Case ID: so2d_844/html/0621-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "LYONS, Justice. JOHNSTONE, Justice HARWOOD, Justice", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ex parte Homer BALLARD. (In re Homer Ballard v. State of Alabama).
    1011866.
    Supreme Court of Alabama.
    Aug. 30, 2002.
    Leonard F. Mikul, Bay Minette, for petitioner.
    Submitted on petitioner’s brief only.
    
      
       Justice Stuart was the circuit court judge in Baldwin County to whom this case was assigned during the initial proceedings in the case.
    
   LYONS, Justice.

WRIT DENIED. NO OPINION.

MOORE, C.J., and HOUSTON, SEE, BROWN, and WOODALL, JJ., concur.

JOHNSTONE and HARWOOD, JJ., dissent.

STUART, J., recuses herself.

JOHNSTONE, Justice

(dissenting).

I respectfully dissent from the denial of Ballard’s petition for a writ of certiorari. The issue is whether Department of Public Safety (“DPS”) records, certified only by an officer of that department, are admissible as evidence of prior convictions in a felony DUI trial.

They should not be. They are not records of convictions. Instead, they are only records of reports of convictions. The records of the convictions themselves are the court records. These DPS records are not within the ambit of the hearsay exception provided by Rule 803(8), Ala.R.Evid., for no one at DPS has “observed” these convictions: the DPS personnel have, at best, only received reports of the convictions. These DPS records of reports of convictions are too unreliable to be allowed as evidence in a criminal trial.

HARWOOD, Justice

(dissenting).

I dissent. I would grant the petition, but only as to the specific ground of “first impression” asserted by the petitioner, as framed in his brief by the following “Statement of the Issues”:

‘Whether the DUI convictions, certified as Public Records of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, were properly admitted to be used as enhancement for sentencing on a Felony DUI, when such records were not certified by the lower court that entered the judgment of conviction.”

All other aspects of the admissibility of the records in question, as, for example, authentication and sufficiency of the content of the records, would not be an issue for review by this Court.