Henry v. State

293 So. 2d 327, 52 Ala. App. 410, 1974 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1095
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Alabama
DecidedApril 9, 1974
Docket6 Div. 606
StatusPublished

This text of 293 So. 2d 327 (Henry v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Henry v. State, 293 So. 2d 327, 52 Ala. App. 410, 1974 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1095 (Ala. Ct. App. 1974).

Opinions

HARRIS, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of robbery and his punishment fixed at fifty years impris[411]*411onment in the penitentiary. His retained counsel appeared with him at arraignment and interposed a plea of not guilty. After trial appellant was adjudged to be indigent and the court ordered a free transcript for him and appointed new counsel to represent him on appeal.

Around 2:00 P. M. on the afternoon of July 3, 1972, two black men robbed the store manager of a supermarket store located at 1965 Bessemer Road, Central Park, Birmingham, Alabama. Four eyewitnesses identified appellant as one of the robbers.

The store manager testified that appellant stuck a pistol in his side and told him, “This is a robbery. If you say anything, or holler, I will blow your brains out. Lets get into the office.” From a desk drawer in the office the manager took an undetermined amount of money and put it in a cloth bank bag. Appellant still had a pistol in the side of the manager and told him to go to the safe. The safe was outside the office and the money in the safe was put in the same bank bag. Appellant then told him to get the money out of the cash registers and to put it in the bag. There were six registers but only two were in operation at this time. The manager got the money from the two registers in operation and three others and told appellant there was no money in the fourth register. Appellant took possession of the money bag and told the manager to walk with him to the door. When they got to the door, appellant told him to tell everyone that if they tried to follow him he would kill them and walked out the exit door of the store.

When appellant carried the manager inside the office, appellant’s companion stood immediately outside the door and kept a pistol pointed on three or four part-time employees. He kept them at bay until the manager got the money from the last cash register and he left the store in front of appellant. The assistant manager of the store called the police and reported the robbery.

When the officers arrived, the manager gave them a description of appellant. He told the officers that appellant was wearing a striped shirt and dark pants and had a fairly heavy mustache. The manager was shown numerous photographs on three separate occasions but was unable to identify either of the two men who robbed the store. Over a month later appellant was arrested and a lineup was conducted and the manager positively identified appellant as one of the men who robbed the store on the afternoon of July 3, 1972. The manager also made an in-court positive identification of appellant.

A male employee who was operating one of the cash registers testified that he observed the two black men while the robbery was in progress. He described one as being short or stocky and he further stated that he was wearing a hard hat and a long-sleeve sweater and the other man was taller and had a mustache and was wearing a long-sleeve printed type shirt and dark pants. The man wearing the hard hat pointed a pistol directly at him while he was checking out a customer; that he got a good look at the man who held a pistol on the store manager at the time the manager came to his cash register and told him to step back and the manager took all the money from his register, except some change, and put it in the bank bag. He saw both men walk out the store.

The detectives in charge of this robbery investigation brought some photographs to the store on two or more occasions and this employee identified both robbers from these photographs. These identifications were made prior to the line-up.

Another employee of the store at the time of the robbery made an in-court positive identification of appellant and also picked him out in a police conducted lineup. He, too, was shown a series of photographs but was unable to identify either of the robbers.

A fourth employee of the store present at the robbery scene identified appellant as [412]*412one of the robbers from a number of photographs and made a positive in-court identification. As the robbers were leaving the store he went to the rear of the store and opened a door leading to the back parking lot. While standing in the opened door, he saw a late model “gloss” black, Electra 225, Buick automobile with two men on the front seat pull around the corner of the store and speed away. He was unable to say whether appellant was in this car as he did not have time to get a good look at the occupants before the car left the parking lot.

A woman from Atlanta, Georgia, was visiting her relatives in Birmingham during the July 4th holidays in 1972. She drove her sister and mother to the supermarket where the robbery occurred on July 3rd and parked in a parking space near the end of the store building. Her sister went in the store to shop and she stayed in her car with her children and her mother. She had been parked between five and ten minutes when she observed two black men come from the direction of the entrance to the store. One was a few steps in front of the other one and both were walking fast. She saw the one in front beckon the other to “hurry”. She first observed them when they were about two car lengths from her car. When they got about in front of her car, they started to run. She saw them enter a late model black Buick automobile. The rear end of this Buick was slanted in her direction and she wrote down the license tag number for the reason that the actions and conduct of the two black men aroused her suspicions. The tag number was 1A-30275. She went in the supermarket and gave the tag number to the store manager or assistant store manager after the Buick sped away.

On August 5, 1972, around 3:40 P.M., one month and two days after the robbery for which appellant stands convicted, two police officers of the City of Birmingham were patrolling in a well-marked police car — blue light on top, regular markings, insignias, etc. — at Third Avenue and Twelfth Street, West, when they received a radio dispatch to answer a call in the 1100 block of Tuscaloosa Avenue. They turned off Twelfth Street into an alley by Tuscaloosa Avenue where a dentist’s office was located, There were seven or eight parking spaces in front of this office building. They observed only one car parked at the building and it was a solid black 1969 or 1970 model Buick automobile, Electra 225. The officers saw two black men with pistols in their hands running toward the Buick automobile. When they were within twenty-five or thirty feet of this automobile they noticed the police car and they turned and ran in the opposite direction. Two other police officers arrived at the scene and started looking for the two men who ran when they saw the police car. About one-half block from the Buick automobile they saw a black man running toward Tuscaloosa Avenue in the direction away from the Buick automobile parked at the dentist’s office building. The officers placed him under arrest and learned his identity. He was the appellant in this case.

The officers checked the license tag registration on the Buick automobile and found the number to be 1A-30275, 1972 Alabama tag, the identical number that the woman from Atlanta, Georgia, wrote on a piece of paper on July 3, 1972, while she was parked at the supermarket that was robbed by two black men .on that date.

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Related

Keeton v. State
190 So. 2d 694 (Supreme Court of Alabama, 1966)
Weatherspoon v. State
56 So. 2d 793 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1952)
Jackson v. State
71 So. 2d 825 (Supreme Court of Alabama, 1954)
Wilkins v. State
197 So. 75 (Alabama Court of Appeals, 1940)

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Bluebook (online)
293 So. 2d 327, 52 Ala. App. 410, 1974 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1095, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/henry-v-state-alacrimapp-1974.