Ex Parte Booker, 1070376.
Decision Date | 25 April 2008 |
Docket Number | 1070376. |
Citation | 992 So.2d 686 |
Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Parties | Ex parte Michael BOOKER. (In re Michael Booker v. State of Alabama). |
Michael Booker, pro se.
Troy King, atty. gen., and James B. Prude, asst. atty. gen., respondent.
Michael Booker petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari to review whether the Court of Criminal Appeals erred in affirming the Chambers Circuit Court's order denying his Rule 32, Ala. R.Crim. P., petition. We issued the writ of certiorari to review whether Booker's claim alleging that the State presented insufficient evidence to support his convictions is precluded from appellate review. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm, on a different rationale, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Michael Booker pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder and one count of attempted murder in March 1998. After a jury trial on the capital offenses pursuant to § 13A-5-42, Ala.Code 1975, which allows a capital defendant to plead guilty but requires the State to prove the defendant's guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury convicted Booker of the capital charges. The trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on each capital conviction and to life imprisonment on the attempted-murder conviction. Booker later appealed his convictions and sentences to the Court of Criminal Appeals. In April 1998, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Booker's appeal as untimely filed. Booker v. State, 738 So.2d 944 (Ala.Crim.App.1998) (table).
In November 2006, Booker, for the third time, petitioned the trial court for postconviction relief under Rule 32, Ala. R.Crim. P., alleging, among other things, that the State presented insufficient evidence to the jury to support his capital convictions. The trial court denied the petition as untimely filed and as successive. Booker then appealed the trial court's denial of his Rule 32 petition to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment of the trial court in an unpublished memorandum. Booker v. State (No. CR-06-1730, Oct. 26, 2007), ___ So.2d ___ (Ala.Crim.App.2007) (table). That court concluded in its unpublished memorandum that Booker's insufficiency-of-the-evidence claim was without merit because he had pleaded guilty to the charged offenses. Relying on Waddle v. State, 784 So.2d 367 (Ala.Crim.App.2000), the Court of Criminal Appeals also held that "a challenge to the lack of a factual basis for a guilty plea is nonjurisdictional" and therefore subject to the procedural bars of Rule 32, Ala. R.Crim. P. Consequently, the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the trial court correctly found that Booker's claim that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions for capital murder was precluded under Rule 32.2(b), Ala. R.Crim. P., as successive, and under Rule 32.2(c), Ala. R.Crim. P., as untimely filed.
Booker then petitioned this Court for certiorari review. We granted the petition to determine whether the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals in this case conflicts with Elder v. State, 494 So.2d 922 (Ala.Crim.App.1986), and Davis v. State, 682 So.2d 476 (Ala.Crim.App.1995).
"`This Court reviews pure questions of law in criminal cases de novo.'" Ex parte Morrow, 915 So.2d 539, 541 (Ala. 2004) (quoting Ex parte Key, 890 So.2d 1056, 1059 (Ala.2003)).
To analyze whether the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals conflicts with Elder and Davis, and thus whether the Court of Criminal Appeals erred in holding that Booker's insufficiency-of-the-evidence claim is precluded, we must determine whether insufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction is a jurisdictional defect when a defendant enters a plea of guilty to a capital offense pursuant to § 13A-5-42, Ala.Code 1975. Section 13A-5-42 provides:
(Emphasis added.) This Court has not previously interpreted § 13A-5-42.
Booker correctly asserts that in Elder and Davis the Court of Criminal Appeals held that failure to prove a defendant's guilt in a capital case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury, as required by § 13A-5-42, is a jurisdictional defect. See Benton v. State, 887 So.2d 304, 306 n. 1 (Ala.Crim. App.2003) (). In Davis, 682 So.2d at 479 n. 2, the Court of Criminal Appeals relied on Cox and Elder to note that "the requirement in § 13A-5-42 that the appellant's guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury is jurisdictional."
In Cox v. State, 462 So.2d 1047, 1049 (Ala.Crim.App.1985), the trial court, without empaneling a jury, accepted a defendant's plea of guilty to a capital offense and sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The trial court later held a hearing in which the defendant again entered a plea of guilty to the same capital offense. Cox, 462 So.2d at 1049. The trial court then empaneled a jury, which heard the State's prima facie case and returned a verdict of guilty. Id. The trial court again sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Id. In analyzing the defendant's assertion that his right to be free from double jeopardy had been violated because the trial court had sentenced him twice for the same offense, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that 462 So.2d at 1051.
In Elder, 494 So.2d at 922, the defendant contended that the trial court had improperly accepted his plea of guilty under § 13A-5-42 because, he claimed, "the jury was selected by the agreement of both the prosecution and the defense." In considering whether the trial court had jurisdiction to accept the defendant's plea of guilty, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that "[w]ith regard to a guilty plea in a capital case, the requirement of § 13A-5-42 that the accused's guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury is jurisdictional." Elder, 494 So.2d at 923 (citing Cox, 462 So.2d at 1051).
In Benton, a plurality opinion, the Court of Criminal Appeals, after acknowledging the holding in Cox and Elder of the jurisdictional status of the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirement in § 13A-5-42, stated:
Booker contends that Judge Wise's opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in Benton, 887 So.2d at 308, correctly states that interpreting § 13A-5-42 as providing that an insufficiency-of-the-evidence claim is jurisdictional is consistent with Davis, Elder, and Cox. Judge Wise reasoned:
The State contends that the Court of Criminal Appeals correctly upheld the trial court's denial of Booker's Rule 32 petition because, it says, Booker's insufficiency-of-the-evidence claim is precluded as successive and untimely. See Rules 32.2(b) and (c), Ala. R.Crim. P. The State argues that the Court of Criminal Appeals correctly treated Booker's insufficiency-of-the-evidence claim as a challenge to the factual basis for the guilty plea, which it contends is a...
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