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Richey v. State3/1/2002
Phyllis Willcut Richey was convicted of the following: (1) driving on the wrong side of the road; (2) driving under the influence ("DUI"); and (3) two counts of murder resulting from a DUI-related automobile accident. She was fined $100 for the conviction for driving on the wrong side of the road and $1000 for her DUI conviction. She was sentenced to one year's imprisonment in the Lauderdale County jail for the DUI conviction and to life imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for each of the two murder convictions. All the sentences were ordered to be served concurrently. The Court affirmed Richey's conviction by an unpublished memorandum opinion, Richey v. State, 778 So. 2d 875 (Ala. Crim. App. 1999) (table).
Richey has now filed a Rule 32, Ala. R. Crim. P., petition, attacking her convictions. The State moved to dismiss, arguing that the claims raised in the petition were all either procedurally barred or without merit. The trial court summarily dismissed the petition on the grounds pleaded by the State -- Richey appealed.
Richey presents nine issues in her brief to this Court. Her Rule 32 petition contained additional issues that she does not argue on appeal. Accordingly, she is deemed to have abandoned these issues, and this Court need not address them. Brownlee v. State, 666 So. 2d 91 (Ala. Crim. App. 1995).
Richey contends that she was not afforded a fair trial. First, she argues that the trial court erred in charging her with murder, under § 13A-6-2, Ala. Code 1975. Because the victims were killed in a DUI-related automobile accident, Richey believes that the proper charge for the two murder offenses was homicide by vehicle or vessel, see § 32-5A-192, Ala. Code 1975, rather than murder.
Next, she claims that the trial court erred in failing to indict the three passengers in her vehicle at the time of the accident for complicity under § 13A-2-23, Ala. Code 1975. She also argues that the trial court erred in allowing evidence of her activities the night before the accident to be presented to the jury. She states that on the night before the accident, she was arrested and charged with DUI in connection with a hit-and-run accident. Because she had been charged with, but not convicted of, these offenses at the time of her trial for the murder offenses, she asserts that evidence of her arrest was improperly admitted.
Richey also argues that, because of what she says was an excessive amount of publicity surrounding this crime, the trial court erred in denying her motion for a change of venue. She further argues that the jury was tainted by the publicity surrounding her case, as well as by the fact that her automobile was parked in the parking lot of the Lauderdale County courthouse during the trial and by photographs of the victims that were introduced into evidence. She contends, also, that the steering wheel from her vehicle was improperly admitted into evidence because, she says, it had been "handled and touched by several people, then removed from the car and placed on the road behind vehicle at the scene of the accident." Richey next contends that her Fourth Amendment rights were violated. She states that she was unconscious immediately after the accident and that any of the three passengers in the vehicle could have tampered with evidence before the state trooper who responded to the accident arrived on the scene. Richey argues that, during this time, the steering wheel was removed from the vehicle and that alcohol and marijuana were placed in the vehicle. She contends that, because she was unconscious immediately following the accident, she was obviously unable to consent to a search of the vehicle, and this evidence, ther
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