Gunn v. State

726 S.W.2d 278, 291 Ark. 548, 1987 Ark. LEXIS 2004
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedMarch 23, 1987
DocketCR 86-194
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 726 S.W.2d 278 (Gunn v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gunn v. State, 726 S.W.2d 278, 291 Ark. 548, 1987 Ark. LEXIS 2004 (Ark. 1987).

Opinion

Per Curiam.

Petitioner was convicted by a jury of second degree murder and sentenced to twenty years in the Arkansas Department of Correction. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Gunn v. State, CACR 85-29 (August 28, 1985). Petitioner now seeks permission to proceed in circuit court pursuant to Criminal Procedure Rule 37. He also requests a copy of the transcript of the trial, all records, documents, docket sheets and “minutes” related to his case.

The motion requesting photocopies of the transcript and other items is denied. Petitioner states that he needs the material to support his Rule 37 petition so that he will not be precluded from litigating unspecified constitutional claims, but he does not explain why the material is needed to support any particular argument. A petitioner is not entitled to a copy of the trial record or other material at public expense unless he demonstrates some reasonably compelling need for specific documentary evidence to support a particular allegation. Austin v. State, 287 Ark. 256, 697 S.W.2d 914 (1985). It should be noted that when an appeal has been lodged in either this court or the Court of Appeals, the appeal transcript remains permanently on file with the Clerk of the Supreme Court. Counsel may check the transcript out through the Clerk’s office for a period of time, and persons who are not attorneys may review a transcript in the Clerk’s office and photocopy all or portions of it. An incarcerated person desiring a photocopy of pages from a transcript may write this court and request that the copy be mailed to the prison. All persons, including persons in custody, must bear the cost of photocopying. Austin v. State, supra. See also Washington v. State, 270 Ark. 840, 606 S.W.2d 365 (1980).

Petitioner’s petition for relief under Rule 37 consists of thirty-five typewritten pages and contains a number of allegations of both trial error and error by petitioner’s attorney at trial. Many of the allegations also have multiple subpoints. New of the allegations state any facts in support of them and no explanation is given in most instances to show how the petitioner was prejudiced. Several of the allegations are unclear. Since allegations which state only a conclusion and lack a showing of prejudice do not warrant postconviction relief, Smith v. State, 264 Ark. 329, 571 S.W.2d 591 (1978), we will discuss only those allegations for which petitioner has provided at least rudimentary facts in support and which are capable of being understood without resort to surmise and conjecture.

I.

Petitioner first alleges that counsel should have secured his release on bail. As denial of bail for whatever reason does not affect the validity of a judgment, failure to release an accused on bail is not a ground for postconviction relief. Smith v. State, 258 Ark. 533, 528 S.W.2d 359 (1975).

II.

Petitioner also finds fault with counsel for not challenging his arrest as illegal. He does not contend that any evidence was obtained as a result of the arrest. A defendant fairly tried in a court of competent jurisdiction is not entitled to be set free based upon some flaw in the manner of his arrest. Probable cause for arrest is immaterial since the court’s jurisdiction to try the accused does not depend upon the validity of his arrest. Singleton v. State, 256 Ark. 756, 510 S.W.2d 283 (1974). A challenge to the validity of an arrest is not cognizable under Rule 37.

III.

Petitioner contends that the jury was biased against him. As support for the allegation, he states that only one black juror was chosen and that the remaining jurors were selected from an all-white section of the county. He does not argue that the state sought to systematically exclude black jurors or offer any proof that racial bias was a factor in his trial. It cannot be concluded from the unsubstantiated allegation that the jury was improperly selected.

Petitioner further alleges that counsel seated the jurors without questioning them and accepted some jurors without his approval. He asserts that one of the jurors was monitoring his case for the VA hospital for some unexplained reason and that he had had unspecified business dealings with some of the others. Counsel had the opportunity during voir dire of the jury to ascertain whether any potential juror was biased against his client. Petitioner does not allude to any proof that bias existed. The jury is presumed unbiased, and the petitioner has the burden of overcoming that presumption by demonstrating actual bias on the part of a juror. Linell v. State, 283 Ark. 162, 671 S.W.2d 741 (1984); Jeffers v. State, 280 Ark. 458, 658 S.W.2d 869 (1983). Petitioner has presented no evidence of actual bias on the part of any juror.

IV.

Petitioner alleges that after the verdict was pronounced, the foreman of the jury told the judge that one juror had been confronted by a member or members of the victim’s family and told “you better get him if you have to railroad him.” He states that the foreman told the judge that the incident did not affect the verdict and that the judge told the sheriff to get the names of those involved so that he could talk to them. Petitioner contends that counsel was ineffective in that he failed to request a mistrial after learning about the incident.

The record does not contain the proceedings after the jury returned with its verdict, so we have only petitioner’s version of what occurred. Even if petitioner’s account is entirely accurate, however, he has not proven that counsel was ineffective under the standard for judging ineffective assistance of counsel set out by the United States Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). To prove ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland, a petitioner must show that counsel’s performance was deficient in that counsel made an error so serious that he was not functioning as the “counsel” guaranteed by the sixth amendment. Second, the deficient performance must have resulted in prejudice so pronounced as to have deprived the petitioner of a fair trial whose outcome cannot be relied on as just. Even if counsel’s conduct is shown to be professionally unreasonable, the judgment must stand, unless the petitioner demonstrates that the error had a prejudicial effect on the outcome of the proceeding. A reasonable probability that but for counsel’s conduct the result of the proceeding would have been different is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome. Here, petitioner states that the court questioned the foreman as to whether the incident affected the verdict and determined that it did not. Although another attorney in a similar situation might have elected to request a mistrial, petitioner has not shown that counsel’s failure to do so had a prejudicial effect on the outcome of the proceeding.

V.

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Bluebook (online)
726 S.W.2d 278, 291 Ark. 548, 1987 Ark. LEXIS 2004, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gunn-v-state-ark-1987.