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531 So. 2d 21

Ex Parte Owens

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided March 27, 1987

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1987-03-27

Relies on 516 So. 2d 768 - Ex Parte Jackson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1987-03-27

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently May 2005

10 state decisions

60198719902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1

On Application for Rehearing

¶2Our opinion of January 9, 1987, is withdrawn and the following is substituted for it.

¶3Charles Owens was convicted of murdering Rebecca Heath during a kidnapping in the first degree, in violation of Code 1975, §13A-5-40 (a). He was sentenced to death by electrocution. Pursuant to Rule 39 (c), A.R.A.P., the defendant's petition for certiorari was granted as a matter of right.

¶4After a careful review of all the questions raised in Owens's petition, we find *22 that the only issue with merit concerns the striking of his jury at trial. Defendant contends that the prosecution impermissibly used peremptory strikes to exclude all blacks from the jury because of possible racial bias.

¶5We remand this case to the Court of Criminal Appeals with instructions to that court to remand the cause to the trial court on the authority of Ex parte Jackson, 516 So.2d 768 (Ala. 1986). If the trial court determines that the facts establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination and the prosecution does not come forward with race-neutral explanations for its strikes, then Owens is entitled to a new trial.

¶6ORIGINAL OPINION WITHDRAWN; OPINION SUBSTITUTED; REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS; APPLICATION OVERRULED.

¶7TORBERT, C.J., and MADDOX, JONES, ALMON, BEATTY, ADAMS, HOUSTON and STEAGALL, JJ., concur.

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