Rogers v. State, 8 Div. 286
| Decision Date | 29 September 1989 |
| Docket Number | 8 Div. 286 |
| Citation | 555 So.2d 1168 |
| Parties | James ROGERS v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Luke E. Alexander of Guin, Bouldin & Alexander, Russellville, for appellant.
Don Siegelman, Atty. Gen., and Gilda B. Williams, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
James Rogers was convicted of first degree sexual abuse of a five-year-old girl and was sentenced to four years' imprisonment.
On appeal Rogers first contends that the five-year-old child should not have been allowed to testify because of her age and lack of knowledge and experience. It is true that § 12-21-165(a) Code of Alabama 1975, provides that "[p]ersons who have not the use of reason, such as idiots, lunatics during lunacy, and children who do not understand the nature of an oath, are incompetent witnesses." However, § 15-25-3(c), Code of Alabama 1975, as amended, provides:
Accordingly, no error was committed when this child was permitted by the trial court to give evidence.
Appellant also urges that he is a black man and was denied a fair trial because there were no black members of the venire from which the jury was struck. The jury was struck from a venire list composed by the Alabama Judicial Data Center. The state made a showing that the venire was randomly selected by a computer based on driver's license records. There is, of course, no requirement of law that juries must mirror a community or reflect various distinctive groups in the population. See, Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975); Owens v. State, 531 So.2d 2 (Ala.Cr.App.1986).
It appears that 4.9% of the overall population of Franklin County, Alabama is black. We find that the appellant was not denied a fair trial simply because there were no members of his race on the venire from which his jury was struck.
AFFIRMED.
All the Judges concur.
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McConico v. State of Ala.
...660, 177 So.2d 460 (Ala.App.1965). Alabama courts have been permissive in allowing children to testify. See Rogers v. State, 555 So.2d 1168 (Ala.Crim.App.1989) (5-year-old); Mickens v. State, 428 So.2d 202 (Ala.Crim.App.1983).8 She asserted this several times, most clearly at page 99 of the......
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Price v. State
...a competent witness and shall be allowed to testify without prior qualification in any judicial proceeding." See also Rogers v. State, 555 So.2d 1168 (Ala.Cr.App.1989). The statute specifically reads "a child victim of sexual abuse or sexual exploitation," no reference is made to child vict......
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Pinkney v. State, CR-90-507
...is "no requirement of law that juries mirror a community or reflect various distinctive groups in the population." Rogers v. State, 555 So.2d 1168, 1169 (Ala.Cr.App.1989). Hence, based upon the record before us, the trial court did not err in overruling Pinkney's objection to the compositio......