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Burnsed v. City of Evergreen3/1/2001
. 2d 543 (Ala. Civ. App. 1988). This Court granted French's petition for certiorari review and considered his argument that the circuit court erred in denying his motion to suppress, and, thus, that the Court of Civil Appeals erred in affirming.
This Court in Ex parte French reviewed several cases in which it had considered the question whether a transcript of a prior proceeding was admissible as evidence in a later proceeding. See Olds v. Powell, 10 Ala. 393 (1846); Degg v. State, 150 Ala. 3, 43 So. 484 (1907); and Woods v. Postal Telegraph-Cable Co., 205 Ala. 236, 87 So. 681 (1920). In each case, this Court had held that the transcripts were inadmissible. This Court held that GTE's transcript of the district court proceeding was inadmissible as evidence in the circuit court. In so holding, this Court noted that "a transcript by a reporter hired and paid by one party has no ... guarantee of authenticity, and the opposing party is provided no protection from possible errors or even fraud." Ex parte French, 547 So. 2d at 549.
The majority concludes that this present case is distinguishable from Ex parte French because this case originated in the municipal court, and because the provisions of the Code of Alabama concerning the appointment of official court reporters, § 12-17-270 et seq., do not apply to the municipal courts. I believe, however, that the concerns voiced in Ex parte French by a unanimous Court are persuasive. In Ex parte French, this Court stated that a transcript prepared without the sanction of the court or the opposing party "has no ... guarantee of authenticity" and is thus inadmissible in evidence in a later trial. Id. If an unofficial transcript is not sufficiently trustworthy to allow its use as evidence in a subsequent proceeding at the trial court level, I cannot agree that it is sufficiently trustworthy to conclude that it nevertheless is an "adequate record" for purposes of allowing a direct appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Rule 30.1(a), Ala. R. Crim. P., provides that " defendant convicted of an offense in a municipal court ... shall have the right to appeal the judgment, within fourteen (14) days of the date of the judgment or the denial of a timely filed post-judgment motion, to the circuit court for a trial de novo." If a defendant is unsuccessful in the circuit court, he would then have an official transcript from which to appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals. See § 12-17-270, Ala. Code 1975.
I believe that the potential inaccuracy in an unofficial transcript and the possible fraud that could be involved in the use of such a transcript outweigh a party's desire to bypass the circuit court when pursuing an appeal. Therefore, I must dissent from the holding that an unofficial transcript is "adequate" for purposes of allowing an appeal from the municipal court directly to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
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