Clemons v. City of Saraland
| Decision Date | 12 March 2021 |
| Docket Number | CR-19-0046 |
| Citation | 334 So.3d 278 |
| Parties | Chikesia Eugenea CLEMONS v. CITY OF SARALAND |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Marcus T. Foxx, Mobile, for appellant.
J. Jeffrey Perloff, Mobile, for appellee.
Chikesia Eugenea Clemons appeals her conviction for resisting arrest, a violation of § 13A-10-41, Ala. Code 1975, for which she was sentenced to six months in the Mobile County Metro Jail. The trial court suspended Clemons's sentence and ordered her to serve one year of "informal probation." (C. 370.)
In April 2018, Clemons was arrested by police officers employed with the City of Saraland ("the City") on charges of disorderly conduct, a violation of § 13A-11-7, Ala. Code 1975, and resisting arrest following an altercation with employees of a Waffle House restaurant in Saraland and Saraland police officers. On June 6, 2018, Clemons was convicted in the Saraland Municipal Court of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Clemons appealed to the Mobile Circuit Court ("the trial court") for a trial de novo and was tried by a jury. The evidence presented at Clemons's jury trial tended to establish the following facts.
At approximately 2:30 a.m. on April 22, 2018, Clemons and her friend, Canita Adams, along with an unidentified man, went to a Waffle House restaurant in Saraland and sat in a booth to await service. Janet Jackson, a waitress, testified that she "tried to wait on them to start with" but that "they didn't want regular silverware" and that she informed them that "there was a 50 cent cost for [plastic] ‘silverware.’ " (R. 768.) According to Jackson, when she informed Clemons and Adams that there would be a charge for plastic utensils, "it started a ruckus" (R. 768) in which Clemons and Adams "started arguing with [her] and cussing" (R. 769) and "called [her] a bitch and [said] they wasn't paying for the motherfucking silverware." (R. 785.) Jackson testified that, at that point, she refused to serve Clemons and Adams and, instead, asked Goldie Mincey, another waitress, to serve them because, Jackson testified, Mincey "just seems like she can tame everybody down." (R. 769.)
Mincey testified that she approached Clemons and Adams and attempted to take their order but that Clemons and Adams called her "a fat bitch" and "a motherfucker" (R. 625) and that Adams "got up and went to pointing her finger in [Mincey's] face" (R. 626), at which point Mincey "said, ‘It would be best if y'all go ahead and leave now.’ " (R. 626-27.) However, according to Mincey, Clemons and Adams refused to leave, so she asked another Waffle House employee to telephone the police. Mincey testified that after briefly walking outside Clemons and Adams returned to the restaurant and that Clemons stated that she was "going to [get] ... the manager's number and ... would have [Mincey's] job come tomorrow morning." (R. 631.) According to Mincey, Clemons was still "hollering and cussing" (R. 633) when Christopher Ramey and Bryson McDaniel, police officers with the Saraland Police Department, arrived at the restaurant, and Mincey testified that, within seconds of Officer Ramey entering the restaurant, Clemons said that she would " ‘come across this counter and beat [Mincey's] ass.’ " (R. 637.)
Officer Ramey testified that, when he and Officer McDaniel arrived at the restaurant, he encountered a man in the parking lot who had just left the restaurant and who informed him that he "better hurry up and get in there" because "it's fixing to get bad." (R. 557.) Regarding what occurred when he entered the restaurant, Officer Ramey testified:
(R. 558-66.) The jury also saw a video of the altercation recorded by the surveillance camera at the Waffle House and a video of Clemons's arrest that Adams had recorded on her cellular telephone.
At the close of evidence, Clemons moved for a judgment of acquittal and also moved "for a dismissal of the charges based on prosecutorial misconduct." (R. 874.) The trial court denied both motions and submitted the case to the jury, which acquitted Clemons of disorderly conduct but convicted her of resisting arrest. Clemons subsequently filed a motion for a judgment of acquittal following the jury's verdict in which she argued that her resisting-arrest conviction must be set aside because, she said, her arrest was unlawful. The trial court denied Clemons's postjudgment motion, and Clemons filed a timely notice of appeal.
On appeal, Clemons argues that the trial court erred by denying her postjudgment motion for an acquittal and by denying her motion to dismiss the indictment. We address each claim in turn.
Clemons argues that the trial court erred by denying her postjudgment motion for an acquittal. In support of that claim, Clemons notes that, in Alabama, a person " ‘may use reasonable force to extricate himself from an unlawful arrest.’ " Telfare v. City of Huntsville, 841 So. 2d 1222, 1229 (Ala. 2002) (quoting Ex parte Wallace, 497 So. 2d 96, 97 (Ala. 1986) ). Relying on that principle, Clemons contends that her acquittal of disorderly conduct -- the offense for which she was arrested -- established that she did not commit that offense and that, as a result, her arrest for that offense was unlawful. Thus, Clemons argues, because reasonable resistance to an unlawful arrest is justified, id., her resisting-arrest conviction must be reversed.
However, this Court has expressly rejected a claim that a conviction for resisting arrest cannot stand in light of an acquittal of the offense that gave rise to the arrest. In Graham v. City of Mobile, 686 So. 2d 541 (Ala. Crim. App. 1996), Donald Graham, Sr., was convicted of third-degree assault, a violation of § 13A-6-22, Ala. Code 1975, and resisting arrest. On appeal, however, this Court agreed with Graham's claim that the City of Mobile...
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