Page:Ricarte v. State.pdf/2

form Rules of Evidence as the law in Arkansas, effective October 13, 1986.

1. COURTS—ARKANSAS SUPREME COURT HAS GENERAL SUPERINTENDING CONTROL OVER ALL INFERIOR COURTS UNDER ARKANSAS CONSTITUTION.—The Arkansas Constitution of 1874 confers upon the Supreme Court a general superintending control over all inferior courts of law and equity. [Ark. Const., art. 7, § 4.]
2. COURTS—SUPREME COURT'S INHERENT POWER TO REGULATE CIVIL AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE RECOGNIZED BY LEGISLATURE.—The Arkansas legislature's use of mandatory words in committing the regulation of criminal practice and procedure and civil procedure to the Supreme Court in Ark. Stat. Ann. §§ 22-242 and 22-245 (Supp. 1985) was not an improper delegation of legislative power but was merely a recognition of the court's inherent power.
3. EVIDENCE—ADMISSION OF TESTIMONY OF WIFE OF CRIMINAL DEFENDANT GROUNDS FOR MISTRIAL—RULE UNDER WHICH IT WAS ADMITTED NOT LEGALLY ADOPTED.—Where, as here, the invalidity of the statute adopting the Uniform Rules of Evidence, under which the wife of a criminal defendant was allowed to testify for the State, was properly raised and this court finds the statute to have been illegally adopted, the defendant is entitled to a new trial; further, his right to claim the statutory privilege must in fairness be recognized at a new trial.
4. EVIDENCE—EVIDENCE OF INCARCERATION—RELEVANCY.—The evidence that appellant had been in the penitentiary was relevant because the plan for the robbery for which he was tried was conceived by inmates who were in the penitentiary with him.
5. TRIAL—PROSECUTOR'S OPENING STATEMENT—PROPRIETY.—Since the fact of appellant's incarceration was admissible and was proved, the prosecutor was entitled to refer to it in his opening statement.
6. WITNESSES—NO PROOF THAT THEY WERE ACCOMPLICES.—Where there was no proof that either of the witnesses who were claimed to have been accomplices participated in the robbery, but, to the contrary, neither of them knew about the robbery at the time it was committed, or knew where the jewelry taken in the robbery came from, they were not shown to be accomplices as a matter of law, their status being at most an issue for the jury.
7. JURY INSTRUCTIONS—INSTRUCTIONS CONCERNING PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS PROPER UNDER CIRCUMSTANCES.—It is proper for the judge to instruct the jury concerning the number of previous convictions which the defendant has where the number is not in dispute; however, where it is in dispute, the issue may be submitted to the jury by the use of AMCI 7001.