Court Opinion

ID: 9768993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:01:19.5019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:52.084719
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. The appellant was convicted of aggravated robbery and manslaughter primarily upon the testimony of one Samuel White. The appellant did not testify. No other witness placed the appellant at the crime scene. There is no doubt that Samuel White and William McCarty actually committed the crime. One of their accomplices was killed by a relative of the victim, during the robbery. Two witnesses to the crime described White as the leader of the band. The prosecutor negotiated an agreement with White, whereby White would testify against the appellant at appellant’s trial in return for the prosecutor’s acceptance of a guilty plea and a five year sentence on manslaughter and, after his testimony at the appellant’s trial, a guilty plea with a twelve year sentence on the aggravated robbery charge. The five year sentence was imposed prior to appellant’s trial; however, the twelve year sentence was forgotten about until it was too late to impose a penalty. The result is that White served not one day for, nor was he ever convicted of, nor did he enter a guilty plea to, the crime of aggravated robbery. During appellant’s trial White appeared as a witness for the state and testified that he had received a twelve year sentence for the aggravated robbery and that he was serving the time. Defense counsel apparently did not know that White had, in fact, not beén sentenced and had not entered a guilty plea to the aggravated robbery charge. However, he could have walked across the hall and looked at the docket sheet and found that White had not been sentenced. The failure to discover this information, coupled with the perjured testimony of White, who was the state’s chief witness, denied the appellant a fair trial. It is no secret that the state frequently holds a sentence over an informer’s head to insure his cooperation during the trial of another person. Such tactics are not illegal, but I do believe that in order to insure a fair trial the jury should know the pressure that is being brought to bear on the state’s witness. It seems very obvious that had the jury been informed that Samuel White was lying to them and that he had a secret agreement with the prosecutor to enter a sentence later, the jury may well have not given the sentence it did. At least with respect to the sentence imposed, it is my opinion that counsel’s performance prejudiced the appellant’s case to the extent that he did not receive a fair trial and that there is certainly a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different. Crockett v. State, 282 Ark. 582, 669 S.W.2d 896 (1984); and Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). See also Blackmon v. State, 274 Ark. 202, 623 S.W.2d 184 (1981). The jury certainly was under a false impression that White was serving time for aggravated robbery. In fact, he never served a day for this particular aggravated robbery. In the state’s closing argument the prosecutor asserted that two other persons had fessed up to the truth and were serving their time. This simply was not the truth and in my opinion constituted prejudicial error. Even though the prosecutor may have honestly forgotten about his agreement with White until it was brought to his attention a year later, it is nevertheless a fact that the jury did not learn that the state’s key witness was lying to them. The prosecutor candidly admitted that it is possible he made the agreement as stated by White, but he did not remember it at the time of the hearing on the Rule 37 petition. It matters not whether the prosecutor remembered or whether he intentionally participated in misleading the jury, the result to the appellant is the same. He did not have a fair trial. I would reverse and remand with instructions to grant the petition for a new trial.