Jacobson v. State

1984 OK CR 72, 684 P.2d 556, 1984 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 187
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
DecidedJune 21, 1984
DocketF-82-577
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 1984 OK CR 72 (Jacobson v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jacobson v. State, 1984 OK CR 72, 684 P.2d 556, 1984 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 187 (Okla. Ct. App. 1984).

Opinions

OPINION

BUSSEY, Presiding Judge:

The appellant, Frankie Lee Jacobson, was convicted of Second Degree Murder, After Former Conviction of Two Felonies, in Muskogee County District Court, Case No. CRF-81-503, was sentenced to fifty (50) years’ imprisonment, and he appeals.

On October 24, 1981, the body of Maxine Goforth was found floating in the Arkansas River near Muskogee, wrapped in a green comforter. A brown electrical cord flecked with white paint was tied tightly through the mouth as a gag and also around her neck; another piece of the same cord bound her feet, while her hands were tied behind her with red shoelaces. A laceration which was approximately one inch in length and about a quarter of an inch deep, was present on the back of the victim’s head.

The appellant had been employed by Go-forth as an apprentice barber and had done various household repairs for her over a period of several years.

During the course of their investigation, Muskogee police officers went to the Jacob-sons’ house and were given consent to enter and search by his wife, who signed a waiver of consent to search form. Between the living and dining rooms, two blood-soaked patches were found. In a small storage building behind the residence, a pole lamp with approximately a foot of brown electrical cord with specks of white paint on it was discovered. Additionally, a blood soaked towel was found in a trash can behind the Jacobsons’ residence. The blood of the victim and the blood on the stained areas and the towel were both type “0”. Upon inquiry by officers regarding a green bedspread and red shoelaces, Mrs. Jacobson responded that such a bedspread was indeed missing and the red shoelaces from one of her daughter’s roller skates could not be found.

Melbajo Butler, the appellant’s next door neighbor, testified that she heard a woman cry out about 1:30 p.m. on October 21, 1981.

Dr. Mohammed F. Merchant, of the chief medical examiner’s office, testified that the scalp laceration to the victim severed no major arteries, that there was no evidence of a skull fracture, and that the wound was not such as to have caused death. It was his opinion, due to the presence of petechial hemorrhages in the throat area (larynx and epiglottis) and hemorrhaging present in the strap muscle of the neck, that the cause of death was manual strangulation.

The appellant testified on his own behalf regarding his past and related that he had dropped out of high school and joined the Army; he spent about 2V2 years in Vietnam and had seen considerable combat action; he returned to Muskogee and had worked for and with the victim as a barber.

He stated that the pair had become intimately involved despite the fact that Go-forth was more than 20 years his senior. He told the jury that he had borrowed $675 from Goforth and repaid $175 in cash and had worked on her car for three days; however, she was unsatisfied and, in addition, wanted him to roof an apartment [559]*559house to repay the debt, which he refused to do, maintaining that he had other debts that needed his attention and the value of the roofing job was between $1,600 and $2,000. On the date in question, Goforth came to his home demanding payment of the debt and threatening to expose their relationship to the appellant’s newest wife, his third, and to whom he had been married for a little over a month. Further, when Goforth pointed a finger at him, Jacobson admittedly pushed her and she hit her head on an exposed door hinge. She was knocked unconscious and began to bleed profusely, so, according to the appellant, he put ice in a towel and placed it on the wound. Goforth regained consciousness in about 10 minutes and told the appellant “It’s all right, Frankie, It’s all right, Frankie”; but she then screamed, grabbed her head and passed out again, landing about a foot from where she had originally been. Jacobson applied a second towel with ice for about 10 minutes more but when he checked her pulse, as he had been trained by the Army to do, he determined that she was dead.

Appellant felt he could not call the police so he put the body in the green blanket and, although he had difficulty keeping the arms and legs in the blanket, took it to the shed behind the house. With a length of cord from a lamp, he bound her feet and, with a red shoelace from his daughter’s roller skates, he also bound her hands. To keep his children from discovering the body, he drove to a department store and purchased a lock to keep the shed secured; he left Goforth’s car in the store’s parking lot with the keys in it and walked home.

In an attempt to divert attention from him, the appellant cut a piece of cord from a lamp in his bedroom and used it as a gag on the body. Later that evening, he took the body and threw it into the river. He stated he thought that Goforth had bled to death.

I.

In one of his assignments of error, the appellant asserts that the trial court committed reversible error by admitting into evidence fruits of an illegal arrest, because the State failed to prove sufficient probable cause to make a warrantless arrest.

It has long been held that the test for the validity of a warrantless arrest is:

“Whether, at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it — whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information was sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner [arrestee] had committed or was committing an offense.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964). One does not have probable cause unless he had information of facts which, if submitted to a magistrate, would require issuance of an arrest warrant. Mere suspicion is not enough. Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957).

Greene v. State, 508 P.2d 1095 (Okl.Cr.1973).

The facts and circumstances in the instant case are such that a prudent man would believe that Jacobson committed the crime. His wife voluntarily consented to police entering and searching the couples’ home. The officers found two patches of blood soaked carpet between the living room and dining room and a towel saturated with blood in their trash can. Further, Mrs. Jacobson informed the officers that one red shoelace from her daughter’s skates was missing, and a green bedspread was also gone. Additionally, in the small shed in back of the house, a pole lamp was found with all but about one foot of brown cord, flecked with white paint, cut off. These facts were ample to allow the officers to make a valid warrantless arrest of the appellant. Jacobson’s statements to police, in the first of which he stated that after Goforth had regained consciousness he grabbed her, pinned her to the floor and then bound her, were properly admitted as a product of a valid warrantless arrest. This assignment of error is without merit.

[560]*560II.

In another assignment of error, the appellant maintains that his sixth amendment right to counsel was violated, and a statement that was taken following his alleged request for an attorney should not have been admitted at trial. We do not agree.

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Jacobson v. State
1984 OK CR 72 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1984)

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Bluebook (online)
1984 OK CR 72, 684 P.2d 556, 1984 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 187, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jacobson-v-state-oklacrimapp-1984.