Prince v. State
| Decision Date | 28 December 1982 |
| Docket Number | 1 Div. 371 |
| Citation | 431 So.2d 565 |
| Parties | Chris PRINCE v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
G. Wayne Ashbee, Mobile, for appellant.
Charles A. Graddick, Atty. Gen., and James F. Hampton and J. Anthony McLain, Sp. Asst. Attys. Gen., for appellee.
Robbery; ten years imprisonment.
Prince was indicted for the kidnapping, rape, and robbery of a young Mobile woman. All three charges arose from a series of events occurring in the early morning hours of April 11, 1981.
The victim was accosted by a young black man as she unlocked her car in the parking lot of her apartment complex around 3:00 o'clock on the morning of April 11, 1981. The man shoved her into the car and then followed her in. He told the victim not to "try anything" because he had a gun. She could not escape through the door on the passenger's side of her automobile because that door was broken and could not be opened from the inside.
The man drove to a side alley next to Murphy High School in Mobile. When he stopped the car, the victim attempted to escape by rolling down her window and opening the right front door from the outside. As she exited, however, her abductor lunged after her and grabbed her with both hands around her throat. She was able to pull him out of the car on that side, where they wrestled in the grass, and dirt, and on the asphalt, until he eventually overpowered her. He hit her several times and threw her down on the pavement. Her head hit so hard on the pavement that her vision became blurred. In this condition and in the midst of continuing threats, the victim was raped twice by her attacker.
After the attack, the victim escaped. She attempted to take her purse but her attacker grabbed it, removed the seventy dollars from her wallet and threw the purse on the back seat. The victim fled and hid in some bushes nearby until her assailant had driven away in her automobile.
The victim then walked several blocks and flagged down a police car. She gave the officers a description of her assailant, down to his undershorts, and a description of her automobile. The police officers immediately broadcast these descriptions on their police radio.
Within minutes another police officer on routine patrol spotted the victim's automobile. When he pulled in behind it, the driver, a young black man fitting the victim's description of her attacker, speeded up in an effort to elude the police officer. After a short high speed chase, the victim's automobile "spun out" at a turn and hit a tree. The officer giving chase was no more than twenty feet away when the driver exited the wrecked vehicle and fled on foot. The officer pursued this man, first in his police car and eventually on foot. He lost sight of the suspect for a few moments but then spotted him inside a well lighted room of a residence. The suspect had crawled in the home through an open window.
This suspect, later identified as the appellant, Chris Prince, was apprehended and transported back to the scene of the victim's wrecked automobile. The victim was seated in the front seat of a police car, the headlights of which were pointed directly at the vehicle in which the appellant was sitting, and she identified the appellant as her abductor. She was unequivocal even though her vision was admittedly blurred and the lighting conditions were not excellent. (It was "daybreak" when she made this positive identification.)
The appellant was first tried for rape in case number CC-81-1578. During that trial the victim related the details of the horrible attack upon her and positively identified the appellant in court as the perpetrator of the attack. The police officer who apprehended the appellant likewise positively identified the appellant in court as the man he saw exiting the victim's automobile, the same man that he pursued and eventually arrested.
The State's evidence showed that the appellant was wearing a black shirt, blue jeans, and red undershorts ("jogging shorts") which exactly matched the description the victim had given the police after her attack but before appellant's arrest. The evidence revealed that the appellant's black shirt had grass stains on one shoulder and that his socks were soiled with mud. The red jogging shorts were soiled with semen and with blood which matched the victim's type. (The victim had experienced some vaginal bleeding during the rape incidents.) The bloodstains on the appellant's jogging shorts (and on a pair of red jockey shorts which appellant was wearing underneath the jogging shorts) were in the crotch areas.
Appellant's sole defense was an alibi and he was the only defense witness. He testified that he had spent six to eight hours on the night of April 10 and the morning of April 11 at a bar in Touminville. He spent most of that time dancing. He had nothing to drink but did smoke one "joint." He was walking home between 4:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M. when he noticed a police car "trying to run him down." He ran to a friend's home and crawled in a window where he was soon apprehended by the police.
Appellant explained that he was scared of the police and always ran when they approached him. He explained that he was a hardworking laborer and must have acquired the grass stain on his shirt and the soiled socks at work. He explained that he had worn his red undershorts for about a week prior to April 11 and that he had had sexual intercourse with a girlfriend earlier that...
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...74 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 38-39 (1960)). The Supreme Court's decision in Ashe has been followed by state courts. See, e.g., Prince v. State, 431 So.2d 565, 568 (Ala.Crim.App.1982), cert. denied, 431 So.2d 568 (Ala.1983), cert. denied, 468 U.S. 1204, 104 S.Ct. 3571, 82 L.Ed.2d 870 (1984); DeSacia v.......
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