Mayola v. State, 6 Div. 86

• Citation: 326 So.2d 665,57 Ala.App. 137
• Decision Date: 03 February 1976
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 86
• Parties: Michael Anthony MAYOLA v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 665

326 So.2d 665

57 Ala.App. 137

Michael Anthony MAYOLA v. STATE.

6 Div. 86.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

Feb. 3, 1976.

Michael Anthony Mayola, pro se.

William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and Sam L. Webb, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

LEIGH M. CLARK, Supernumerary Circuit Judge.

The record before us in this case shows that on November 15, 1962, appellant was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for life. While serving his sentence, he became an avid student of law by means of a library furnished him at public expense. The record does not indicate that he spent much time to determine legal standards of behavior but that in the eleven years service of his sentence prior to the institution of this proceeding he spent months and even years in self-service in delving deeply into legal means by which the guilty, as well as the innocent, can escape punishment as criminals.

On April 3, 1973, appellant filed a pro se petition for writ of error coram nobis, which he subsequently amended, and which as amended was heard and denied in August 1973. The case now before us is an appeal from the judgment denying the coram nobis petition, which appeal was submitted on pro se brief of appellant and brief of appellee on November 25, 1975. As an indigent, he was afforded counsel on the hearing of the coram nobis petition, a free transcript and counsel on appeal.

In his coram nobis petition, he sets forth a miscellany of charges relative to his communications with law enforcement officers, their conduct relative to the crime with which he was charged, his arraignment, his trial and publicity attendant upon his trial and circumstances preceding it. Categorized, the charges were:

1. He was interrogated without counsel having been provided for him and 'without signing a waiver' of the right to counsel; and

2. That he was arraigned without benefit of counsel;

3. That he was in a 'state of fear and despair of his life' and that his statements 'were not the product of a rational intellect and were mentally coerced, and received in violation of the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments.'

4. That he was not aware of his right to remain silent and not to incriminate himself and that no 'relative warnings or information' were given him.

There were other purported charges in the amended petition, some of which were to some extent repetitious of the charges stated above; some were vague and indefinite, consisting chiefly of argument; some of them were not even alluded to by him when he testified on the hearing of the petition.

On the hearing, petitioner was his only witness. He testified that his repeated confessions that he had been guilty of the crime against nature and had deliberately murdered the victim, an eleven-year-old boy, by shooting him under an eye with a pistol, were made before he was made aware of his rights against self-incrimination, his right to counsel, and were in effect extorted from him instead of being voluntary on his part. He also testified that at his arraignment, at which he pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, he was not represented by counsel. He indicated that two of his counsel, appointed by the court, now deceased, were hostile or unsympathetic to him. He said very little, if anything, that constituted any indication that the other two attorneys appointed by the court did not defend him with superior skill and devotion.

Evidence for the State on the coram nobis hearing consisted of the testimony of Russell E. Vorpagle, a former investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Baltimore, Maryland; Robert G. Jenson, former assistant agent in charge of the FBI office at Birmingham; Roy McDowell, long time an investigator with the Alabama Department of Public Safety; and one of his attorneys on the trial of his case, now Honorable Wayman Sherrer, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.

Mr. Vorpagle testified that while he was in his office in Baltimore, on August 7, 1962, he was asked to speak to a man who had come into the office and wanted to talk about a parole violation. It was Mayola, the appellant. After discussing the matter of a possible parole violation, Mayola told him that something had been bothering him a great deal, that he had killed a little boy in Alabama and wanted to get it off his chest. The witness had never heard of the incident. Mayola gave him the details of the crime. According to him, 'he volunteered all of these statements.' He was not in custody at the time. With the exception of advising defendant that, if he was indigent, he would be furnished free counsel if desired (mandated two years later as to offenses 'under FBI jurisdiction' by the Criminal Justice Act of 1964), the witness complied with all of the requirements thereafter compiled in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694. (1966). ¹ After the discussion, a transcript of the colloquy between him and Mayola was made, which was read to Mayola, but which he declined signing. The transcript was introduced in evidence on the coram nobis hearing. Included in it are the following statements as to what happened five days before, after he had kidnapped the victim and his youthful companion, another boy, at Midfield in Jefferson County, the other boy had escaped, and he had taken the victim to a house in Blount County, put him in a bed and committed sodomy:

'I dozed off a few times. And in the early morning, while he was still asleep, I took a .22 caliber revolver from under my pillow and shot him. I tried to make it as painless as possible. I looked around and pulled the trigger.

'After I shot the boy, I wrapped him up and took him outside to a trench around the cabin. I put him in the corner of the trench and covered him with dirt. Then I went to work.'

Mr. Jenson testified that he went to Etowah County August 12, 1962, for a meeting with other law enforcement personnel and defendant. He had his notes of the conference, which he read...