Title: Ex Parte Weaver

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

678 So. 2d 284 (1996)
Ex parte William Ray WEAVER.
(In re William Ray Weaver v. State of Alabama).
1950044.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
February 2, 1996.
Rehearing Denied March 8, 1996.
*285 Charles C. Hart, Gadsden, and Walden M. Buttram, Gadsden, for Petitioner.
Jeff Sessions, Atty. Gen., and Gail Ingram Hampton, Asst. Atty. Gen., for Respondent.
HOUSTON, Justice.
William Ray Weaver was indicted and convicted in Etowah County for the capital offense stated in Ala.Code 1975, § 13A-5-40(a)(2), involving the robbery and murder of Aubrey Ray Estes. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Weaver's conviction and death sentence, and it later overruled his application for rehearing. See Weaver v. State, 678 So. 2d 260 (Ala.Crim.App.1995), for a detailed statement of the facts. We granted certiorari review pursuant to Rule 39(c), Ala.R.App.P. We reverse and remand.
The dispositive issue is whether the trial court erred to reversal in instructing the jury as follows during the guilt phase of the trial:
The trial court gave this one-sentence instruction on flight at the end of its oral charge on the law and immediately after it had given the following instruction on intent:
Weaver contends that the trial court's instruction on flight improperly suggested to the jury that there was only one conclusion that could be reasonably drawn from the evidencethat he had gone to live with his niece in Florida to avoid arrest and prosecution for the murder of Mr. Estes. In this respect, he argues that the jury was not properly instructed to fully consider whether his move to Florida might have been motivated by reasons other than a consciousness of guilt of the murder. Weaver contends, in the alternative, that there was insufficient evidence that he left Alabama to avoid arrest and prosecution for the murder of Mr. Estes to even warrant an instruction on flight. In response, the State, although conceding that the instruction on flight was rather terse, contends that it properly conveyed to the jury that the jury had the responsibility for determining Weaver's motivation for going to Florida and for considering whether his motivation indicated a consciousness on his part of guilt. The State also contends that the evidence of Weaver's move to Florida was probative on the question of his guilt or innocence. After carefully reviewing the record, the briefs, and the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals, we conclude that the trial court's one-sentence instruction on flight *286 was misleading and that its prejudicial effect requires the reversal of Weaver's conviction.
In Ex parte Musgrove, 638 So. 2d 1360, 1366-67 (Ala.1993), cert. denied, Rogers v. Alabama, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S. Ct. 136, 130 L. Ed. 2d 78 (1994), this Court, faced with a similar problem concerning the adequacy of an instruction on flight, stated:
"The jury instruction at issue stated:
"The second instruction, which had been requested by defense counsel, stated:
"This instruction repeated to the jury the explanation that it could look to all the evidence to determine the motive for the defendants' flight, and it sufficiently cured the impropriety that existed in the earlier charge. Accordingly, we find no plain error."
