Title: Ex Parte McCurley

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

412 So. 2d 1236 (1982)
Ex parte Lula Mae McCURLEY.
Re STATE of Alabama
v.
Lula Mae McCURLEY.
80-539.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
January 8, 1982.
Rehearing Denied February 5, 1982.
*1237 Richard D. Horne of Hess, Atchison & Horne, Mobile, for petitioner.
Charles A. Graddick, Atty. Gen., and Joseph G. L. Marston, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.
EMBRY, Justice.
We granted the writ of certiorari directed to the Court of Criminal Appeals to review a question of first impression: whether monies paid as fine and costs imposed after pleas of guilty to criminal charges made pursuant to a statute subsequently determined, retroactively, to be unconstitutional in its application to defendant, must be refunded?
Petitioner, Lula Mae McCurley, pleaded guilty in 1978 to charges of sale of pentazocine hydrochloride (Talwin) in violation of the Alabama Uniform Controlled Substances Act, Code 1975, §§ 20-2-1, et seq. She received a five year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay a fine in the amount of $5,000 and court costs totalling $307.70, both of which she duly paid.
Subsequently, this court ruled in McCurley v. State, 390 So. 2d 25 (Ala.1980), that Talwin had not been classified as a controlled substance under the requirements of the Act and we, therefore, reversed McCurley's conviction for its sale. Following that decision, McCurley petitioned the trial court for the writ of habeas corpus to vacate the conviction and sentence. The trial court granted her requested relief and also ordered that she be repaid the amounts of the fine and court costs, from which judgment the State appealed.
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment insofar as it vacated the conviction and sentence, but reversed as to the order for the State to repay the fine and court costs, saying:
We find no Alabama case which has addressed the issue here presented. However, this very question was considered by the federal district court in United States v. Lewis, 342 F. Supp. 833 (E.D.La.1972), aff'd 478 F.2d 835 (5th Cir. 1973), which declared:
In Lewis, the federal government asserted, as does the State here, the defenses of sovereign immunity and availability to petitioner of another remedy. In affirming the lower court's decision, the Fifth Circuit addressed these issues as follows:
478 F.2d  at 836.
Reasoning similarly, the Supreme Court of South Dakota in State v. Piekkola, 90 S.D. 335, 241 N.W.2d 563 (1976), pronounced:
And in People v. Meyerowitz, 61 Ill. 2d 200, 335 N.E.2d 1 (1975), the Supreme Court of Illinois concluded:
Our thinking accords with the rationale and holdings of these decisions from other jurisdictions. We therefore conclude the trial court was acting both within its authority, and judiciously, in ordering repayment of the amounts of the fine and court costs to McCurley. Equity and fairness demanded no less.
*1239 The judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals is due to be reversed and this case is hereby remanded to that court for entry of judgment consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
TORBERT, C. J., and MADDOX, FAULKNER, JONES, ALMON, SHORES, BEATTY and ADAMS, JJ., concur.