Opinion ID: 1675525
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Freeing Travis Buckley While Condemning Alvin Hill Is Arbitrary and Capricious

Text: On the first substantive error under discussion, compare this case with Buckley v. State, 223 So.2d 524 (Miss. 1969). In Buckley, the defendant was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to ten years in prison. This Court reversed his conviction because the trial court erroneously allowed the state to elicit from a codefendant that he (the codefendant) had pled guilty to the kidnapping. Buckley observed that The law is well settled in this state that where two or more persons are jointly indicted for the same offense but are separately tried, a judgment of conviction against one of them is not competent evidence on the trial of the other because such plea of guilty or conviction is no evidence of the guilt of the party being tried. 223 So.2d at 528. This case presents a legally and factually analogous situation. Codefendant Gregory Tucker testified that, arising out of the same facts and circumstances as gave rise to the Hill prosecution, he had been convicted of manslaughter. This is clear grounds for reversal. How can Travis Buckley's ten year sentence be vacated on the basis of this error while Alvin Hill's death sentence is affirmed? There are only two differences in the cases: Buckley's attorney made timely objection in the trial court, while Hill's did not. Buckley was sentenced to ten years in prison while Hill has been sentenced to death. This latter difference surely renders the first legally irrelevant and thus arbitrary.