Stevens v. State
| Decision Date | 04 November 1975 |
| Docket Number | 1 Div. 510 |
| Citation | 333 So.2d 852 |
| Parties | Joseph Ralph STEVENS v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Alphonse Maples, Jr., Mobile, for appellant.
William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and Randolph P. Reaves, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
A jury found defendant guilty of the crime against nature (Code of Alabama 1940, Title 14, Section 106) as charged in an indictment in Code form (Form 104, Code of Alabama 1940, Title 15, Section 259) alleging that defendant 'against the order of nature, carnally knew James Edward Hampton.' The court fixed his punishment at imprisonment for ten years in the penitentiary and duly sentenced him accordingly.
A summary at least of the evidence would be made if necessary and in the interest of justice, but it is neither. We condense our discussion of the facts to a statement sufficient to explain our resolution of the questions presented and worthy of discussion on this appeal.
The chief contention of appellant is that he was convicted on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice and for that reason the court erred in overruling defendant's motion to exclude the evidence at the conclusion of the State's case. If appellant is correct in the contention, the court should have granted defendant's motion and should have directed a verdict in favor of the defendant or given the defendant the affirmative charge in his favor, as he requested in writing in several forms. Code of Alabama 1940, Title 15, Section 307; Alexander v. State, 281 Ala. 457, 204 So.2d 488, af'g. 44 Ala.App. 143, 204 So.2d 486 (1967); Leonard v. State, 43 Ala.App. 454, 192 So.2d 461 (1966); Smith v. State, 45 Ala.App. 63, 223 So.2d 605 (1969).
The scene of the alleged crime was Cell Block 7--B of the Mobile County Jail. Hampton, an inmate of the particular cell of the jail during the first part of January 1974, testified that defendant and others in the cell conducted a 'little trial' for him for not taking a shower for three days. According to him, the defendant was the judge, one of the inmates acted as the district attorney and another inmate was designated as his attorney, and the remaining inmates, at least three, constituted the jury. They found him guilty and sentenced him to do what he was told by the others, including specifically conduct expressed in post-Victorian jargon not readily found in judicial or other legal publications, but defined in some authoritative ultramodern lexicons as a specific form of the crime against nature. He further testified that for three or four hours there after he was intermittently used unnaturally by some of the others; he was bruised in and about his face and eyes, his glasses were broken; and, while he was in the bathroom taking a shower, defendant, as well as two others, committed a sex act of anal penetration of him.
Another inmate at the time testified for the State and corroborated the testimony of Hampton in the foregoing essential details, but appellant contends that such witness was also an accomplice. If so, his testimony is insufficient to afford the legal corroboration required by Section 307, supra. Evans v. State, 42 Ala.App. 587, 172 So.2d 796; White v. State, 47 Ala.App. 282, 253 So.2d 351.
The only other witness for the State was a jail guard, who testified that on January 8, 1975, he removed Hampton from the cell, but at that time Hampton said nothing to him about being sexually assaulted. He further testified that he was told that there was an inmate in the cell that had been beaten, burned and sexually molested. Hampton had testified that he had been burned.
Defendant did not testify. The chief jailer testified for the defense to the effect that one of the persons who Hampton testified took part in the mistreatment of him had been removed from the Mobile County Jail to Atmore or Holman Prison at the time.
The other witnesses for the defense included an inmate of the cell at the time of the alleged offense. He said that Hampton's sentence at the trial was to wash his clothes, take a shower, send his clothes in once a week to the laundry and wash clothes for the other inmates, that upon his failure to clean himself he was taken back to the court and sentenced to go through a gauntlet line. He further said he had never witnessed any sex acts committed upon Hampton by anyone in the cell.
There were two other witnesses for the defense, both of whom testified that in late January 1974 they were in the 'drunk tank' of the Mobile County Jail and that while there they had heard Hampton say that he had told officials that he had been sexually molested in order to beat the case that they had pending against him, and both testified in effect that at such time Hampton denied that he had been sexually abused by defendant.
Inmates of the jail who testified, including Hampton, and certainly he was no virgin, had substantial criminal records calculated to impair seriously their credibility as...
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