Hill v. State, 5647
| Decision Date | 08 November 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 5647,5647 |
| Citation | 472 S.W.2d 722,251 Ark. 370 |
| Parties | Presley Allen HILL, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Odell C. Carter, Star City, for appellant.
Ray Thornton, Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for appellee.
Presley Allen Hill, Jr. was convicted of first degree murder in the Lincoln County Circuit Court and was sentenced to life imprisonment. On appeal to this court he relies on the following points for reversal:
'The defendant was tried in prison clothes in violation of his constitutional rights.
The defendant was never arraigned.
The defendant was never furnished a copy of the indictment or information although charged with a capital offense.'
The homicide involved in this case occurred in one of the so-called 'isolation cells' in the maximum security building at the Arkansas Penitentiary where the appellant, Hill, as well as the decedent, Bittle, were serving time under felony convictions. Three young inmates testified for the state and the nauseating details as related by them would add nothing to this opinion. Suffice it to say the evidence was more than sufficient to sustain the conviction and the sufficiency of the evidence is not questioned on this appeal.
We now discuss the points relied upon by the appellant, Hill, in the order they are designated. Hill argues that he was tried in prison clothes in violation of his constitutional rights, and he cites Miller v. State, 249 Ark. ---, 457 S.W.2d 848, as authority for reversal. The accused in the Miller case was apparently serving time in the Arkansas Penitentiary under a conviction for some unrelated crime when he was brought to Pulaski County dressed in prison clothes to be tried the following day on a charge of robbery. Before trial the prisoner's appointed attorney moved for a continuance to enable the accused to obtain civilian clothes to wear at his trial, and the trial court denied the motion. In that case we followed the rule previously announced in a number of state and federal decisions that 'absent a waiver accused should not be forced to trial in prison garb,' and we reversed the trial court judgment. But in the Miller case as well as the cases cited in that opinion, the alleged crime did not occur inside the confines of the penitentiary while the accused was confined as a prisoner there.
The rationale of the rule is reasonable and sound because an accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and when he does not take the witness stand as a witness in his own defense, other unrelated crimes or convictions may not be used in evidence against him merely for the purpose of getting across to the jury the fact that he is a 'criminal' and therefore likely to have committed the crime with which he is charged. Dickerson v. State, 251 Ark. ---, 471 S.W.2d 755 (1971). Certainly an accused should not be forced to wear a badge conveying evidence which is not admissible when conveyed in words.
In the case at bar the accused was on trial for murder committed in a solitary confinement cell at the Arkansas Penitentiary and we are unable to see how he could have been prejudiced by the fact that he was wearing prison clothes at the time of his tiral. It would appear that there might have been a greater likelihood of prejudice if Hill had appeared at his trial wearing civilian clothes, thereby leaving the jury to speculate on when, how and why he was released from custody following the murder he was accused of committing so recently in a maximum security isolation cell at the state penitentiary. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Hill objected to going to trial in prison clothes until after his conviction. In Hernandez v. Beto, 443 F.2d 634, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on petition for rehearing, said:
'A defendant may not remain...
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