James H. Fry

In Clark v. State, the defendant was convicted of capital murder during a first-degree robbery and sentenced to death. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama reviewed the trial court's sentencing order and found it failed to include the specific written findings required by Alabama Code § 13A-5-47(d) regarding the existence or nonexistence of each aggravating and mitigating circumstance, as well as a factual summary of the crime and the defendant's role. The court also determined that the trial judge had improperly relied in part on the victim's status and person when finding the offense was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel under § 13A-5-49(8), rather than limiting the analysis to whether the murder was conscienceless, pitiless, and unnecessarily torturous to the victim under the standard from Ex parte Kyzer. The appellate court therefore remanded the case for the trial court to enter a corrected sentencing order with the required findings while preserving the death sentence for further review.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Antonio Bonner, who was convicted on four counts of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance under Alabama law and sentenced as a habitual offender to concurrent life terms. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the convictions but initially remanded for imposition of mandatory Demand Reduction Assessment fines and for application of sentencing enhancements under §§ 13A-12-250 and 13A-12-270 due to sales occurring near a school and housing project. On rehearing, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, the court held that those enhancements could not be applied because the factual findings increasing the sentence were not submitted to and found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt; it therefore vacated the sentences and directed resentencing without the enhancements. The core reasoning centered on the mandatory nature of the Apprendi rule for facts that raise a sentence above the statutory maximum and the requirement to apply Alabama's fine statutes on each count.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Alan Lee Anderson's Rule 32 petition challenging his 1998 conviction and life sentence for first-degree kidnapping. Anderson claimed violations of double jeopardy after the trial court accepted but then rejected his guilty plea to second-degree kidnapping, a defective indictment due to an improper amendment, and ineffective assistance of counsel. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama reversed the first-degree kidnapping conviction, holding that the trial court lacked jurisdiction because it never accepted the guilty plea or validly amended the indictment to charge the lesser offense. The court remanded the case with instructions to reinstate the original guilty plea conviction for second-degree kidnapping and to impose sentence on that charge. The decision rested on the principle that a court cannot try or convict a defendant on charges not contained in a valid indictment.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Michael Deangela Dowdell's conviction for fraudulent use of a debit card under Alabama law, for which he received an eight-year sentence as a habitual offender. Dowdell challenged the admission of the victim's bank transaction records, arguing they constituted inadmissible hearsay because the supervisor who printed the computer-generated documents did not testify at trial. The court held that the records qualified under the business records exception to the hearsay rule (Rule 803(6), Ala. R. Evid.), as the testimony of an electronic services assistant established their regular maintenance by the bank, her personal knowledge of the records, and their reliability despite the supervisor's absence. The court further found the evidence sufficient to support the conviction, based on the victim's identification of Dowdell in ATM photographs and her testimony that the withdrawals were unauthorized. The judgment was affirmed.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Anthony Keith Brown appealing his multiple convictions for burglary, theft, receiving stolen property, conspiracy, and related offenses stemming from several pharmacy break-ins in Florence, Alabama, where he participated in planning, supplying equipment, and dividing stolen drugs. The court addressed whether Brown could be tried in absentia after he escaped custody during the trial, ruling that his voluntary absence constituted a waiver of his right to be present under Rule 9.1, Ala.R.Crim.P. It also reversed his conviction for receiving stolen property in the second degree because the evidence showed he participated in the underlying theft, making such a conviction legally inconsistent, while other challenges like sufficiency of the evidence were not preserved for review. The case was remanded for vacating that one conviction and resentencing.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Ricky Hunter's convictions for second-degree assault and first-degree robbery arising from an incident in which he allegedly robbed and assaulted a victim at gunpoint after following the victim's car from a nightclub. Hunter appealed, arguing that the trial court erred by admitting testimony from another victim about a prior robbery committed by Hunter two weeks earlier, claiming the evidence was inadmissible under Rule 404(b), Ala. R. Evid., to prove bad character. The court examined the exclusionary rule's limits on prior bad acts evidence and whether the prior robbery could be admitted for the limited purpose of showing intent, with the majority concluding the evidence was improperly admitted as prejudicial and not fitting within Rule 404(b)'s exceptions, while a dissent maintained it was properly allowed to prove intent with a limiting instruction. The opinion addresses the application of Alabama evidence rules to collateral crimes in a criminal trial.

criminal lawprocedure