff v. State, 537 So.2d 1130 (Fla.2d DCA 1989); McElrath v. State, 516 So.2d 276 (Fla.2d DCA 1987).
This case provides a propitious occasion to reiterate the following statement made by this court in Smith v. Mogelvang, 432 So.2d 119, 125 (Fla.2d DCA 1983):
Unnecessary departures from the standard jury instructions may undermine the unquestionably beneficial effect of those forms on the Florida trial system as a whole. That system depends in large part for its fairness and effective functioning upon reasonably predictable rules and rulings in the conduct of trials. Those instructions "state as accurately as a group of experienced lawyers and judges could state the law of Florida in simple understandable language." In re: Use by the Trial Courts of the Standard Jury Instructions, 198 So.2d 319, 319 (Fla. 1967).
DANAHY, A.C.J., and LEHAN and ALTENBERND, JJ., concur.