CopyPublished | District Court of Appeal of Florida | 1973 Fla. App. LEXIS 7744
...with a claim which has enough superficial plausibility to mislead Lyden, though too little, we would hope, to mislead any of the able federal judiciary in Florida. Lyden says that his counsel’s failure to argue orally his appeal violates Fla.Stat. § 924.31, F.S.A., which reads: “A judgment may be affirmed if the appellant fails to argue, but it shall not be reversed unless the appellant submits a written brief or makes oral argument.” Lyden conveniently overlooks “files a written brief...
...clearly permits dispensing with oral argument, and we customarily do so in most criminal cases because the public defenders and assistant attorneys general who argue here are kept inordinately busy by a large volume of appeals, many of which are frivolous. As to precedence between Fla.Stat. § 924.31 and Rule 3.10(e), we need say only that the statute is a plainly unconstitutional legislative intrusion into the realm of procedure committed exclusively to the Supreme Court, subject to legislative power to override by two-thirds vote....
