Title: State v. Zimlich
Citation: 796 So. 2d 399
Docket Number: 1981536
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: May 5, 2000

796 So. 2d 399 (2000)
Ex parte State of Alabama.
(Re STATE of Alabama
v.
Wayne ZIMLICH).
1981536

Supreme Court of Alabama.
May 5, 2000.
Rehearing Denied July 7, 2000.
*400 Bill Pryor, atty. gen., and James B. Prude, asst. atty. gen., for petitioner.
Kenneth A. Nixon, Mobile; and Joseph D. Quinlivan, Jr., Mobile, for respondent.
ENGLAND, Justice.
Wayne Zimlich, a registered nurse-anesthetist, and his supervising physicians were sued in a medical-malpractice case; the plaintiff alleged that they had negligently caused the death of a patient during a surgical procedure. Zimlich testified at the trial of the malpractice case in October 1995. After the trial, Zimlich sued his insurance company, alleging that it had acted in bad faith in failing to settle the malpractice claim against him. After a trial in November 1997, he was awarded $15,000 against the insurance company. In the trial of his claim against the insurer, he alleged that he had been coerced into giving false testimony at the malpractice trial, and that the coercion was by the insurance company and its employees, the doctor who employed him, and the defense attorney for the insurance company.
Zimlich was indicted in June 1998 for perjury. The indictment read:
Zimlich moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that it failed to allege the offense of perjury in the first degree because *401 it made no allegation that the alleged perjurious statement was "material." The trial court dismissed the indictment, stating:
A second indictment was returned in January 1999. That indictment read:
Zimlich moved to dismiss the second indictment, alleging that it was barred by the three-year statute of limitations. The trial court denied Zimlich's motion on May 11, 1999.[1] The court set the perjury case for trial on May 26, 1999. Zimlich petitioned the Court of Criminal Appeals for a writ of mandamus directing Judge Robert G. Kendall, the judge to whom Zimlich's perjury case was assigned (see note 1), to dismiss the second indictment. Judge Kendall denied a motion by Zimlich to stay his trial pending a ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals.
The Court of Criminal Appeals granted Zimlich's petition and ordered Judge Kendall to dismiss the second indictment, holding that it was barred by the statute of limitations. Ex parte Zimlich, 796 So. 2d 394 (Ala.Crim.App.1999). The Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the first indictment tracked the language of § 13A-10-103, Ala.Code 1975, the statute defining third-degree perjury. That statute reads: "A person commits the crime of perjury in the third degree when he swears falsely." The statutory limitations period for commencing a prosecution for third-degree perjury, a misdemeanor, is 12 months. Ala.Code 1975, § 15-3-2. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that the first indictment did not operate to toll the running of the time for returning the second indictment because, it said, the first indictment charged an offense different from that charged in the second indictment and because the first indictment was void, having been returned more than 12 months after the alleged perjury had occurred at the October 9, 1995 trial. Id.[2]
In order to obtain a writ of mandamus, the party seeking the writ must show (1) a clear legal right to the order sought; (2) an imperative duty upon the respondent to perform, accompanied by a refusal to do so; (3) a lack of another remedy; and (4) properly invoked jurisdiction of the court. Ex parte Gonzalez, 686 So. 2d 204 (Ala.1996) (citing Ex parte Ziglar, 669 So. 2d 133 (Ala.1995)).
The State has now petitioned this Court for a writ of mandamus directing the Court of Criminal Appeals to set aside the writ of mandamus it issued on Zimlich's petition.
Zimlich argued before the Court of Criminal Appeals that he would suffer irreparable harm if convicted of felony perjury because the felony conviction, he said, would deprive him of his license to practice his profession and thereby deprive him of his livelihood. The Court of Criminal Appeals quoted from Ex parte Spears, 621 So. 2d 1255, 1259 (Ala.1993), where this Court had stated that "mandamus review *403 will generally be restricted ... to those cases where one of the recognized exceptions applies, or to those extraordinary cases where the rights of the parties cannot be adequately protected by appellate review of a final judgment." That court concluded that Zimlich's rights could not be adequately protected if it denied mandamus review. Ex parte Zimlich, 796 So. 2d  at 396. The State argues here that the Court of Criminal Appeals erred in issuing its writ of mandamus because, it says, Zimlich failed to establish that he had a clear legal right to the relief sought. We agree.
We have stated:
Ex parte Fowler, 574 So. 2d 745, 747 (Ala. 1990). We conclude that on his petition to the Court of Criminal Appeals Zimlich failed to establish that Judge Kendall had a duty to dismiss his indictment as barred by the statute of limitations and improperly refused to do so. "The fact that a statute of limitations defense is applicable is not a proper basis for issuing a writ of mandamus, due to the availability of a remedy by appeal." Ex parte Southland Bank, 514 So. 2d 954, 955 (Ala.1987). Zimlich did not show that he had a clear legal right to the order he sought.
The State contends that the Court of Criminal Appeals erred in holding that the June 1998 indictment (the first indictment) charged third-degree perjury; that that indictment was void on the basis that it was returned after the one-year limitations period had expired; and that it did not toll the running of the limitations period for a prosecution of the offense charged in the second indictment. Zimlich argued in the Court of Criminal Appeals that the June 1998 indictment was void because it attempted to state a first-degree perjury charge but in actuality stated only a third-degree perjury charge because it did not allege that the alleged false statements made either during the malpractice trial or during Zimlich's trial against his insurance carrier were "material." In making this argument, Zimlich asserted that the Court of Criminal Appeals needed to decide whether Rule 15.5(c), Ala. R.Crim. P., applied; whether the tolling statute, § 15-3-6, Ala.Code 1975, applied and was superior to Rule 15.5(c); and whether the tolling statute permitted a subsequent indictment to increase the nature of the alleged offense from a misdemeanor to a felony. The uncertainty about the applicability of Rule 15.5(c) and § 15-3-6 and the question whether the State's error in regard to the first indictment was the kind of "inadvertent technical error" contemplated by Rule 15.5(c) (see Committee Comments to that rule) lead us to conclude that Zimlich had no clear legal right to an order by Judge Kendall dismissing the second indictment as barred by the statute of limitations, given that Zimlich, if improperly convicted, would have had a remedy by appeal.
The State is entitled to a writ directing the Court of Criminal Appeals to set aside its writ of mandamus.
*404 PETITION GRANTED; WRIT ISSUED.
HOUSTON, COOK, LYONS, BROWN, and JOHNSTONE, JJ., concur.
HOOPER, C.J., and MADDOX and SEE, JJ., concur in the result.
[1]  The perjury case based on the second indictment was assigned to Judge Chris Galanos. He recused himself before ruling on the motion to dismiss, after learning that the law firm he was planning to join upon resigning his judgeship represented the insurance company that had been involved in the medical-malpractice action. The case was reassigned to Judge Robert G. Kendall.
[2]  Although the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the first indictment charged Zimlich with misdemeanor perjury and that the language of the indictment tracked § 13A-10-103 (third-degree perjury), an equally persuasive argument can be made that it did not track § 13A-10-103 and did not charge misdemeanor perjury. We note that the indictment more closely tracked § 13A-10-104, which allows a person to be prosecuted for inconsistent statements that occurred within the statutory limitations period, and that it cited the felony-perjury statute, § 13A-10-101.