Ex parte Carroll

• Court: Supreme Court of Alabama
• Writing for the Court: LYONS, Justice.
• Citation: 852 So.2d 833
• Parties: Ex parte Taurus CARROLL. (In re Taurus Carroll v. State of Alabama).
• Decision Date: 26 July 2002

852 So.2d 833

Ex parte Taurus CARROLL.
(In re Taurus Carroll v. State of Alabama)

1010546.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

July 26, 2002.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing September 20, 2002.

852 So.2d 834

Joe W. Morgan III, Birmingham, for petitioner

William H. Pryor, Jr., atty. gen., and A. Vernon Barnett IV, asst. atty. gen., for respondent.

LYONS, Justice.

Taurus Carroll was convicted in December 1997 of intentional murder made capital because the murder occurred during the course of a robbery in the first degree. See § 13A-5-40(a)(2), Ala.Code 1975. Carroll and Mack Dailey robbed a dry-cleaning and coin-operated-laundry business in Birmingham on April 9, 1995. During the robbery, Betty Long, one of the owners of the business, was shot and later died as a result of the gunshot wound. Carroll was 17 years old at the time of the robbery murder. The jury, by a vote of 10-2, recommended that Carroll be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but the trial court overrode the jury's recommendation and sentenced Carroll to death.

The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Carroll's conviction, but remanded the case for the trial court to resentence Carroll because in sentencing Carroll the trial court had improperly considered Carroll's prior youthful-offender adjudications. Carroll v. State, 852 So.2d 801 (Ala.Crim. App.1999) ("Carroll I"). On remand, the trial court again sentenced Carroll to death. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed that sentence. Carroll v. State, 852 So.2d at 818 (Ala.Crim.App.1999) ("Carroll II"). This Court granted certiorari review, and we affirmed the Court of Criminal Appeals' judgment as to Carroll's conviction, but reversed its judgment as to Carroll's sentence. Ex parte Carroll, 852 So.2d 821 (Ala.2001) ("Carroll III"). We remanded the case to allow the trial court the opportunity to "state specific reasons for giving the jury's recommendation the consideration he gave it," 852 So.2d at 828, pursuant to the requirement this Court announced in Ex parte Taylor, 808 So.2d 1215, 1219 (Ala.2001). In its order on return to remand in August 2001, the trial court submitted an amended sentencing order; in that order it weighed the aggravating circumstance and the mitigating circumstances in this case, and again overrode the jury's recommendation and sentenced

852 So.2d 835

Carroll to death. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed that sentence, concluding that the trial court's reasons for overriding the jury's recommendation were sufficient to comply with Ex parte Taylor. Carroll v. State, 852 So.2d 830 (Ala.Crim.App.2001) ("Carroll IV"). This Court granted certiorari review; thus, the case is now before us for the second time. For a detailed account of the facts of this case and its procedural history, see Carroll I and Carroll III.

In its sentencing order on the first remand, the trial court found only one aggravating circumstance in this case, that the murder took place during a robbery. The court found the following four mitigating circumstances: "(1) no significant prior criminal history; (2) [the] age of the defendant; (3) the favorable testimony of the family of the defendant; and (4) the jury's recommendation of life imprisonment without parole." Carroll III, 852 So.2d at 825-26. Commenting on the Court of Criminal Appeals' remand of the case in Carroll I on the basis that the trial court had improperly considered Carroll's youthful-offender adjudications, we stated:

"[T]he trial judge in this case expressly found that Carroll `[had] no significant history of prior criminal activity' and expressly acknowledged that he could not consider, `to negate this statutory mitigating circumstance,' the fact that, just four months before the robbery murder, Carroll had been released from the penitentiary, `where [he] was serving time on four

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