Ramage v. State

Blackwell, Judge.

Thomas Lee Ramage was tried by a Baldwin County jury and convicted of aggravated child molestation, child molestation, incest, and cruelty to children. He then filed a motion for new trial, in which he claimed, among other things, that he was deprived at trial of his constitutional right to be present during all critical stages of the proceedings when the trial judge met privately with the jury on several occasions during its deliberations, an unusual procedure to which his lawyer consented at trial, but about which Ramage knew nothing, he says, until after the trial had…