Gerald Jermaine Allen v. State of Arkansas

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ARKANSAS COURT OF APPEALS  NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION  WENDELL GRIFFEN, JUDGE  DIVISION III  CACR07­702  January 30, 2008  GERALD JERMAINE ALLEN  APPELLANT  AN APPEAL FROM CRITTENDEN  COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT  [CR97­1085A]  V.  HON. RALPH WILSON, JR., JUDGE  STATE OF ARKANSAS  APPELLEE  AFFIRMED; MOTION TO BE RELIEVED  AS COUNSEL IS GRANTED  This is a no­merit appeal from the revocation of appellant Gerald Allen’s probationary  sentence.  Pursuant  to  Anders  v.  California,  386  U.S.  738  (1967),  and  Ark.  Sup.  Ct.  R.  4­3(j)(1),  appellant’s  counsel  submitted  a  no­merit  brief  and  a  motion  to  be  relieved  as  counsel, asserting that there is no non­frivolous argument to be made in support of an appeal.  Appellant filed  pro se points for reversal; accordingly, the State filed a responsive brief,  asserting that appellant’s arguments are either not preserved for review or that an appeal  therefrom would be wholly without merit.  We affirm the revocation of appellant’s probation  and grant counsel’s motion to be relieved.  I.  Facts Appellant was placed on probation on July 17, 1998, after pleading guilty to burglary  and  theft  of  property.  He  was  sentenced  to  ten  years’  supervised  probation  and  to  an  additional  five  years’  unsupervised  probation.  As  a  condition  of  receiving  probation,  appellant was ordered to pay a total of $3719 in costs, fees, and restitution.  On  August  10,  1999,  the  State  filed  a  petition  to  revoke  appellant’s  probation,  asserting  that  he  failed  to  report  to  his  probation  officer  as  directed  and  failed  to  pay  probation fees, fines and costs.  Because appellant was incarcerated on other charges from  October 2000 until May 2006, no revocation hearing was held until March 27, 2007.  The  State  presented  two  witnesses:  Deborah  Wiseman,  collector  of  fines  for  the  Crittenden County Sheriff’s office, and Kyle Bruce, appellant’s probation/parole officer.  Wiseman testified, without objection, that appellant originally owed $3719 and owed $4206  as of August 1, 2006.  The ledger sheet, which was admitted into evidence without objection,  shows  that  appellant  never  paid  any  money  as  ordered.  Wiseman  further  testified  that  appellant never contacted her office to explain why he never made a payment.  Bruce  testified  that  appellant  was  currently  under  Bruce’s  supervision  due  to  his  probationary sentence and because he had been paroled on May 10, 2006, in an unrelated  case.  Bruce testified that appellant failed to pay any of his supervision fees relating to his  1  probation.  He also testified that appellant had failed to comply with several of his parole  conditions, including failing to report on two occasions and exceeding the parameters of his 1  Bruce incorrectly testified that appellant’s supervision fees were  the same as his  parole fees, which were $25 per month.  The record shows that appellant’s supervisory fees  were $15 per month.  2  electronic monitoring device.  However, Bruce admitted that appellant would not be able to  report or pay fines during his period of incarceration, from October 2000 until May 2006.  Appellant offered no testimony to explain his nonpayment.  The trial court revoked  appellant’s  probationary  sentenced  based  solely  on  his  failure  to  pay,  finding  that  he  inexcusably  failed  to  pay  as  ordered.  The  court  excluded  the  time  that  appellant  was  incarcerated but noted that he made no payment from July 17, 1998, through October 2000,  when he was incarcerated, and thereafter made no payment after May 10, 2006, when he was  released.  The trial court sentenced appellant to serve five years on the residential burglary  charge, the minimum sentence for that offense (but ordered no time based on the theft­of­  property charge).  II.  Adverse Rulings  A defense attorney may file a no­merit brief and request to withdraw as counsel if,  after a conscientious examination of the record, he believes that an appeal would be wholly  frivolous.  See Anders, supra.  In so doing, counsel must file a brief discussing all adverse  rulings that might arguably support the appeal and explaining why each adverse ruling does  not provide a meritorious ground for reversal.  See  Eads v. State, 74 Ark. App. 363, 47  S.W.3d 918 (2001).  This court is bound to perform a full examination of the proceedings  as a whole to decide if an appeal would be wholly frivolous.  See Campbell v. State, 74 Ark.  App. 277, 47 S.W.3d 915 (2001).  As appellant raised no objections during the revocation proceeding, the only adverse  ruling was the decision to revoke  his probation, which is an adverse ruling that must be 3  addressed by counsel seeking to withdraw from representation.  