Court Opinion

ID: 9674698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:34:09.77694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:29.242326
License: Public Domain

Richard L. Mays, Justice, dissenting. Because of a lack of an objection by appellant’s attorney in the court below, the majority fails to reach the issue of whether the trial court denied appellant his statutory right to a jury trial on the habitual criminal charge. In justification, the majority basically asserts that this court should only consider an alleged error in the trial court without an objection when the damage from the error could not have been undone even had an objection been made. I would hold that some errors are so alien to certain basic concepts of fair play and render the trial procedure so fundamentally deficient that they must be reached whether or not an objection has been raised at the trial court level. See Klimas v. Mabry, 599 F. 2d 842 (8th Cir. 1979), reversed on other grounds, _ U.S. _, 100 S. Ct. 2755, 65 L. E. 2d 897 (1980). I view the denial of a right to a jury trial which has been statutorily preserved to be such an error. Under our state law, the same jury which determines the guilt of an accused must determine his status as an habitual offender before imposing punishment. See Ark. Stat. Ann. § 41-1005 (Repl. 1977). The defendant has a statutory right to be judged by a jury of his peers. This right is not of recent origin but is indigenous to our judicial heritage. Such an important right should not be usurped by an unwary judge or lost because of an absent-minded attorney. It should be preserved by a vigilant judicial structure cognizant of the significance of the jury trial right to the integrity of our system of justice. In addition to ignoring the abrogation of the jury trial right on the issue of appellant’s habitual criminal status, the majority strains to find sufficient evidence to support a finding that appellant had four or more prior felony convictions. Irrespective of the majority’s effort, however, the state’s proof concerning appellant’s prior felony convictions remains a confusing mixture of indecipherable judgments, duplications of judgments, and informations. The state not only has the burden of proving the requisite prior felony convictions but that a defendant was represented by counsel at the time of the convictions. McConahay v. State, 257 Ark. 328, 516 S.W. 2d 887 (1974). That burden was most definitely not satisfied in this case. If “burden of proof’ means anything, it means that no court should be required to probe uncommonly rare intellectual depths to extract a quantum of less than convincing evidence from a bedrock of ambiguities to justify sustaining a conviction. I would reverse the judgment below.