Court Opinion

ID: 9527597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:31:45.955982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:55.664113
License: Public Domain

*622MERRILL, Justice.
Appellant was convicted of robbery and sentenced to 25 years in the penitentiary. The offense occurred in 1962. Appellant, then 17 years of age, was first sent to the Juvenile Court, where it was later decided that he should be tried as an adult. That ruling was reviewed and affirmed by this court in Guenther v. State, 279 Ala. 596, 188 So.2d 594. Then, in January, 1965, appellant was convicted of burglary and received a sentence of 2 to ■10 years. His trial on the present charge was held on May 29, 1967.
The victim of the robbery, Thomas C. Capell, was parked in front of Williams School in Montgomery, where his wife taught, about 9:20 P.M. on October 10, 1962. He was waiting to take his wife home. Two young men walked up to his car, pointed their pistols at him, got inside the car and told him they wanted to go for a ride and they would guarantee his safety if he cooperated with them. He offered them the money he had in his pocket and his automobile. They required him to drive off on a side road and then one of them hit him in the head and both’ of them began to beat him. After he had been severely beaten, they took his money and his outer clothing and drove off in his car, leaving him lying in the road. He testified that appellant was one of the men who had robbed him.
Capell crawled to a house and called for help. He was taken to a hospital where approximately 200 stitches were taken in his scalp. « - •
Sometime later, the Sheriff of Montgomery County -was notified that Capell’s automobile had beéri found in Pulaski, Ten-nesse'e, and the two o'ceupants -were being held in custody. About a week after the robbery, Captain J. H. Duke and Detective J. C. McKenzie went to Pulaski to-return the two occupants, appellant and one Charles Stalker, to Montgomery. The Pulaski police returned the automobile and Capell’s wallet to Capell.
The first point raised concerns the admissibility of some statements which the officers overheard the prisoners make as they were riding in an automobile on the way back to Montgomery. The two officers were on the front seat and the-prisoners on the rear seat. Detective McKenzie testified that before they left Tennessee, the prisoners were told that the officers would talk to them and question, them when they all returned to Montgomery, and both he and Captain Duke-testified that they were not questioned during the entire trip.
Captain Duke testified that appellant asked him and McKenzie what the penalty for robbery was in Alabama and he told him “from ten years to electrocution.” Appellant admits that he asked the question. Captain Duke testified that appellant and Stalker began dicussing the case between themselves, that he overheard them: 'say that after they beat the man and took his car they went to the bus station, got their suitcases and drove north and that they were arrested in Pulaski, Tennessee. Duke testified that appellant did not admit or deny to him that he was implicated in the crime because he did not question appellant, but that they did talk freely and voluntarily among themselves.
Appellant brought out on cross examination of Duke that Stalker had pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 15 years..
Appellant, who took the stand in his own behalf, testified that he heard what the-officers said about the conversations he and Stalker had, and he denied that they occurred, but at no time did he claim or testify that he or Stalker were questioned, by thé 'officers while they were being transported-from Pulaski to • Montgomery. He-*623testified that on the same day he was arrested in Pulaski, he called his mother and “she got me an attorney” there.
None of the statements overheard and testified to by the officers were made to them or in answer to any questioning by them. But they were inculpatory admissions. We have held that inculpatory admissions as well as direct confessions are prima facie involuntary and inadmissible, and before they can be admitted in evidence it must be shown that they were voluntarily made. Reeves v. State, 260 Ala. 66, 68 So.2d 14; Tillison v. State, 248 Ala. 199, 27 So.2d 43. A predicate was laid to Captain Duke.
Confessions voluntarily made by the defendant of his own free will are admissible although made while the accused is in the custody of law officers. Johnson v. State, 272 Ala. 633, 133 So.2d 53; Goldin v. State, 271 Ala. 678, 127 So.2d 375.
The true test of voluntariness of •extra-judicial confessions is whether, under .all the surrounding circumstances, they have been induced by a threat or a promise, express or implied, operating to produce in the mind of the prisoner apprehension of harm or hope of favor; and if so, whether true or false, such confessions must be •excluded from the' consideration of the jury as having been procured by undue influence. Womack v. State, 281 Ala. 499, 205 So.2d 579. Applying this test to the inculpatory admissions overheard by the ■officers as appellant and Stalker talked with each other, we conclude that the trial court did not err in admitting the ■evidence.
