Carroll v. State

189 So. 219, 28 Ala. App. 516, 1939 Ala. App. LEXIS 153
CourtAlabama Court of Appeals
DecidedMay 23, 1939
Docket4 Div. 452.
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 189 So. 219 (Carroll v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Alabama Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Carroll v. State, 189 So. 219, 28 Ala. App. 516, 1939 Ala. App. LEXIS 153 (Ala. Ct. App. 1939).

Opinion

BRICKEN, Presiding Judge.

This appellant was indicted for the offense of robbery. Specifically, that he feloniously took one automobile truck of the value of $500, meal of the value of $10, all of the aggregate value of $510, the property of I. N. Stewart, from his person, or against his will, by violence to his person, or by putting him in such fear as unwillingly to part with the.same, etc.

The trial resulted in the conviction of this appellant and the jury fixed his punishment at imprisonment for ten years.

When this appeal was here submitted, there were also submitted similar appeals of two other cases, towit: Guy Hardis v. State, post, p. 524, 189 So. 216, and Floyd Deese v. State, post, p. 526, 189 So. 218.

There is endorsed upon the record in this case, and also upon the record in each of the other above named two cases, a note of the clerk of the court, which reads as follows: “Clerk’s Note: The Grand Jury of Russell County, Alabama, on investigation of this case before this body returned three indictments against three separate defendants namely Bill Carroll, Floyd Deese and Guy Hardis. At the time this case was called for trial there was an agreement between 'the State and the three named defendants that they be tried jointly and a separate verdict be returned by the jury as to each defendant.”

Upon an examination of the three separate records certified to and filed in this court, we find that upon identically the same testimony three different defendants have each been separately indicted for identically the same offense, alleged to have been committed against one and the same person, at one and the same time, by which they are charged with robbing the injured party of an automobile truck and meal, notwithstanding our Statutes, Code 1923, Section 3196, which provides-that all persons concerned in the commission of a felony must be indicted, tried and punished as principals, and this whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, and Code 1923, Sec. 5570, which provides that when two or more persons are jointly indicted, they may be tried either jointly or separately, as either may elect. Then why the three indictments? There might be some force in the insistence that the reasonable answer to tbis question is that the grand jury finding and returning said indictments did not believe from the testimony of the witness before it that they had sufficient evidence upon which to find and return a joint indictment against these three defendants either upon the theory that they conspired together to commit said offense, or that they aided and abetted each other in the commission thereof. It is insisted that this conclusion is strengthened by the fact that in the general oral charge to the jury, in each case, the presiding judge of the court below did not charge the jury either the law of conspiracy, or that which pertains to one, or more, persons aiding and abetting another in the commission of an offense. The trial court charged: “Now, if you believe, beyond a reasonable doubt that they forced this man to part with his automobile and with meal, irrespective of its value, by violence to his person, or as the results of fear, making him in that way unwillingly to part with them, they are guilty of highway robbery.”

In brief of the Attorney General, it' is contended, that according to the testimony of Stewart, the defendants Carroll, Hardis and Deese, accompanying Stewart left Phenix City and drove about two miles into the county and there Carroll and “his cohorts,” Deese and Hardis, pulled Stewart out of his truck, took his money from him at the point of a pistol and ran him off. 'In reply to the foregoing the appellant insists there is absolutely no evidence, shown by the bill of exceptions, and none tending to show, that this appellant robbed Stewart of his money and rah him off, or that he assisted another in so doing. The evidence in the record sustains appellant in this insistence, the alleged injured party, Stewart, gave no such evidence as contended by the State in this connection. Appellant insists further, that if he had forcibly and feloniously taken Stewart’s money, or assisted in so doing, still he could not be convicted of the offense charged in the indictment, for 'that the indictment alleges the felonious taking, by force or intimidation of Stewart’s automobile truck and meal. In this insistence the appellant is correct, for in every criminal case the State must prove *518 beyónd a reasonable doubt every material ingredient of the offense charged, and it must also similarly prove that the defendant is the person who committed it. Anderson v. State, 19 Ala.App. 606, 99 So. 778; Piano v. State, 161 Ala. 88, 49 So. 803. In Anderson’s case this court said, the material inquiry is [19 Ala.App. 606, 99 So. 779]: “Did the unfortunate deceased come to his death by unlawful violence, or has the identical offense complained of in the indictment been committed? And the next inquiry is: Was it committed by the accused and in the form and manner stated in the indictment ?”

In the case at bar the burden was on the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Carroll, the defendant, either alone, or with another, or others, feloniously took the automobile truck and meal described in the indictment, the property of Stewart, from his person and against his will, by violence or intimidation. The felonious taking of money, by violence or intimidation, is not the offense charged in the indictment.

The rule is that where particular kind of property is described in an indictment, it must be proved as laid. Lee et al. v. State, 20 Ala.App. 334, 101 So. 907. In our case of Marsh v. State, 3 Ala.App. 80, 57 So. 387, this court held, that a person indicted for the larceny of a cow cannot be convicted under such indictment, upon proof showing the larceny of a steer calf. Under this well settled proposition of law, the taking of money, papers, etc. from the person of Stewart, by Hardis by force and intimidation, as testified to by Stewart, is not the offense charged against Carroll under the indictment in this case and upon this theory the defendant, Carroll, was clearly entitled to the affirmative charge requested by him in writing.

During the progress of the trial in the court below the condition of Mr. Stewart, the alleged injured party, whether drunk or sober at, before and after, the time of the alleged robbery was made an issue in the case inasmuch as he gave a detailed account of what was done by all of the parties prior to and at the time of the alleged robbery; of what was said to him and what he said in reply. Two of the witnesses for the defendant, Mr. J. L. Hand and Mr. O. C. Lester testified that .when they passed the defendants late in the afternoon of that day, at, or near the scene of the alleged robbery, they were standing near the truck, probably taking a drink, and that Mr. Stewart, when they passed, was lying in the truck with his head hanging over. Mr. Hand said that he stopped there about two minutes and that Mr. Stewart was asleep. The defendant had also offered testimony tending to show that a short time before the alleged robbery they stopped at Mr. Kent’s store and got a soft drink, “a chaser,” and probably some smoking tobacco and that they went from this store to the place where Mr. Stewart said he was robbed. After the defendant rested in the taking of testimony the State recalled Mr. Stewart as a witness and upon his re-direct examination he testified that he did not lie down and go to sleep in the truck at the place where it stopped.

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Related

Donalson v. State
40 So. 2d 636 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1949)
Wood v. State
7 So. 2d 780 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1942)
Smith v. State
2 So. 2d 341 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1941)
Blakely v. State
190 So. 102 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1939)
Hardis v. State
189 So. 216 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1939)

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Bluebook (online)
189 So. 219, 28 Ala. App. 516, 1939 Ala. App. LEXIS 153, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carroll-v-state-alactapp-1939.