See generally Brown  v.  State, 85 Ark. App. 382, 155 S.W.3d 22 (2004).  To revoke a probationary sentence, the  circuit court must find by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant inexcusably  violated  a  condition  of  that  probation.  Ark.  Code  Ann.  §  5­4­309(d)  (Repl.  2006);  Richardson v. State, 85 Ark. App. 347, 157 S.W.3d 536 (2004).  The State bears the burden  of proof, but need only prove that the defendant violated a single condition.  Id.  When  appealing from a revocation determination, a defendant has the burden of showing that the  trial court's findings are clearly against the preponderance of the evidence.  Id.  Evidence that  is insufficient for a criminal conviction may be sufficient to revoke a probationary sentence.  Id.  As counsel argues, an appeal from the revocation of appellant’s probation would be  wholly frivolous because the State proved by a preponderance of the evidence that appellant  inexcusably failed to pay his fines and costs as ordered.  Here, Wiseman’s testimony and the  payment ledger, which were admitted without objection, demonstrated appellant’s failure to  pay.  The burden then shifted to appellant to present a reasonable excuse for his failure to  pay.  See  Baldridge  v.  State,  31  Ark.  App.  114,  789  S.W.2d  735  (1990).    As  appellant  presented no evidence to excuse his failure to pay, the trial court was permitted to find that  his failure to pay was inexcusable.  See Palmer v. State, 60 Ark. App. 97, 959 S.W.2d 420  (1998).  Further,  no  meritorious  appeal  would  lie  based  on  the  sentence  imposed.    The  sentence imposed was proper because it was within the range of the sentence that could have 4  originally been imposed.  See Ark. Code Ann. § 5­4­309(f)(1)(A) (Repl. 2006).  Appellant  could have originally been sentenced to serve five­to­twenty years on the burglary charge.  See Ark. Code Ann. § 5­39­201(a)(2) (Repl. 2006); Ark. Code Ann. § 5­4­401(a)(3) (Repl.  2  2006).  Here, the trial court imposed the minimum five­year sentence based on the burglary  charge, which was clearly within the statutory range.  III.  Pro Se Points  Appellant’s pro se arguments may be summarized as follows.  First, his appellate  counsel  failed  to  adequately  abstract  the  record.    Second,  the  State  failed  to  hold  his  probation hearing in a timely manner, which deprived the trial court of jurisdiction to revoke  his appeal.  Third, his Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated.  Fourth,  the delay in bringing him to trial prejudiced his ability to properly defend the charges against  him.    No  meritorious  appeal  would  lie  based  on  these  arguments,  as  they  are  either  not  preserved for appellate review or are wholly without merit.  A.  Inadequate Abstracting  Appellant first asserts that his abstract is inadequate because it “only placed advantage  for  Prosecution”  in  that  in  failed  to  include  voir  dire,  opening  and  closing  arguments,  pre–hearing motions, and “all” proceedings regarding this case.  This argument is wholly  without merit. 2  Both the judgment and commitment order placing appellant on probation and the  revocation order incorrectly cite the burglary statute as Ark. Code Ann. § 5­39­202 (Supp.  2007), which is the citation for the breaking or entering statute.  However, it is clear that the  court meant to cite to the burglary statute because it identifies the offense as a Class B felony  and breaking or entering is solely a Class D felony.  See Ark. Code Ann. § 5­39­202(c).  5  First, because the revocation proceeding was not preceded by any pre­hearing motion  and does not involve a jury, there were no pre­hearing motions or voir dire proceedings to  abstract.  Second, counsel adequately abstracted the revocation proceedings, as the abstract  includes the witnesses’ testimony, appellant’s motions for a directed verdict, his arguments  concerning his justification defense, his assertion that he was entitled to a lesser charge, and  the trial court’s ruling.  While the abstract does not include the attorneys’ closing arguments, we examine the  record as a whole.  See Campbell, supra.  Appellant does not allege and the record does not  reveal any error predicated on closing arguments.  On these facts, nothing in the manner in  which the record was abstracted would present a meritorious issue for appeal.  B.  Jurisdiction to Revoke  Appellant raises several arguments related to the trial court’s jurisdiction to revoke  his  probation,  which,  in  turn,  are  based  on  the  timeliness  of  the  revocation  hearing.  Appellant was placed on probation on July 17, 1998.  His supervised probation will expire  no later than July 17, 2008; his unsupervised probation will thereafter expire no later than  July 17, 2013.  Appellant was incarcerated in an unrelated case from October 2000 until May  10, 2006.  