The trial court's instruction on flight in the present case improperly suggested to the jury that the only conclusion that could be reasonably drawn from the evidence was that Weaver had gone to Florida to avoid prosecution for the murder of Mr. Estes. Contrary to the State's assertion here, the instruction did not inform the jury that it had the responsibility to determine in the first instance what Weaver's motivation was in going to Florida. The instruction, instead, conveyed to the jury the idea that Weaver's move to Florida was presumptively to avoid prosecution. The jury was asked, in essence, to determine whether Weaver's "flight to avoid prosecution" tended in any way to indicate a consciousness of guilt on his part regarding the murder of Mr. Estes. Unlike Ex parte Musgrove, supra, this case had no additional instruction to cure the impropriety of the instruction regarding flight. We hold, therefore, that the trial court's instruction on flight, when examined in the context of the entire case, was highly prejudicial and constituted reversible error.[1]
Because of the possibility that Weaver may be retried, we further note that the evidence appears to be insufficient to warrant an instruction on flight. In Ex parte Jones, 541 So. 2d 1052, 1053-57 (Ala.1989), Justice Maddox, writing for this Court, discussed flight evidence and the requirements for its admissibility. We quote extensively from his opinion:
"In an even earlier case, this Court did hold, however, that care must be taken in introducing evidence like evidence of flight. In Liles v. State, 30 Ala. 24, 24-25 (1857), this Court stated:
"Alabama cases clearly hold that evidence of flight that is not combined with other criminative circumstances has little probative force. The teaching of Levison, supra, of course, is that care should be used when evidence of flight is presented. The United States Supreme Court has similarly warned, on more than one occasion, of the dangers in the introduction of evidence of flight. In Hickory v. United States, 160 U.S. 408, 16 S. Ct. 327, 40 L. Ed. 474 (1896), the Court made a detailed examination of the nature of evidence of flight and ruled that a jury charge that raised evidence of flight into a presumption of guilt was error:
"160 U.S.  at 417-18, 16 S. Ct.  at 330-31.
"Further, the United States Supreme Court has `consistently doubted the probative value in criminal trials of evidence that the accused fled the scene of an actual or supposed crime. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 483 n. 10, 83 S. Ct. 407, 415 n. 10, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441 (1963).' Nevertheless, the rule still remains that such evidence is admissible in a proper case.
"The basic rule for the introduction of evidence of flight was set forth in the early Alabama case of Bowles v. State, 58 Ala. 335, 338 (1877):
"This basic statement about evidence of flight has remained intact and basically unchanged in the law of Alabama up until this time. It is still the law. Later cases dealing with flight often state little more than the main proposition that such evidence is admissible. See Kelley v. State, 226 Ala. 80, 145 So. 816 (1933); Carden v. State, 84 Ala. 417, 4 So. 823 (1887); Sylvester v. State, 71 Ala. 17 (1881).
"One of the most recent cases summarizing the Alabama rule on this subject is Beaver v. State, 455 So. 2d 253, 257 (Ala. Crim.App.1984):
"A good statement of the rule concerning the admissibility of evidence of flight when separate offenses are involved appears in United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036 (5th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 847, 99 S. Ct. 147, 58 L. Ed. 2d 149 (1978):
"550 F.2d  at 1049-51.
See, also, Rogers v. State, 630 So. 2d 88 (Ala. 1992).
The evidence indicated that Mr. Estes was killed on or about December 2, 1989; that Weaver moved to Florida in August or September 1990 to live with his niece and to find work; that he did not leave Alabama until after he had been discharged from parole in connection with another offense; and that he was arrested in Florida in June 1991, approximately two months after he had been notified by an investigator with the Attalla, Alabama, Police Department that he was a suspect in the case. The record and the arguments of the parties also suggest that the Attalla Police Department did not begin until February 28, 1991, to focus on Weaver as a possible suspect in the murder of Mr. Estes. Assuming that Weaver was not a suspect when he left Alabama in 1990, we would conclude that the evidence was insufficient to furnish reasonable support for an inference that Weaver's move to Florida was motivated by a guilty conscience in regard to the murder of Mr. Estes. Our conclusion in this regard would be dictated by the fact that the only reasonable inference to be drawn from the evidence would be that Weaver, approximately eight or nine months after the crime had occurred and at a time when he was under no suspicion of being involved in it, left Alabama and went to Florida to live with a relative and to find work. The length of time between the murder and Weaver's move to Florida, in conjunction with the fact that Weaver was under no suspicion of being involved in the murder, would weigh heavily against inferring that his move was motivated by a desire to avoid arrest and prosecution for the murder of Mr. Estes. It is also significant, we think, that Weaver delayed his move to Florida until after he had been discharged from parole and that he made no attempt to flee from his niece's residence in Florida after he had been notified that he was a suspect in the case. As a whole, the record does not appear to demonstrate the kind of instinctive or impulsive behavior on Weaver's part that generally indicates fear of apprehension and that gives evidence of flight such limited reliability and trustworthiness as it possesses. Although we recognize that prosecutors are generally given wide latitude in proving that an accused fled out of a consciousness of guilt, it is clear that flight evidence can be so untrustworthy, when there is no evidence that the defendant fled because of a consciousness of guilt or a desire to avoid arrest and prosecution, that the probative value of the evidence is outweighed by the prejudice it produces.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment is reversed and the case is remanded for an order or proceedings consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
MADDOX,[*] SHORES, KENNEDY, and COOK, JJ., concur.
