Tarrants v. State

• Decision Date: 01 June 1970
• Docket Number: No. 45684,45684
• Parties: Thomas Albert TARRANTS, III v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 360

236 So.2d 360

Thomas Albert TARRANTS, III v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 45684.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

June 1, 1970.

Rehearing Denied July 2, 1970.

Rodgers, J., concurred specially and filed opinion.

See also Miss., 231 So.2d 493.

Thomas M. Haas, Mobile, Ala., Roy Pitts, Meridian, for appellant.

A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Guy N. Rogers, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Wade H. Creekmore, Jr. and James H. Creekmore, Special Asst. Attys. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

INZER, Justice.

Appellant, T. A. Tarrants, III, was convicted in the Circuit Court of Lauderdale County for the crime of planting a bomb in violation of Section 2143, Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated (1956). He was sentenced to serve a term of thirty years in the State Penitentiary. From this conviction and sentence he appealed to this Court.

After his appeal reached this Court and was argued by his counsel and while under consideration by us, appellant filed a motion asking that his appeal be dismissed because he did not desire to appeal his case. He also stated that the attorneys who had represented him in the trial court and in this Court no longer represented him. Since his principal defense in the trial court was insanity, before passing on the motion we determined that we should direct the trial judge, as a facility of this Court, to conduct a factual hearing in order that we could determine whether appellant was mentally competent to represent himself in this Court and whether he was mentally competent to understand the effect of his motion to dismiss his appeal. In compliance with our order the trial judge entered an order requiring appellant to submit to a mental examination by the staff at the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield. Appellant was examined by the staff and after his examination and before we received the record of the proceedings from the trial judge, appellant filed a motion that he be allowed to withdraw his motion to dismiss his appeal. He stated in his motion that he had been advised by the doctors at the Mississippi State Hospital that he had a well-balanced mind, a high I.Q., and no mental disorder of any kind. He also stated that he advised his attorneys not to pursue the issue of insanity on appeal, but in spite of his direction his counsel for some reason defied him and violated his trust. He reaffirmed his decision to discharge his counsel. Included in this motion is a statement which we take to be a motion for a new trial on newly discovered evidence, which he alleges will show that he was entrapped.

After the foregoing motion was received and filed in this Court we received the report of the trial judge which contains the findings of the staff at Mississippi State Hospital. This report reveals that appellant has an I.Q. of 126 and it was the opinion of the staff of ten psychiatrists that he is a competent and responsible person, and that there was no evidence of insanity. After reviewing this report along with the evidence in the record of the trial of this case on the merits relative to the question of appellant's sanity, we are of the opinion that appellant is not insane and is mentally competent to discharge his lawyers and to represent himself in this Court.

The motion of appellant to withdraw his motion to dismiss his appeal is sustained. In considering the appeal on the merits we have considered it on the record made in the trial court and the briefs filed in this Court by counsel who then represented him. We deem it appropriate to state that the record reflects that appellant was ably defended by competent counsel in the trial court and that they filed excellent briefs in this Court. The brief filed on behalf of the State is likewise an excellent one covering all the points raised by appellant on appeal.

The facts as to the crime charged are as follows: During the summer of 1968 various citizens in the City of Meridian received bombing threats. One such person was Meyer Davidson. In an effort to protect lives and property the Meridian Chief of Police ordered a stake out of all those places whose occupants had been threatened. On June 30, 1968, Detectives Willoughby and McNair were stationed near the home of Davidson. This house is located at the northwest corner of 36th Street and 29th Avenue. The house faces south on 36th Street and has a driveway that enters from 29th Avenue. The two detectives were concealed just across 29th Avenue from the driveway of the Davison home. Shortly after midnight the detectives observed a dark colored Buick automobile approach the intersection from the east. When it reached the intersection it turned north on 29th Avenue and drove slowly up the street. A few minutes later the car came back down 29th Avenue from the north. As it reached the intersection it turned west in front of the Davidson home and went down 36th Street. Apparently the car circled the block because a few minutes later it again approached the intersection coming down 29th Avenue from the north. As the car approached the lights were turned out. It came to a stop adjacent to the Davidson property. A man got out, reached into the back seat, and picked up a box. This man was the appellant. He walked onto the Davidson property and placed the box in the driveway. When he did so, one of the policemen ordered him to halt. Appellant whirled and fired two shots in the direction of the officers, who returned the fire. Appellant ran back to the car, jumped in and drove south down 29th Avenue. He was later apprehended.

