Case Title: Deason v. State

Citation: 363 So. 2d 1001

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1978-09-08T00:00:00Z

Document:
363 So. 2d 1001 (1978)
In re Jackie DEASON
v.
STATE of Alabama.
Ex parte Jackie Deason.
77-457.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
September 8, 1978.
Rehearing Denied October 6, 1978.
*1002 George W. Cameron, Montgomery, for petitioner.
William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and Samuel J. Clenney, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State, respondent.
BEATTY, Justice.
Certiorari was granted to enable this Court to determine whether or not the trial court erred in refusing to grant the defendant's motion to require the prosecution to elect among charges of carnal knowledge. The opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals, 363 So. 2d 998, refers neither to that motion nor to the colloquy between counsel and the trial court in connection with it. However, the petitioner filed with his application for rehearing in the Court of Criminal Appeals his request for a finding of facts which included that motion and exchange, together with the language of the indictment, all containing references to the pertinent portions of the record and transcript, and which we have examined and found to be correct. Rule 39(k), ARAP.
The indictment charged carnal knowledge or, in the alternative, abuse in the attempt thereof in the following form:
The opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals recites the facts proved by the prosecution. Insofar as it relates to the problem of an election, the record shows that the mother of the prosecutrix testified that her daughter told her of having sex with her stepfather several times.
In the initial stage of the prosecutrix's testimony she testified that her twelfth birthday was January 10, (1975), and then she was asked:
She told her mother about it on February 16. Then the following exchange occurred:
On cross-examination she testified that "it" happened "A couple of days or a week" after the holidays.
Following her testimony the State rested its case, whereupon the defense moved orally to require the prosecution to elect among the charges it had proved:
In opposition to the petitioner's position, the State has viewed the problem as one of evidence law, referring us to that *1005 portion of the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals in which McElroy's Alabama Evidence, § 45.11(3) (3rd Ed. 1977) is cited for the proposition that in a carnal knowledge case the prosecution may introduce proof of sexual relations between the accused and the prosecutrix before and after the act on which the prosecution is based. That is a correct proposition of evidence law. The reason behind the admissibility of such acts was discussed by Mr. Justice Brown in Harrison v. State, 235 Ala. 1, 2, 178 So. 458, 459 (1937):
One of the cases cited as authority allowed proof of subsequent sexual conduct upon the same child because:
He added:
That discussion clearly demonstrates that the admissibility of sexual occurrences before and after the one charged in the indictment is based upon conditions of relevancy, that is, whether they are probative of the main charge. That rule of evidence, however, does not create for carnal knowledge cases an exception to the rule of election which applies to all others.
The indictment in this case charges two separate offenses in the alternative. This is permissible under our statute. Tit. 15, § 249, Alabama Code (Recomp. 1958) (now Code of 1975, § 15-8-52), and places no obligation upon the prosecution to elect before hand which of those offenses it intends to prove. The case of Elam v. State, 26 Ala. 48 (1855) established the rule when the indictment charges only one offense:
The reason for placing the obligation to elect among the charges was stated in Carleton v. State, 100 Ala. 130, 14 So. 472 (1893):
Accord, Nuckols v. State, 109 Ala. 2, 19 So. 504 (1896); Untreinor v. State, 146 Ala. 133, 41 So. 170 (1906).
The same reasoning has been applied to indictments containing only one count with alternative averments. As early as Cochran v. State, 30 Ala. 542, 545 (1857) this Court commented upon both the propriety of such allegations and the prosecution's obligations under them:
Pointing out that the Code then in effect allowed disjunctive pleading in one count, the Court continued:
Accord, Williams v. State, 77 Ala. 53 (1884).
And in Warrick v. State, 8 Ala.App. 391, 62 So. 342, 343 (1913), involving a prosecution for violation of the prohibition law, the following language expressed the same limitation:
To the same effect is Brooms v. State, 197 Ala. 419, 73 So. 35 (1916).
In Watkins v. State, 36 Ala.App. 711, 63 So. 2d 293 (1953), Judge Harwood summed up the requirement:
As this record discloses, the prosecution directed much of its proof of carnal knowledge to an occasion in early January, 1975, during her Christmas holidays. But it went further and proved other such occasions, specifically one when the prosecutrix was about nine years old. Indeed, the prosecutor's remarks disclose the State's position, that it could go to the jury on all of them. While proof of these other instances were relevant to the commission of the January offense, as we have stated, nevertheless under the authorities the petitioner could not have been convicted of their commission, having been charged in one count only. To the contrary, the authorities entitled him to require the State to elect between them. His timely motion to that effect should have been granted, and the failure to grant it was reversible error. The judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals must be reversed and this case is remanded to that Court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
All the Justices concur.