City of Kansas City v. Darby

544 S.W.2d 529, 2 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1397, 1976 Mo. LEXIS 351
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedDecember 13, 1976
DocketNo. 59595
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 544 S.W.2d 529 (City of Kansas City v. Darby) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Kansas City v. Darby, 544 S.W.2d 529, 2 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1397, 1976 Mo. LEXIS 351 (Mo. 1976).

Opinions

DONNELLY, Judge.

These cases involve the law relating to obscenity. The judgments of conviction were affirmed by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Kansas City District. On June 15, 1976, both cases were transferred to this Court by this Court. They will be determined here “the same as on original appeal.” Mo.Const. Art. V, § 10.

CITY OF KANSAS CITY vs. DARBY:

Robert J. Darby was charged in the Municipal Court of Kansas City, Missouri, with exhibiting an obscene motion picture on August 9, 1973, in violation of an ordinance of Kansas City. He was tried in the Municipal Court, without a jury, and was convicted. He appealed to the Circuit Court of Missouri, Sixteenth Judicial Circuit.

[530]*530In the Circuit Court, Darby filed several pre-trial motions. Among these was a Motion to Dismiss which asserted, in part, that the charges pending against him should be dismissed because he “was denied in the Municipal Court trial below the right to have community standards with regard to the question of obscenity determined by a jury * * *.” The motion to dismiss was overruled, the cause proceeded to trial before a jury, Darby was convicted, and his punishment was fixed at “hundred twenty days confinement, five hundred dollar fine.”

The parties agree that the Municipal Court was barred by ordinance from providing Darby with a trial by jury.

In Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), the United States Supreme Court reformulated the constitutional tests for determining obscenity under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. In Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974), the Court explained the Miller holding. In McNary v. Carlton, 527 S.W.2d 343 (banc 1975), this Court construed Miller, as explained in Hamling, to mean that, in determining obscenity under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, a jury determination of contemporary community standards is constitutionally required.

Accordingly, we must conclude that a constitutionally acceptable determination of obscenity cannot be made in the Municipal Court in Kansas City because no jury is available.

The question presented in the Darby case is whether this constitutional deficiency can be cured by the process of allowing an appeal to the circuit court and making a jury available there.

In Callan v. Wilson, 127 U.S. 540, 8 S.Ct. 1301, 32 L.Ed. 223 (1888), Callan was charged with conspiracy in the Police Court of the District of Columbia and convicted. He perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (in which a trial by a jury would have been available to him), withdrew the appeal and was committed to the custody of the Marshal. On appeal to the United States Supreme Court, he contended “that the Constitution of the United States secured to him the right to be tried by a jury, and, that right having been denied, the police court was without jurisdiction to impose a fine upon him, or to order him to be imprisoned until such fine was paid.” The Supreme Court sustained his contention, and said (127 U.S., at 557, 8 S.Ct. at 1307):

“ * * * Except in that class or grade of offences called petty offences, which, according to the common law, may be proceeded against summarily in any tribunal legally constituted for that purpose, the guarantee of an impartial jury to the accused in a criminal prosecution, conducted either in the name, or by or under the authority of, the United States, secures to him the right to enjoy that mode of trial from the first moment, and in whatever court, he is put on trial for the offence charged. In such cases a judgment of conviction, not based upon a verdict of guilty by a jury, is void. To accord to the accused a right to be tried by a jury, in an appellate court, after he has been once fully tried otherwise than by a jury, in the court of original jurisdiction, and sentenced to pay a fine or be imprisoned for not paying it, does not satisfy the requirements of the Constitution. When, therefore, the appellant was brought before the Supreme Court of the District, and the fact was disclosed that he had been adjudged guilty of the crime of conspiracy charged in the information in this case, without ever having been tried by a jury, he should have been restored to his liberty.”

We consider the Callan holding extremely persuasive. If it is to be followed, Darby should be discharged.

First, however, we must consider the possible impact of Ludwig v. Massachusetts, - U.S. -, 96 S.Ct. 2781, 49 L.Ed.2d 732, decided by the United States Supreme Court on June 30, 1976.

In Ludwig, the accused was convicted in the District Court of Northern Norfolk in a [531]*531proceeding in which no jury was available. He then asserted his statutory right to a trial de novo before a jury. In the de novo proceeding he asserted that he had been deprived of his federal constitutional right to a speedy jury trial in the first instance, and that he had been subjected to double jeopardy. At the second trial he was again convicted. The Supreme Court of the United States rejected his assertions and held that the Massachusetts “two-tier” court system violated neither his Fourteenth Amendment right to a trial by jury nor the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment. The significant language in Ludwig, for our purposes, is as follows (-U.S. at -, 96 S.Ct., at 2787, 49 L.Ed.2d at 741):

“Our disposition of this case does not require us to disturb the holding in Callan v. Wilson, 127 U.S. 540, 8 S.Ct. 1301, 32 L.Ed. 223 (1888). In Callan, this Court considered the validity of a District of Columbia two-tier trial system that provided for trial by jury only in the second tier. The Court announced: ‘Except in that class or grade of offences called petty offences, which, according to the common law, may be proceeded against summarily in any tribunal legally constituted for that purpose, the guarantee of an impartial jury to the accused in a criminal prosecution, conducted either in the name, or by or .under the authority of, the United States, secures to him the right to enjoy that mode of trial from the first moment, and in whatever court, he is put on trial for the offence charged.’ Id., at 557, 8 S.Ct. 1301, 32 L.Ed. 223.
“Reconsideration of Callan is not required here for two reasons. First, as the Court there recognized, the sources of the right to jury trial in the federal courts are several and include Art. III, § 2, cl. 3, of the Constitution. That provision requires, in pertinent part, that ‘[t]he trial of all Crimes . . . shall be by Jury.’ This language, which might be read as prohibiting, in the absence of a defendant’s consent, a federal trial without a jury is, of course, not applicable to the States. Second, to the extent that the decision in Callan

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Bluebook (online)
544 S.W.2d 529, 2 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1397, 1976 Mo. LEXIS 351, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-kansas-city-v-darby-mo-1976.