An examination of the box disclosed twenty-nine sticks of dynamite, an electric cap and a home-made timing device, consisting of a clock and a dry cell battery. The officers took pictures of the box and its contents which are in evidence.

The foregoing facts relative to the commission of the crime are not in dispute. The other evidence concerns the issue of insanity.

Mrs. Doris Tarrants, mother of appellant, testified in his behalf. She stated that she had resided in Mobile, Alabama, all her life and that her son was born therein December 20, 1946. She stated that he had a normal childhood until 1963. At that time he was a junior at Murphy High School in Mobile and the school was integrated. She testified that after the confusion that occurred during this event the personality of her son changed. He became obsessed with the idea that the communists were taking over the country and he began to constantly read the Bible. She told of her son's involvement with the National States Rights Party and of his association with a man named Smith, who had been a minister and who had great influence on her son. She said that she and her husband became concerned about the conduct of their son and made an appointment with a psychiatrist to see him. He went to see the psychiatrist on one or two occasions but would not go back because he felt that his feelings were normal. She stated that from that time on the appellant was withdrawn and did not take part in the normal activities of a teenage boy. He later attended Mobile Baptist College for awhile but the FBI started questioning his friends. He then came home one afternoon to find the FBI questioning his fourteen year old brother. Appellant left home at that time and she did not see him again from March until July when she saw him in the hospital in Meridian.

She testified that she and her husband employed Dr. Claude L. Brown, a psychiatrist, to examine him. She had given Dr. Brown a history of the conduct of her son. Mrs. Tarrants did not express any opinion as to the sanity or insanity of her son.

Dr. Claude L. Brown, a qualified psychiatrist who resides in Mobile, Alabama, testified that he examined appellant in the jail at Meridian on two occasions. The first examination on October 23, 1968, extended over a period of an hour and a half. The second examination on October 30, 1968, was for a period of forty minutes. It was Dr. Brown's opinion from his examination that the appellant was insane and that he had been for several years.

In rebuttal George Butler, a deputy sheriff, testified that since appellant was arrested he had seen him on twenty to twenty-five occasions and had talked with him on two or three occasions. He said that he had not observed anything abnormal about appellant's actions and that from his conversation with him on general subjects, he noticed nothing abnormal. Based upon these observations it was his opinion that appellant was sane.

Dr. Reginald P. White, a psychiatrist, and director of the East Mississippi State Hospital, qualified as an expert in the field of psychiatry, testified in answer to a hypothetical question that in his opinion appellant in all probability could distinguish right from wrong and had the ability to comprehend the consequences of his act.

Appellant assigns as error twenty-eight grounds for reversal of this case, but these are combined in his brief into nine principal points, which we will discuss.

Appellant assigned as error the overruling of his motion for continuance so that an examination could be made relative to his sanity. This motion requested the court to appoint a competent medical doctor specializing in the field of psychiatry to examine appellant in order that his mental competency, both at the time of the alleged offense and presently, could be determined. It specifically requested that Dr. Claude L. Brown, who was such a doctor, be appointed. Although the motion did not set up any grounds for the request, a hearing was had on the motion and Dr. Brown and others testified in support of the motion. Section 2575.5, Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated (Supp.1968), provides as follows:

In any criminal action in the circuit court in which the mental condition of a person indicted for a felony is in question, the court or judge in vacation on motion duly made by the defendant, the district attorney or on the motion of the court or judge, may order such person to submit to a mental...