Appellant complains that the court erred in permitting a pistol to be introduced in •evidence. The pistol was turned over to Detective McKenzie by the Pulaski police and was identified to him as having been taken from appellant’s luggage. On cross examination, McKenzie was asked if two pistols were turned-over to him by the Pulaski police and he said that he djd‘ receive two pistols. He stated that he did not know of his personal knowledge where the pistols “came from.” He had previously testified that he had heard appellant and Stalker say that they had purchased two pistols in Atlanta and that appellant said that he was the first one who hit Capell over the head. He also stated that he found a letter from the Post Office Department to Mr. Capell in Guenther’s luggage.
Both the pistol and the testimony about finding the letter were admitted into evidence without objection.
Appellant contends that the evidence of the pistol and the letter coming from his luggage was inadmissible because it was the result of an illegal search and seizure.
The answer to this contention is that the right to protection against an unlawful search is personal, and a defendant in a criminal case who denies any proprietory or possessory interest in seized property has no standing to object to the method of seizure. Aldridge v. State, 278 Ala. 470, 179 So.2d 51, and federal cases there cited.
Appellant had testified that the four or five pieces of .luggage turned over to the officers by the Pulaski police did not belong to him, that he had not been in Montgomery, but went with the carnival with which he was working from Atlanta to Nashville, that he had not purchased a pistol in Atlanta; that he just met Stalker in. Nashville, that Stalker had the automobile and a pistol and that he and Stalker were going from Nashville to appellant’s home in Huron, Michigan when they were arrested in Pulaski. Clearly, appellant’s denial of any luggage and the ownership or. possession of a pistol prohibited him from raising the admissibility of the evidence on the ground that it was secured by-an illegal search or seizure.
*624 Appellant argues that the trial court erred in refusing -to give' the following requested written charges:
“The law- presumes the defendant is innocent of the charge against him and this presumption of innocence is evidence in his behalf to be considered by you, and you cannot find him guilty until, from the evidence, his guilt is established to your reasonable satisfaction, and beyond a reasonable doubt.
* * * * * *
“I charge you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the indictment, information, affidavit or warrant of arrest in this case is not any evidence in this case, and the fact that the defendant was arrested is not to be-considered by you as a circumstance against him, but said indictment, information, affidavit or warrant of arrest is merely the method of placing the defendant on trial, but the presumption of innocence attends the 'deféndant throughout this trial and remains with him and authorizes an acquittal, if the entire testimony fails to overcome the presumption of the defendant’s innocence, by proof of the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.”
The first charge was properly refused because it was misleading. The burden of proof in a criminal case is not to the jury’s “reasonable satisfaction.” Ragland v. State, 238 Ala. 587, 192 So. 498. The trial court charged, in part, as follows:
“ * * * A criminal case begins with an indictment. I charge you that the indictment is not evidence for- the State of Alabama nor is it evidence against a defendant. The only thing that an indictment is so far as your consideration is concerned is the method the law has devised to present, the nature of a case before a jury of twelve ladies and gentlemen as yourselves. Once again, it is neither evidence for nor against and anything that-has gone on-''-prior to the indictment, the warrant, the affidavit of arrest — all of those matters are not to be considered by you in this or any other-case that you sit upon as criminal Court jurors. When a person is indicted there is immediately a presumption that is the very basis and foundation of our system of law and it is this presumption. A person charged with a crime in an indictment such as this is presumed to be innocent until he is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty. In other words, when an indictment is returned by the Grand Jury against a defendant it immediately places upon the State of Alabama as the party bringing the action the burden to prove the defendant guilty, as there is this presumption of innocence. Now, the measure of proof required to successfully carry that burden in behalf of the State is in a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, the State has the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt each and every one of the essential allegations or the material parts of the indictment. * * *.!!
The second charge was refused without error since the same rules of law were substantially and fairly given in the court’s oral charge to the jury. Tit. 7, § 273, Code 1940; Chambers v. State, 264 Ala. 8, 84 So.2d 342.
Finally, appellant argues that “every defendant, from the moment he is arrested until he is finally tried and the case disposed of, is not only entitled but required to have an attorney present in order to consult with him, advise and represent him.” In oral argument, counsel concedes, that no court has yet gone this far, but that this court should lead the way in making such a pronouncement. This court does not agree with all the decisions already announced that are loosing confessed and convicted criminals'of serious felonies upon society. We hope for the day when many of the far-fetched opinions purportedly protecting the liberties of the -individual criminal’s • will" be nullified and *625overruled. We decline to add further weight to a field where the scales of justice have already been seriously tipped.
We have found no reversible error in the record.
Affirmed.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and LAWSON and HARWOOD, JJ., concur.