Mathews v. State

LEIGH M. CLARK, Retired Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction and sentence to imprisonment for 30 years on a jury trial on an indictment that charged in pertinent part that “Melvin Eugene Mathews ... on or about March 8, 1983, did intentionally cause the *1088death of another person, to-wit: Shirley C. Mathews by shooting her with a pistol, in violation of § 13A-6-2 of the Code of Alabama, 1975.”

According to the undisputed evidence in the case, the defendant and the victim were living together as husband and wife with their three children, the oldest being ten, the next…