Court Opinion

ID: 9665902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:59:16.235645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:20.350283
License: Public Domain

Robert H. Dudley, Justice, concurring. I concur in affirming the trial court, but would reach appellant’s argument involving the sufficiency of the evidence. Appellant made a specific motion for a directed verdict at the close of the State’s case. The trial court denied the motion. Appellant renewed his motion at the close of all of the evidence, but the trial court did not announce a ruling. Rather, the trial court charged the jury. The majority opinion cites valid precedent for its holding that appellant failed to obtain a ruling on the motion and, as a result, did not preserve the issue of sufficiency of the evidence. I have no disagreement with the well-established rule that the failure to obtain a ruling constitutes a waiver of an issue, but it does not seem appropriate to apply the rule under the facts of this case. When a lawyer renews a motion for a directed verdict at the close of all the evidence and the trial judge turns away from him, faces the jury, and begins to instruct the jury, the trial judge has denied the motion by his actions. The real difficulty with the holding of the majority opinion and its precedent is that it applies to all cases, civil as well as criminal. Consequently, in all cases when a trial judge does not make a ruling aloud but rather begins the charge to the jury, it is necessary for the attorney who made the motion to immediately interrupt the charge to the jury and obtain a ruling aloud. Motions for directed verdict have traditionally been made and ruled upon outside the hearing of the jury; now, the interruption must necessarily take place in front of the jury with prejudice possibly resulting to the movant. For this reason, I would hold that the trial judge denied the motion when he said nothing, but began to charge the jury. Even so, the result of this case would be the same, for there was more than sufficient evidence to prove that appellant was guilty of capital murder. BROWN and Roaf, JJ., join in this concurrence.