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State v. Thrasher8/11/2000
PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS
The sole question presented by this case is whether a prior uncounseled conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol ("DUI") can be used to enhance a defendant's sentence, where the prior uncounseled DUI conviction was a misdemeanor for which the defendant received no jail time. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that the trial court "correctly determined that two of Thrasher's convictions could not be used for enhancement purposes." State v. Thrasher [Ms. CR-98-1112, Oct. 29, 1999], ___ So. 2d ___, ___ (Ala. Crim. App. 1999). We disagree.
Many of the facts relating to the issue presented in this case are contained in the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals, and we set out here a few of those facts for a better understanding of the reason we reverse that Court's judgment.
On February 21, 1998, Steven Keith Thrasher was issued a traffic ticket charging him with driving under the influence of alcohol, a violation of § 32-5A-191(a)(2), Ala. Code 1975. On March 4, 1998, the Decatur Municipal Court transferred the case to the Morgan Circuit Court for prosecution as a "felony DUI," under § 32-5A-191(h), Ala. Code 1975, because Thrasher had had at least three prior DUI convictions.
On August 21, 1998, the Morgan County Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Thrasher with felony DUI and alleging 4 prior DUI convictions: 1) an uncounseled guilty-plea conviction on March 16, 1981, for which he was fined $114, but not given a jail sentence, suspended or otherwise; 2) an uncounseled guilty-plea conviction on February 20, 1984, for which he was fined $500 and sentenced to 48 hours in jail; 3) a counseled guilty-plea conviction on May 15, 1992, for which he was fined $500 and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, with 28 days suspended and 48 hours served; and 4) a counseled guilty-plea conviction on October 28, 1993, for which he was fined $750 and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, with 50 days suspended and 10 days served, followed by 18 months' probation.
When the parties appeared for trial on March 9, 1999, the circuit court required the State to prove Thrasher's prior DUI convictions it intended to use to enhance Thrasher's sentence. The circuit court found that two of Thrasher's four prior DUI convictions, the March 16, 1981, conviction and the February 20, 1984, conviction, were "uncounseled," meaning that the record did not show that Thrasher had been represented by counsel or that he had voluntarily waived his right to counsel; the court held that the State could not use those two prior convictions to enhance the possible sentence in Thrasher's case. Consequently, the circuit court transferred the case back to the municipal court.
The State appealed this pretrial ruling to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The State argued that an uncounseled prior conviction can be used for enhancement if the conviction is a misdemeanor for which the defendant received no jail time. The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected this argument. The Court of Criminal Appeals recognized that this Court has stated that " n misdemeanor cases ... the right [to counsel] applies only when the defendant is actually sentenced to jail," Ex parte Reese, 620 So. 2d 579, 580 (Ala. 1993), but it rejected the State's argument that Reese stands for the proposition that a prior uncounseled conviction for which the defendant received no jail time could be used for sentence enhancement.
In this present case, the Court of Criminal Appeals based its decision, in part, on the fact that the record was silent as to the sentences imposed on Thrasher for the two prior uncounseled-DUI-misdemeanor convicti
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