Mitchell v. State

290 So. 2d 241, 52 Ala. App. 174, 1974 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1053
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Alabama
DecidedFebruary 12, 1974
Docket8 Div. 398
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 290 So. 2d 241 (Mitchell 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
Mitchell v. State, 290 So. 2d 241, 52 Ala. App. 174, 1974 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1053 (Ala. Ct. App. 1974).

Opinion

HARALSON, Supernumerary Circuit Judge.

The appellant was convicted of robbery and sentenced to ten years imprisonment in the penitentiary. He has appealed from that judgment of the court.

At the conclusion of the testimony offered by the State, the appellant moved to exclude, which motion was overruled by the court. Following the verdict of the jury and judgment of the court, appellant filed a motion for a new trial, which motion was also overruled by the court.

The testimony adduced by the State tended to show the following facts in substance :

At approximately ten o’clock on the evening of May 25, 1972, prosecutrix and Walter Stephens were parked in her automobile at the south end of Triana Boulevard in Huntsville at a place where the street came to a dead end. Prosecutrix testified that Stephens got out of the car on the passenger side and walked toward the rear of the car at which time she heard voices coming from the outside. Stephens called for her to get out of the car, which she did and came and stood next to him, where she observed another person. some ten feet from her. The moon was shining and she could see well enough to describe the person and the clothing he was wearing. He had a short, shiney, silver pistol in his hand and wore a green shirt over a tee shirt. He asked for the keys to the car and got them from the ignition and while this was going on, she observed another man lying prone in a freshly plowed field some twenty or thirty feet from her.

*176 After procuring the keys, the man with the gun, by the use of threats, forced Stephens to get in the trunk of the car and when Stephens resisted the closing of the lid of the trunk, the first man called the other from the field, he came and leaped on the back of the trunk and forced it to go down and lock with Stephens inside.

Prosecutrix described the second man, who came in from the field, and he was later identified as the appellant as having brown hair, a prominent or long nose, and wearing an Army fatigue shirt over a tee shirt and colored trousers. She further testified that she smelled alcohol on the breath of both men.

Immediately after Stephens was locked in the trunk, the man with the gun, later identified as Mr. Burgett, forced prosecutrix to go with him down into the muddy field until they reached a short knoll where he proceeded to take her clothes off and rape her. Immediately thereafter, the appellant came down to the knoll and also raped her, the first man having gone back to the car.

She testified to certain conversations between the men and statements made by them at the scene. Immediately after her encounter with Burgett he forced her to open the trunk lid of the car and to procure Stephens’ billfold, which he handed to her through the small opening while he was still within the trunk. She in turn gave the billfold to Burgett, the man with the gun, and he took from her person a five dollar bill. During the time of the actual taking of the billfold from Stephens, which had a one dollar bill in it, and the five dollar bill from prosecutrix, the appellant appeared to have left the scene.

Prosecutrix was told by Burgett to go back to the car and not open the trunk until two minutes passed but she opened it in about a minute and released Stephens. She and Stephens immediately made their way to a telephone at her home and reported the matter to police.

State’s witness Stephens, above referred to, testified substantially the same as prosecutrix.

A short time later in the evening Huntsville police officers, Harvey and Faucette, apprehended Burgett and the appellant. The shoes or boots and pants of each were wet and muddy up to the knees and the mud, described as red, was the same type of soil as found in the plowed field where the alleged incident took place. At the time of the arrest a nickel-plated .32 revolver was found in the floorboard of the car in which the suspects were sitting. It was lying on the back floorboard near the feet of Burgett.

Photographs of the appellant were made at the Huntsville police station and one of these, along with six photographs of other people, were shown to prosecutrix for identification. Later in the night the appellant was put in a line up and viewed by prosecutrix but at this time she was not able to make an identification. However, she did testify that, although she could not make a positive identification at the line up, one of the photographs she viewed looked like the appellant except he didn’t have glasses on. Later at the preliminary trial on July 21, 1972, prosecutrix did make a positive identification of appellant. She further sought to explain the difference in appellant’s dress at the time of the line up and at the time of the robbery, the difference being that he did not have on a tee shirt at the line up and that appellant wore glasses at the line up. It does not appear that he had glasses on at the scene of the alleged robbery.

Appellant denied any connection with or knowledge of the incident for which he was tried and sought by testimony offered by the defense to show that he was somewhere else on the occasion complained of. He also offered evidence of good character. He further testified that on the afternoon of the alleged robbery he, along with his mother and Ken Burgett, went fishing in a nearby creek and that he and Burgett both got mud and water on their feet and *177 up to their knees from the muddy banks of the creek and that the mud was of the same type as the mud, testified to by State’s witnesses prosecutrix and Stephens, in the field where the incident took place. His mother substantiated his testimony with regard to the fishing trip in her testimony.

Before entering upon the trial of the merits the court heard testimony on a motion to require the district attorney to turn over to the appellant’s attorneys certain information and evidence bearing upon the issues in this cause. The court took this motion under advisement pending the development of the case and later, after ascertaining the existence of certain pertinent evidence and requiring the district attorney to deliver same to attorneys for appellant, the motion was overruled. This is a procedure which rests largely in the discretion of the trial court and without prolonging this opinion with attempting to state the details of the procedure, we are in accord with the court’s action and we find no error therein. Certainly the appellant was not prejudiced.

Before entering the main trial, the court also heard testimony on appellant’s motion to suppress any identification made by prosecutrix of appellant based substantially upon the grounds that the in-court identification was brought about by improper influence upon her by certain newspaper articles appearing in the Huntsville News, which recounted some of the alleged circumstances of the robbery; and also upon grounds that certain film news broadcast by a Huntsville television station showing pictures of the accused and other news items incident to the robbery had an improper influence upon her.

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424 So. 2d 1368 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama, 1982)
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Wright v. State
333 So. 2d 218 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama, 1976)
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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
290 So. 2d 241, 52 Ala. App. 174, 1974 Ala. Crim. App. LEXIS 1053, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mitchell-v-state-alacrimapp-1974.