State of Missouri v. Sandra G. Plunkett

473 S.W.3d 166, 2015 Mo. App. LEXIS 827
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedAugust 18, 2015
DocketWD77406
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 473 S.W.3d 166 (State of Missouri v. Sandra G. Plunkett) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Missouri v. Sandra G. Plunkett, 473 S.W.3d 166, 2015 Mo. App. LEXIS 827 (Mo. Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

Cynthia L. Martin, Judge

Sandra G. Plunkett (“Wife”) appeals her convictions of first-degree murder and armed criminal action following a jury tri *169 al. Wife argues that the trial court erred by refusing to submit a proposed self-defense instruction to- the jury, by overruling her motions to suppress evidence, and by admitting testimony at trial regarding the evidence she sought to suppress. Finding ho error, we affirm.

Factual and Procedural History 1

Wife married Paul Plunkett (“Husband”)) a Jefferson City police officer, in 1998. . Husband retired from the police department in 2008 and bought a pest control company from his brother. Wife and Husband operated the business, together. ,, ...

Wife developed a drug addiction to Vico-din and heroin. To fund her drug habit, Wife overdrew thousands of dollars from joint personal and business checking accounts and sold items to a local pawn shop.

Husband developed diverticulitis in the summer of 2009, requiring several surgeries and hospitalizations. By the end of 2010, Husband was generally confined to a hospital bed in the living room of his home in Holt’s Summit. Husband had an open wound, a feeding tube, tubes for intravenous drugs, and a colostomy bag. Husband had to wear an abdominal binder to be able to get out of bed and move around. Husband’s heart was enlarged and his legs had atrophied to the point that moving around required great effort.

Sometime during the week after Christmas in 2010, Wife asked a drug associate, Randy Deppe (“Deppe”), if he knew anyone who would kill Husband. On December 80, 2010, Wife again asked Deppe if he knew anyone who would kill Husband and mentioned something about an insurance check. Wife told Deppe that Husband would not die and admitted to putting morphine and heroin in Husband’s IV drip in an attempt to kill him. ■ ■

Later on December 30, 2010, Wife took a Marlin .22-caliber rifle to a pawn shop. Wife asked the store clerk to show her how to load the rifle. The clerk told Wife the kind of ammunition needed for the rifle. ■ '

Before 10:00 a.m. on January 1, 2011, Wife shot Husband in the head with the Marlin rifle, killing him. ' Wife left the house and drove to Jefférson City to buy heroin. She then drove to a ne'arby cul-de-sac and disposed of the rifle in the woods. She disposed of a box of ammunition while driving on a gravel road in New Bloomfield. ■

Between 12:45 p.m. and 12:50 p.m. on January 1, 2011, Wife called 911 and reported that a man in camouflage was in the middle of the street pointing a'rifle at her house. She reported that she had arrived home to' discover her Husband had been shot. ' A police officer arrived. The officer could not see into Wife’s house because the blinds were closed, and no one immediately answered the front door. The officer started toward the back of the house when Wife opened the carport door holding a handgun. Wife told the officer she did not know how to use the gun.

■ Wife led the officer into the house. She lifted and turned Husband’s head to show the officer an entry- wound on the right side. Wife said the-man in camouflage was a white male in his fifties. Wife said she grabbed the handgun, which Husband kept in a holster near his bed, and tried to fire it out the door to scare the man but could not fire the gun. Wife said she tried to do the same with a rifle.

*170 ■ Paramedics arrived on the scene. As the paramedics moved Husband, a .22-caliber shell casing rolled onto the floor. The shell- casing was consistent, with having been fired from a Marlin rifle.

■ Wife continued to claim to police that Husband was shot by a camouflaged gunman. Wife denied that she or Husband were experiencing financial problems and denied that she had current drug problems. The police ruled out people Wife identified as potential suspects.

The police contacted family members and determined that a Marlin rifle was missing from the home., Police learned of Wife’s drug problem and interviewed Deppe about his conversations with Wife.

On January 3, 2011, the police again interviewed Wife. This time, Wife claimed that Husband asked her to find someone who would kill him because he wanted to die. Wife said Deppe agreed to kill Husband and that she left a rifle in the garage for Deppe. Police re-interviewed Deppe, who denied any involvement in the murder.

On January 4, 2011, the police again interviewed Wife. This time, Wife said she killed Husband at his request. Wife led investigators to the rifle. Wife.was arrested and later charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action.

Both before and after Wife’s arrest, Prosecutors secured investigative subpoenas from the trial court pursuant to section 56.085. 2 Before Wife was arrested, Jefferson Bank and Hawthorne Bank received subpoenas that requested account information for Husband and Wife’s joint bank accounts. After Wife was arrested, United Healthcare received subpoenas that re? quested information about a life insurance policy worth $100,000 owned by Husband. In lieu of appearing in person at the prosecutor’s office to deliver 'the records and to submit to oral examinations under oath, the subpoenaed businesses simply submitted the subpoenaed records to police investigators. ■ •• - - •

Wife filed motions to suppress the subpoenaed records. Relevant to this appeal, Wife argued that her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures was violated when the State waived the statutory requirement that representatives ' from the subpoenaed businesses produce thé records and appear at the prosecutor’s office for oral examinations under oath. Wife also argued that the subpoenas issued to United Healthcare for insurance policy records violated the Fourth Amendment because the .State failed to provide Wife notice of the subpoenas.

The trial court overruled Wife’s motions to suppress. The trial court ruled in pertinent part that:

Investigative subpoenas must be sufficiently limited in scope, relevant 'in purpose, arid specific in directive so that compliance will not be unreasonably burdensome. Johnson v. State, 925 S.W.2d 834 (Mo. banc 1996). Parenthetically, assuming that it is the burden on the [subpoenaed party] that must be analyzed, that burden is certainly lessened by permitting the [subpoenaed party] to simply send the documents without an appearance.

The trial court also found that the United Healthcare insurance policy belonged to Husband, and that Wife had no ownership interest in the policy.

At trial, Wife timely objected to admission of the subpoenaed records by referencing her motions to suppress. The trial court overruled Wife’s objections and *171 elected to stand by its ruling on the motions to suppress.

At trial, Wife testified that she had been abused by Husband for a number of years and killed Husband in self-defense. Wife testified that on the day of the killing, she and Husband got into an argument and Husband kicked her.

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Bluebook (online)
473 S.W.3d 166, 2015 Mo. App. LEXIS 827, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-of-missouri-v-sandra-g-plunkett-moctapp-2015.