Court Opinion

ID: 9678561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:23:12.770921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:05.698461
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing
The District Attorney has filed an application for rehearing which has been expressly adopted by the Attorney General.5
In brief the State takes no exception to Part I of our opinion, supra. Hence, the reversal of judgment stands.
As to our interpretation of the statute, § 103 (T. 15), there is definite disagreement with our strictness.
Also, the District Attorney — mistakenly —excepts to our reference to perjury. We are glad to clarify what we intended our words to mean. Originally we wrote (perhaps too elliptically) :
“False swearing is difficult to guard against particularly where no record is of what is sworn to.”
We elaborate this to read:
“False swearing by a witness testifying orally before a magistrate who has been requested to issue a search warrant is difficult to guard against particularly where such court keeps no record or memorial of what the witness so testifying has sworn to.”
The pertinency of this observation was well illustrated by Judge Loe’s perplexity in recalling details of the testimony of the witness who had not submitted an affidavit to Judge Loe. Judge Loe has issued many search warrants, has had many witnesses before him and the passage of time to the date of Brandies’s trial all required that the District Attorney resort to leading questions to refresh his recollection.
Certainly prosecution for false swearing before Judge Loe would be less difficult of proof with a written memorandum over the witness’s signature under oath. This point lends added cogency to a mandatory meaning of the words, “and take their' depositions in writing.”
Aside from this aspect we would point’ out that our comment on the search warrant, strictly speaking, was not ratio decidendi. Rather it was a mere pronouncement by way of gratuitous dictum, advisory in nature. This because a ruling on this point was not necessary to dispose of this appeal.
*654Should the State consider that we will ultimately be held to be wrong by the Supreme Court of Alabama, as to the meaning of § 103, supra, then if Brandies is reindicted and tried, it is true that we in strict analysis have not positively ruled. However, as of now, we think that we have given the proper construction to our statute.
Opinion corrected; application overruled.

. This practice seems to obviate any question under Bruner v. State, 265 Ala. 357, 91 So.2d 224, and Gambrell v. Bridges, 266 Ala. 302, 96 So.2d 182.