The arrest warrant issued due to appellant’s probation violation was issued on  February 24, 2003, while appellant was incarcerated, but the warrant was not filed until  March 20, 2007.  The revocation hearing was held seven days later, on March 27, 2007.  Appellant raises three related jurisdictional arguments: 1) the arrest warrant was stale  because he was not arrested within one year of its issuance; 2) his “prosecution” was not 6  timely because he was not prosecuted within one year of the issuance of the arrest warrant;  and 3) the trial court lacked jurisdiction to try him because the arrest warrant was not issued  within the correct statutory period after the commission of the offense.  Although appellant  did not raise a jurisdictional argument below, whether a trial court has jurisdiction to revoke  probation is an argument that we may address for the first time on appeal.  See Gates v.  State, 353 Ark. 333, 107 S.W.3d 868 (2003).  On the merits, the trial court did not lack jurisdiction to revoke appellant’s probation.  First, the trial court was not required to conduct appellant’s revocation hearing within one  year of the date his arrest warrant was issued.  Appellant cites to several cases in which  criminal prosecutions for certain offenses were not timely brought within their respective  statutes  of  limitations,  but  none  of  these  cases  require  a  trial  court  to  hold  a  revocation  hearing within one year of the issuance of the arrest warrant based on a probation violation.  While a probation hearing must be held no later than sixty days of a probationer’s arrest, see  Ark. Code Ann. § 5­4­310(b)(2) (Repl. 2006), nothing in the statutes governing probation  proceedings  requires  a  probation  hearing  to  be  brought  within  any  certain  time  period  following the issuance of an arrest warrant.  In fact, a trial court may even revoke probation  after  the  probationary  period  has  expired,  as  long  as  a  warrant  was  issued  for  the  probationer’s  arrest  before  the  probationary  period  expired.  See  Ark.  Code  Ann.  §  5­4­309(e) (Repl. 2006).  Relatedly,  the  arrest  warrant  here  was  not  stale  because  it  was  issued  before  appellant’s probationary period expired.  See Ark. Code Ann. § 5­4­309(e) (Repl. 2006); 7  Richmond v. State, 326 Ark. 728, 934 S.W.2d 214 (1996) (holding a bench warrant for the  defendant's arrest was not stale, where it was issued within the defendant's five­year probated  sentence  but  not  served  until  17  months  after  expiration  of  the  defendant’s  probated  sentence).  Here, the arrest warrant was issued and the revocation hearing was held before  appellant’s probationary period expired.  Appellant  cites  to  Ark.  Code  Ann.  §  5­1­109(f)  (Repl.  2006),  which  states  that  a  prosecution is commenced when an arrest warrant or other process is issued based on an  indictment, information, or other charging instrument if the arrest warrant or other process  is sought to be executed without unreasonable delay.  Appellant seems to argue that because  he was incarcerated from October 2000 through May 10, 2006, the State knew where he was,  and thus, its delay in holding his revocation hearing unreasonably exceeded the time period  allowed to prosecute him.  This argument might bear more weight if appellant’s probationary sentence was tolled  or extended by his imprisonment on another charge.  However, that is not the case, as a  period of probation runs concurrently with any term of imprisonment to which a defendant  is or becomes subject to during the period of the suspension of probation.  See Ark. Code  Ann.  §  5­4­307(b)(2)  (Repl.  2006).    Again,  as  the  arrest  warrant  was  issued  and  the  revocation hearing was held within appellant’s probationary period, his argument that the  trial court lacked jurisdiction to revoke his probation is wholly without merit.  C. Arguments Not Preserved  For the first time, appellant raises constitutional arguments and further asserts that the 8  State’s delay in prosecuting him prejudiced his ability to properly defend the charges against  him.  However, we do not address these arguments because appellant failed to present them  to the trial court.  See London v. State, 354 Ark. 313, 125 S.W.3d 813 (2003)(declining to  address constitutional argument raised for the first time on appeal);  Hodges v. Gray, 321  Ark. 7, 901 S.W.2d 1 (1995) (declining to address the argument that the party was denied  the right to defend against a contempt charge where that argument was not made to the trial  court).  We note that, were we to reach the merits of appellant’s constitutional arguments,  none would provide a meritorious basis for an appeal.  Affirmed; motion to be relieved as counsel granted.  ROBBINS  and MARSHALL, JJ., agree. 9 

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