Eddins v. Popwell

35 So. 2d 47, 33 Ala. App. 239, 1947 Ala. App. LEXIS 472
CourtAlabama Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 30, 1947
Docket6 Div. 407.
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 35 So. 2d 47 (Eddins v. Popwell) 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
Eddins v. Popwell, 35 So. 2d 47, 33 Ala. App. 239, 1947 Ala. App. LEXIS 472 (Ala. Ct. App. 1947).

Opinion

HARWOOD, Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Circuit Court of the Tenth Judicial Circuit entered in a habeas corpus proceedings, which judgment sustained appellee’s demurrers to the answer and amended answer of appellant to appellee’s petition and ordered the release of the appellee from the custody of the appellant, C. Floyd Eddins, Chief of Police of the City of Birmingham.

From the record it appears that the appellee had been convicted in the Recorder’s Court of the City of Birmingham on 17 June 1946 of the offense of violating the State Firearms Act. The Recorder, as punishment, fined the appellee one hundred dollars, and costs of three dollars, and sentenced him “to serve one hundred and eighty days (suspended) at hard labor for -the City of Birmingham.” The sentence to hard labor was suspended at the request of the attorney for the appellee.

On 14 November 1946 appellee was arrested and placed in the City jail during an investigation of a hit and run traffic accident. The outcome of this investigation is not shown in the record. Plowever, while appellee was in jail one of the Assistant City Attorneys for Birmingham advised the attorney for the appellee that he would request the Recorder to revoke the order suspending the sentence to hard labor on 17 June 1946. Thereafter on 20 November 1946, after hearing evidence submitted by the City and by the appellee the Recorder entered the following order:

*241 “Nov. 20th 1946. The judgment of suspending the 180 days is modified and the suspension is revoked and the 180 day sentence is revised and the judgment of the court is that the defendant serve 180 days at hard labor for the City.”

Upon his incarceration by this appellant as Chief of Police of the City of Birmingham, pursuant to the above order, appellee instituted this habeas corpus proceedings with the results indicated above.

The question of foremost importance in this case is whether the Recorder was empowered to order executed on 20 November 1946 the sentence of one hundred and eighty days hard labor imposed on appellee on 17 June 1946, which sentence was on that date, at request of appellee, suspended by the Recorder.

Counsel for appellant have filed an excellent and. exhaustive brief in this case. They concede that the action of the Recorder in suspending that portion of the sentence imposing the one hundred and eighty days hard labor was unauthorized by statute and therefore invalid. See Section 9, Title 1, Section 334, Title 15, Code of Alabama 1940; Shapiro v. City of Birmingham, 30 Ala.App. 563, 10 So.2d 38; Montgomery v. State, 231 Ala. 1, 163 So. 365, 101 A.L.R. 1394. They further acknowledge that the appellate courts of this State are committed to the doctrine that where a court, without authority, and not acting, upon the request of a ¡defendant suspends execution of sentence imposed, the court cannot, after expiration of the period for which the defendant was sentenced, order the sentence executed. Corporate Authorities of Scottsboro v. Johnston, 121 Ala. 397, 25 So. 809; Blackwell v. State, 19 Ala.App. 553, 99 So. 49; Alexander v. Posey, 32 Ala.App. 494, 27 So.2d 237.

However, appellant argues strongly, and not without substantial authority from other jurisdictions, that where the suspension of the sentence is secured at the instance and request of the defendant he is thereby es-topped from questioning the power of the court to later revoke such order of suspension and reinstate the original sentence.

Appellant further argues in the alternative that if the doctrine of estoppel is hot applicable, then the doctrine of our courts to the effect that a court cannot, after expiration of a sentence invalidly suspended or unexecuted, order such sentence executed, should not be extended or enlarged so as to prohibit the enforcement of the unexpired portion of the sentence suspended without authority, where such suspension was at the request of the defendant and where the vacation of the suspension was effected before, instead of after, the expiration of the term of the sentence.

We admit the persuasiveness of appellant’s argument, but are of the opinion that the proposition contended for by the appellant has been settled adversely to his contentions by the case of Daley v. City of Decatur, 18 Ala.App. 141, 90 So. 69, certiorari denied 206 Ala. 698, 90 So. 925.

In the Daley case, supra, the petitioner was tried before a Recorder on 6 August 1920, adjudged guilty, fined and sentenced to thirty days “on the streets,” which the court assumed to mean thirty days at hard labor on the streets. The judgment concluded “Sentence suspended on his promise not to go to this house again.”

It does not appear in the report of this case whether the sentence to thirty days hard labor was suspended at the request of the defendant. We have however examined the original record and find that the sentence was suspended at the instance of the defendant.

Fine and costs were presently paid. On 19 August 1920, or thirteen days later and well within the thirty day period of the sentence, the petitioner, on verbal order of the Recorder was re-talcen into custody. The trial court, in the ensuing habeas corpus proceedings entered an order refusing petitioner’s discharge from custody. In reversing and rendering the judgment of the trial court this court wrote:

“The right of the criminal courts at common law to suspend sentence is asserted by writers of acknowledged authority. The authorities are cited in People v. Court of Sessions, 141 N.Y. 288, 36 N.E. 386, 23 L.R.A. 856. But that for reasons which do not now obtain; that was because the courts had no power to grant new trials, either upon the same or additional evidence, and the *242 verdict was not reviewable upon the facts by any higher court. 141 N.Y. supra.

“It will be observed that the trial court pronounced what it must be held to have considered the proper punishment for the offense committed by the petitioner, and then placed it in the power of the petitioner by h'is conduct to free himself from the lawful infliction of the punishment so pronounced. In substance the sentence to hard labor pronounced in this case was a sentence upon condition. But the principle is fundamental that the sentence in a criminal case must be certain and definite, and not dependent on any contingency or condition. 8 R.C.L. p. 254; Bradley v. State, 69 Ala. 318. In the text of R.C.L., supra, it is stated that —

“ ‘Whenever the question has arisen and been passed on, it has been decided, practically without dissent, that in passing sentence on a person convicted of an offense the court has no power to provide that the imprisonment of the defendant shall begin at some future, indefinite, time, depending on the happening of a contingency’ — citing Tanner v. Wiggins, 54 Fla. 203, 45 So. 459, 14 Ann. Cas. 718; State v. Sturgis, 110 Me. 96, 85 A. 474, 43 L.R.A.,N.S., 443 ; Ex parte Clendenning 22 Okl. 108, 97 P. 650, 19 L. R.A.,N.S., 1041, 132 Am.St.Rep. 628, 18 Ann.Cas. 152.

“These cases, as far as they go, sustain the text, and such, in our opinion, is the case here under consideration, and such its proper disposition.

“Further, it is said (8 R.C.L.

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Bluebook (online)
35 So. 2d 47, 33 Ala. App. 239, 1947 Ala. App. LEXIS 472, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/eddins-v-popwell-alactapp-1947.