Rowe v. State

607 S.W.2d 657, 271 Ark. 20, 1980 Ark. LEXIS 1659
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedNovember 10, 1980
DocketCR 80-99
StatusPublished
Cited by36 cases

This text of 607 S.W.2d 657 (Rowe 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
Rowe v. State, 607 S.W.2d 657, 271 Ark. 20, 1980 Ark. LEXIS 1659 (Ark. 1980).

Opinions

John A. Fogleman, Justice.

Rodney Lee Rowe was found guilty of aggravated robbery and attempted capital murder of Mrs. Katie Cage and sentenced to terms of ten years for aggravated robbery and 30 years for attempted capital murder, as fixed by the jury. After trial on December 11, 1979, the trial judge ordered that the sentences run consecutively. The offenses were committed on the night of January 23, 1979, as Mrs. Cage was preparing to enter her dwelling house at 22 Tallyho Lane.

Appellant contends that the trial court erred in accepting the jury verdicts with two convictions for one offense. He was charged in a two-count information with 'having committed the crime of aggravated robbery by holding a gun on Mrs. Katie Cage for the purpose of committing a theft and the crime of criminal attempt by purposely engaging in conduct constituting a substantial step towards the commission of capital murder of Mrs. Katie Cage during the course of, and in furtherance of, attempted robbery. Appellant admits that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the conviction on both charges, but argues that he could not legally be found guilty of both charges or sentenced on both. He contends that acceptance of the jury verdict violated the Arkansas statutes and the prohibition against double jeopardy contained in both the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Article II, § 8 of the Constitution of Arkansas.

Mrs. Katie Cage testified that she arrived at her home at about 11:30 p.m., got out of her car and walked to the back of the automobile in her driveway when she heard someone running toward her. Mrs. Cage said that she thought that this was one of the neighborhood joggers and kept walking toward her house, but when she realized that this person was coming toward her too fast and hard to be a jogger, she stopped at the edge of her driveway near the front steps of the house, looked around, heard someone say “help” and saw this person running frantically toward her with his hand extended. She thought that someone was chasing him, but when he came closer to her, she realized that no one was chasing him and that the cry had been “hey, hey, hey,” instead of “help.” The runner then came up to her with his hand "out.” She tried to defend herself with her hand, and said, “You are not going to do this.” When this person responded, “Oh, yes I am,” she demanded that he get his hand off her and “get out of here.” When she said this, she heard a gun go off and realized that she had been shot. She stepped back but did not fall. She felt that her assailant would shoot her again if she did not fall, so she fell to the ground and called out to her husband. As she was falling, her assailant grabbed her purse off her shoulder and ran. According to Mrs. Cage, she and her assailant had scuffled for about two minutes. She positively identified appellant as the assailant.

The information actually charged aggravated robbery under Ark. Stat. Ann. § 41-2102 (1) (a) (Supp. 1979). The specific language was that appellant did “threaten to employ physical force upon Mrs. Katie Cage by holding a gun to her with the purpose of committing a theft from her and did have in his possession the following deadly weapon, to-wit: a pistol, ***". This did not charge an offense under § 41-2102 (1) (b). The criminal attempt charged under Ark. Stat. Ann. § 41-701 (1) (b) (Repl. 1977) was that appellant “did unlawfully, feloniously attempt to commit an offense by purposely engaging in conduct constituting a substantial step in a course of conduct intended to culminate in the capital murder of Mrs. Katie Cage, in the course of and in furtherance of the attempted commission of robbery.” Appellant waived formal arraignment and entered pleas of not guilty. Several pretrial motions were made but no objections to the information or to being put to trial on both counts was ever made. The state was never asked to elect to proceed on one count or the other and there was no motion to sever the charges for trial. No pretrail objection of the nature of those now made was ever asserted.

The jury was given instructions defining both offenses contained in the information. No objection was made by appellant to any of these instructions. No mention was made by the judge in his instructions to the jury that the offenses should be considered alternatively or that appellant should be sentenced on only one of the charges if it found him guilty of both. No such instruction was requested by appellant. The verdict forms which the judge submitted to the jury were described in one of the instructions given. They did not provide for consideration of the offenses charged in the alternative or for the fixing of only one sentence. No objection was made and no alternate or substituted verdict form was requested by appellant. When the verdicts were returned, no objection was made. Thereafter, the judge asked if there was any legal reason why sentence should not be imposed at that time and appellant’s attorney1 responded that there was not. The sentences were then pronounced, and the court ordered that they run consecutively. No objection was made, either to the sentences or their being made to run consecutively.

All of the arguments now advanced on appeal could have been raised in the trial court, but none of them were. Even though an alleged error is of constitutional proportion, we do not consider it for the first time on appeal. Shepherd v. State, 270 Ark. 457, 605 S.W. 2d 414 (1980); Clark v. State, 264 Ark. 630, 575 S.W. 2d 622.

Appellant contends that he could not be convicted or sentenced for both offenses because of the provisions of Ark. State. Ann. § 41-105 (1) (e) (Repl. 1977). That subsection provides that a defendant may not be convicted of more than one offense if his conduct constitutes an offense defined as a continuing course of conduct and is uninterrupted, unless the law provides that specific periods of such conduct constitute separate offenses. Appellant argues as if the italicized language was not even a part of the subsection on which he relies. Neither offense charged is defined as a continuing course of conduct. We might as well dispose of this argument of appellent by pointing out that neither aggravated robbery nor attempted capital muder is defined as continuing a course of conduct, relying upon Britt v. State, 261 Ark. 488, 549 S.W. 2d 84. We made it clear in Britt that a continuing offense must be a continuous act or series of acts set on foot by a single impulse and operated by an unintermittent force. We emphasized the distinction made by Mr. Wharton in his treatise (Wharton’s Criminal Procedure) which was pointed out in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S. Ct. 180, 76 L. Ed. 306 (1932). According to that distinction, when the impulse is single but one charge lies, no matter how long the action may continue, if successive impulses are separately given, even though all unite in swelling a common stream of action, separate charges lie; and the test is whether the individual acts are prohibited or the course of action they constitute; if the former, each act is punished separately, if the latter, there can be but one penalty. We made it clear that § 41-105 (1) (2) did not change the common law rule.

Here two distinct impulses exist, according to the Britt-Blockburger test. When appellant approached Mrs.

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Bluebook (online)
607 S.W.2d 657, 271 Ark. 20, 1980 Ark. LEXIS 1659, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rowe-v-state-ark-1980.