HOOPER, C.J., and INGRAM, and BUTTS,* JJ., dissent.
*292 HOOPER, Chief Justice (dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The jury instruction at issue here was:
(Emphasis added.)
The instruction, taken in its in context, merely states the relevance of "flight." The instruction speaks of "a defendant's flight" and states that it "may be considered," not that it "shall" be considered. If the judge was holding, or instructing the jury, that flight had been proven, then the jury would have been required to consider flight. The instruction does not direct the jury to accept or to reject the evidence of flight. The defense was allowed to introduce evidence indicating there was no flight; this fact is important. The jurors were still left by the judge's instruction to draw a conclusion if they believed the prosecution had proven flight. Therefore, the court was not requiring the jury to find that there had been a flight by the defendant. The jury had evidence on both sides to weigh on the issue of flight. The court did not err in giving the instruction, and thus no curative instruction was required.
There is no dispute that evidence of flight is a circumstance the jury may consider "even where the conduct of the defendant tending to show flight is weak and inconclusive." Eddins v. State, 501 So. 2d 574 (Ala. Crim.App.1986). See also, United States v. Levine, 5 F.3d 1100 (7th Cir.1993) (evidence of defendant's flight one year after murders when defendant realized he would be indicted was admissible as probative of defendant's guilt). Further, I note that no Alabama cases have disallowed evidence of flight on the basis of remoteness. C. Gamble, McElroy's Alabama Evidence, § 190.01(4) at 383 (4th ed. 1991).
The evidence of flight was sufficient to go to the jury, especially since this is an area in which the courts and prosecutors have been given much leeway. The jury could reasonably have found that the reason Weaver took nearly eight months to go to Florida was that he was on parole and had to stay in Alabama, until July 27, 1990. He went to live in Florida with his niece and her husband in August 1990, just after his parole term ended. He had never lived with his niece before and had met her husband only once before. He asked if he and Tina Leslie, the mother of his child, could stay with his niece and her husband until he and Tina "got on their feet." He moved in, and only later did Tina and their child join him there. In the spring of 1991, the police telephoned him and told him he was a suspect in a murder investigation and asked him to return to Alabama. He became angry and did not return to Alabama. He continued to live in Florida until he was arrested there and extradited. The evidence of flight came both from evidence that the state introduced, as well as evidence Weaver introduced. The evidence was at least minimally sufficient to go to the jury, and the jury then weighed the evidence. The conviction should not be reversed on the basis that the court erred in allowing the jury to consider evidence of flight.
[1]  The State's case was based primarily on the testimony of two witnessesHenry Gene Whitmore, a codefendant; and Faye Edwards, the mother of another codefendantand the credibility of those two witnesses was at issue. Without detailing all of the testimony at the trial, suffice it to say that any juror who might have been uncertain as to the weight to give these witnesses' testimony could have been influenced by the trial court's instruction.

We also note that Weaver objected at trial to the flight instruction on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to support such an instruction. However, it appears that Weaver's argument concerning the adequacy of the flight instruction was not made to the trial court; therefore, we have reviewed that argument under the "plain error" rule. See Rule 39(k), Ala. R.App.P.
[*]  Although Justices MADDOX and BUTTS were not present when this case was orally argued, they have listened to the tape of that oral argument.