Thompson v. State
Decision Date | 21 August 1979 |
Docket Number | 6 Div. 998 |
Citation | 384 So.2d 1131 |
Parties | Lawrence Aubery THOMPSON v. STATE. |
Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
James G. Stevens, Mountain Brook, for appellant.
Charles A. Graddick, Atty. Gen. and Jean Williams Brown, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
This is an appeal from a conviction of murder in the first degree and a sentence to life imprisonment.
It is a companion case to Flanagan v. State, Ala.Cr.App., 369 So.2d 46 (1979) and Charlene Madison Thompson v. State, Ala.Cr.App., 369 So.2d 50, cert. denied, Ala., 369 So.2d 52 (1979). In each of the cited cases, a conviction of each defendant-appellant for murder in the first degree of Veronica Wilson, the alleged victim in this case, was affirmed. The evidence in the case under consideration, as well as in the other two cases, shows without dispute that the victim was brutally slain by being stabbed to death while she was with appellant, appellant's wife Charlene, and Flanagan late at night, January 6-7, 1978, at an isolated place in Coalburg, Jefferson County, to which the four had traveled in appellant's automobile. The wife of appellant herein, the defendant-appellant in Charlene Madison Thompson, supra, was the chief witness against defendant in Flanagan ; in the instant case Flanagan was the chief witness against defendant; appellant herein did not testify in Flanagan, supra; in testifying in his own defense in Flanagan, supra, Flanagan said that Thompson and his wife killed Veronica while Flanagan waited in the automobile.
As there is no contention on this appeal that the evidence is not sufficient to sustain the verdict and as our review of the record convinces us that there is no reasonable basis for such a contention, we find it unnecessary to recite facts in addition to those stated above and those discussed in Flanagan, supra.
Appellant presents no issue as to any of the proceedings in the trial court other than as to a proceeding on a hearing before a jury as to defendant's mental competency to stand trial. Appellant contends that the verdict of the jury finding defendant mentally competent to stand trial was contrary to the evidence. He also contends that on the hearing of that issue the trial court erred in admitting in evidence a letter from a psychiatrist who had examined defendant, which letter consisted of a report by the psychiatrist to the court.
On the competency hearing, defendant presented strong evidence by Dr. Robert Estock, a psychiatrist, that defendant was not mentally competent to stand trial at the time. On the other hand, the State presented strong evidence by the testimony of Mrs. Donna Click, who had been employed as a psychiatric social worker in Jefferson County for eight years, that defendant was mentally competent to stand trial at the time. Mrs. Click had a "Masters Degree in Guidance and Counseling and 30 hours work beyond a Masters Degree in General Psychiatry" and on-the-job training. She had worked with psychiatrists in dealing with hundreds of prisoners, including defendant whom she had examined about five times over a period of approximately four years. The evidence on the particular issue was sharply in dispute, and it is not for this Court to say that the verdict of the jury was wrong.
The letter to which defendant objected when offered in evidence was addressed to Judge Wallace Gibson, one of the judges of the Jefferson County Circuit Court. The body of it is as follows:
The circumstances of the offer in evidence of the letter, defendant's objection, and the court's ruling were set out in the record as follows:
Code Ala.1975, § 12-21-43, provides:
It may well be that the State should have called Dr. Blankenship to testify as to his examinations and opinion as to the mental competency of defendant, but Ala.Code 1975, § 12-21-43, prescribes exceptions to the hearsay rule of exclusion. In Gamble, McElroy's Alabama Evidence, (3d ed. 1977), § 254.01(6), it is stated:
"The business entries exception to the hearsay evidence rule is applicable in criminal as well as civil cases and records made in conformity with the rule may be introduced by either the accused or the state."
Appellant relies largely upon Pierce v. State, 52 Ala.App. 422, 293 So.2d 483 (1973), cert. den. 292 Ala. 745, 293 So.2d 489 (1974), in which the trial court was upheld in its rejection of a letter to an expert witness for defendant from a psychologist. The court held:
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...However, the defendant's objection to the hospital report as hearsay did not preserve this issue for review. As in Thompson v. State, 384 So.2d 1131, 1134-35 (Ala.Cr.App.1979), cert. denied, 384 So.2d 1135 (Ala.1980), the trial court was not called upon to determine whether the copy of the ......
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...that the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals in the present case is in direct conflict with its decision in Thompson v. State, 384 So.2d 1131 (Ala.Cr.App.1979), where the defendant's psychiatric records were admitted under the business entries exception, Code 1975, § 12-21-43, without......
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