Coon v. State
| Decision Date | 30 September 1965 |
| Docket Number | 2 Div. 474 |
| Citation | 179 So.2d 710,278 Ala. 581 |
| Parties | Clarence Cecil COON v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Hubbard H. Harvey, Demopolis, for appellant.
Richmond M. Flowers, Atty. Gen., and Leslie Hall, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
This appellant, Clarence Cecil Coon, has been adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree of Leonard Culpepper and sentenced to death.
Coon being unable to employ counsel, the court, prior to appellant's arraignment, appointed a member of the Marengo County bar to represent him.
Upon arraignment, appellant, through counsel, entered pleas of not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity.
This appeal is here under our automatic appeal statutes, and the counsel who represented the appellant in the trial below has filed a brief in his behalf in this court.
On the day of arraignment, counsel for appellant filed two motions in appellant's behalf, one for a change of venue, and the other for the appointment of specialists to examine appellant's mental condition. Each of these motions was denied by the court prior to trial.
At the hearing on the motion for a change of venue, the appellant presented some four citizens of Sumter County. Each of such witnesses presented by appellant testified that in their opinion the appellant could secure a fair trial in Sumter County. There was no evidence otherwise. Clearly in this state of the record no reversible error can be said to infect the trial court's action in overruling the motion for a change of venue. Denton v. State, 263 Ala. 311, 82 So.2d 406.
As to the motion to appoint three reputable specialist practitioners in mental and nervous diseases to examine appellant, we point out at the threshold of our consideration of this point that the court was under no duty to appoint a lunacy commission or to procure a report of the Superintendent of the Alabama State Hospital under the provisions of Section 425, Title 15, Code of Alabama 1940. The court has the right, but not the duty, to seek these aids for advisory purpose when in the discretion of the court it considers such aid will be helpful. Howard v. State, Ala., 178 So.2d 520, decided 30 June 1965, and cases cited therein.
Further, the only evidence offered in support of his motion for the appointment of three specialists in mental diseases was the testimony of the appellant himself. His testimony took a wide sweep, and was to the effect that his family moved to California when he was a baby and he has spent most of his life in that state; he has had eleven years in school, of which three years were in high school in California. His grades were C's and E's.
He first got into trouble when he was 15 years old when he, his brother and sister, twice broke into a frozen food establishment and took some frozen foods; then he went into the girl's gymnasium at his school and took money out of purses he found therein. For this offense he was sent to something 'like a correctional home' and was supposed to stay there until he was 21. However, while at the correctional home, he and two other boys went into a church and took some money. For this offense he was put in a reformatory. After about three months in the reformatory his probation officer placed him in a mental institution near San Francisco. There never were any court proceedings committing him to this mental institution and after about two months he was released to the custody of his parents. At the institution they gave him 'block tests and they give you a piece of paper with garbs of ink smeared on it and such as that and they ask you a lot of questions.' When he was about 19 years of age he left his home and started 'bumming around.' In Montana he stole fifteen dollars out of a man's wallet and for this he was given a 30 day suspended sentence and told to 'get out of there.' He then went to Wyoming where he broke into a creamery and stole some money. He was sentenced to 90 days for this offense. In 1961 he had worked for a T. V. store in Las Vegas, Nevada, and when he left this employment he took the key to the store with him. After about three months he entered this store with the key on four different occasions and took money out of the cash register. He was sentenced to 15 years in the penitentiary for this offense, but after one year he was released from the penitentiary.
After this he worked for various carnivals and in Houston, Texas, while working for the Max Harris shows he and three companions set out for Tennessee. On their travels they burglarized a house in Texas and one in Oklahoma. On their route to Tennessee they drove into Alabama when they concluded they were being followed by a highway patrolman.
While the appellant's testimony tends to show a criminal career on the appellant's part since he was quite young, there is nothing in his testimony of real probative value tending to establish insanity other than his testimony to the effect that he was placed in a mental institution by his probation officer in California. Even so, he was released from this institution after about two months. This evidence is indeed weak in tending to establish legal insanity on the part of the appellant.
In rebuttal to the appellant's evidence presented to establish his insanity, the state presented as witnesses Melvin Stephens, Sheriff of Sumter County, Arthur Guellett and James W. Briggs, transfer agents for state prisoners, and Dr. C. E. Kimbrough, a practicing physician in Marengo County. All of these witnesses testified that they had observed the appellant since he had been returned to Alabama after his arrest in Texas, and that in their opinion he was of sound mind.
It would thus appear that even under the appellant's evidence taken in connection with the motion for the appointment of a lunacy commission to examine the appellant, the lower court was fully justified in denying the motion. However, as before stated, the question of the appointment of medical specialists in mental disorders in response to the motion was solely within the discretion of the trial court.
The record shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this appellant and his three companions, Dezso John Lokos, Gerald Eaton, and Harold Edwards acted in full and complete concert in the burglarizing of the Leonard Culpepper home and the unprovoked and atrocious murder of Mr. Culpepper during the commission of the burglary. Each of these accomplices was indicted separately for murder in the first degree, and each has been tried separately and found guilty of murder in the first degree and...
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Seibold v. State
...of medical specialists in mental disorders in response to a motion is solely within the discretion of the trial court. Coon v. State, 278 Ala. 581, 179 So.2d 710; Tiner v. State, 279 Ala. 126, 182 So.2d The 'Second Motion for Investigation of Sanity of Defendant' was filed pursuant to the p......
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Edwards v. State
...444, and repeated in Lokos v. State, 278 Ala. 586, 179 So.2d 714. To these opinions we refer for greater detail. See also Coon v. State, 278 Ala. 581, 179 So.2d 710. The evidence favorable to defendant is to effect that he was an unwilling member of the group, that Lokos and Eaton had threa......
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...of medical specialists in mental disorders in response to a motion is solely within the discretion of the trial court. Coon v. State, 278 Ala. 581, 179 So.2d 710; Tiner v. State, 279 Ala. 126, 182 So.2d Earlier in Pace v. State, 284 Ala. 585, 226 So.2d 645, Merrill, J., stated: '* * * The l......
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