Opinion ID: 1946348
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: admission of arrest and probation revocation forms

Text: The state introduced into evidence at the sentencing hearing a commitment paper from Jones County indicating that Gray had been convicted of aggravated assault upon a law enforcement officer and had been placed on probation for three years. Attached to the commitment paper were the arrest warrant and probation revocation forms which indicated that he had committed another unnamed violation of law. Defense counsel objected to introduction of the order of the circuit court because of the additional writing on the bottom. This referred to the fact that the commitment paper indicated that Gray's probation was revoked and his three-year sentence was reinstated. Gray argues that this evidence should not have been admitted at trial under the rule that proof of a crime different from that alleged in the indictment is not submissible against the accused. Gray v. State, 351 So.2d 1342, 1345 (Miss. 1977); West v. State, 463 So.2d 1048 (Miss. 1985). In West, we held it to be error for the jury to see during the sentencing phase a copy of the defendant's Georgia conviction which recited that he had been found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death. We found that this information impermissibly lessened the burden upon the jury as to whether their verdict was the only final determination on the question of whether the death penalty would be imposed upon West. Id. at 1052-53. Gray further argues that the introduction of the probation revocation evidence was irrelevant to any of the aggravating circumstances the state was allowed to prove and was prejudicial because it suggested that Gray had committed other crimes. Gray further argues that he was not represented by counsel at the probation revocation hearing and, therefore, his Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated. The papers in question only showed that Gray did eventually serve time for the aggravated assault conviction, but do not reveal the crime for which his probation was revoked. Furthermore, the inference that Gray had committed another unnamed crime could not have prejudiced him in any way differently from his own admission from the witness stand of convictions for aggravated assault, grand larceny, and cattle theft. Gray admitted to the jury that he served around 28 months in prison and was last paroled from the penitentiary in August of 1981. Gray's situation is readily distinguishable from West v. State, supra , because nothing in the probation revocation forms indicated that Gray had already been sentenced to death, so that their admission could not have lessened the jury's burden in returning a second death sentence. The state properly points out in its argument that this record is completely silent as to whether Gray was represented by counsel at the probation revocation hearing and this Court will not act on such naked assertions.