State v. Baker

791 S.W.2d 939, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 975, 1990 WL 86895
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 26, 1990
DocketNos. 16008, 16490
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 791 S.W.2d 939 (State v. Baker) 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 v. Baker, 791 S.W.2d 939, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 975, 1990 WL 86895 (Mo. Ct. App. 1990).

Opinion

FLANIGAN, Presiding Judge.

A jury found defendant Baker guilty of sexual abuse in the first degree, § 566.100,1 and felonious restraint, § 565.120, and he was sentenced, as a prior and a persistent offender, to consecutive imprisonment terms of seven years and ten years respectively. Defendant appeals, and that appeal is Case No. 16008. After the jury trial, defendant filed a motion under Rule 29.15, seeking relief from the conviction. That motion was denied without evidentiary hearing. Defendant appeals from that denial, and that appeal is Case No. 16490. The appeals have been consolidated and will be dealt with separately in this opinion.

No. 16008

Defendant’s first point is that the trial court erred in refusing to give Instruction B, offered by defendant, for the reason that Instruction B submitted the offense of false imprisonment, which is a lesser included offense of felonious restraint, and the evidence supported the giving of Instruction B because the jury could have found that the victim, Janice, was not exposed to a substantial risk of serious physical injury, in that she suffered no serious physical injury and there was no evidence that defendant possessed a weapon with which he could have injured her.

A person commits the crime of felonious restraint, a class C felony, “if he knowingly restrains another unlawfully and without consent so as to interfere substantially with his liberty and exposes him to a substantial risk of serious physical injury.” § 565.120.1. “Serious physical injury,” as used in § 565.120, “means physical injury that creates a substantial risk of death or that causes serious disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any part of the body.” § 565.002(6). False imprisonment is a class A misdemeanor unless the person unlawfully restrained is removed from Missouri, in which case it is a class D felony. § 565.130.2. A person commits the crime of false imprisonment “if he knowingly restrains another unlawfully and without consent so as to interfere substantially with his liberty.” § 565.130.1. Felonious restraint contains all the elements of false imprisonment and the additional element that the committer of the offense exposes the victim to a substantial risk of serious physical injury.

The offense occurred during the late afternoon of October 21, 1987. The principal witness for the state was the victim, Janice, a real estate agent. Janice encountered defendant on the public square in Springfield. Janice was wearing a name tag identifying her as a realtor. The defendant was 44 years old and was not acquainted with Janice. Defendant told Janice that he knew of a house which might be available for a “listing.”

Janice and defendant drove to a house on East Central in Springfield. Defendant’s house was close by- Defendant had recently painted the. house which was to be inspected, and defendant had the key to it.

Janice and defendant entered the house, which was “totally vacant.” After looking at the interior of the house, Janice started to open the front door but defendant said he was not through talking with her and shut the door. Defendant told Janice he wanted to take her to a party. She told him she did not want to go. Defendant said she was going to go with him and that he was going to take her out there and have her sexually assaulted. Defendant told Janice that he had not been “with a woman” in a long time and that she was not leaving until they had sex. Janice told [941]*941him she did not want to have sex and to let her walk out the front door.

Janice testified, “He threatened to harm me. I told him the last thing he needed were rape charges, and he got angry and flung me across the room and said, ‘Oh, you would, would you ... I might as well kill you and get it over with.’ I told him to stop, that I had five little children. I pleaded over and over for him to let me out the front door.”

Janice further testified, “I started for the door and he started laughing and said, ‘Not until I get some ...’ I made it to the door on about three occasions but there was a dead bolt and the door lock. By the time I could get the dead bolt undone he was shutting the door and locking it back. He flung me across the room. I began to panic because I began to realize nobody knew that I had run into him. No one knew we were going there.

“I felt he had a weapon. At one point he had me up against the wall and 1 had my hands against his chest and he started reaching in his top pocket real slow and just staring me in the face and I said, ‘What are you doing, what are you taking out of your pocket,’ because he had an object about this long and I thought it was a pocket knife. He pulled it out real slow. It was the halves of two cigarettes but it frightened me so bad I started to slide down the wall. I was sure he had a knife on me.

“Then he lit one of the cigarettes and had it in his fingers and put both hands like this behind my neck. He had his thumbs like that but I didn’t know at any moment when he might choke me. He grabbed me by the breasts on at least three occasions and poked me on the breast numerous times.”

Janice further testified that during this ordeal, which lasted an hour to an hour and a half, defendant would not let her leave. Janice saw the door knob turn and defendant’s mother, who lived nearby, entered the room. When defendant turned to look at his mother, Janice fled from the house.

On cross-examination by defense counsel, Janice testified that defendant “might be a little taller than I.” She said that when defendant threw her against the wall he had both hands and fingers “like so, put both of them behind the back of my neck, and he had a cigarette lit. I thought he was going to set my hair on fire. He was definitely trying to scare the daylights out of me.”

After fleeing from the house, Janice went to the home of a friend who called the police. Officer Blunt and Officer Greene went to defendant’s house and arrested him.

Detective Timothy Medlin of the Springfield Police Department interviewed defendant on October 22 and gave defendant the Miranda warnings. Medlin testified at length concerning statements defendant made to him. Defendant admitted to Med-lin that he had been present in the house with Janice and that he had made sexual advances to which she was not responsive.

Defendant contends, and the state agrees, that false imprisonment is a lesser included offense of felonious restraint. This is so because false imprisonment is established by proof of the same or less than all of the facts required to establish the commission of felonious restraint, the offense charged. See § 556.046(1).

Section 556.046.2 reads: “The court shall not be obligated to charge the jury with respect to an included offense unless there is a basis for a verdict acquitting the defendant of the offense charged and convicting him of the included offense.”

In State v. Olson, 636 S.W.2d 818, 321 (Mo. banc 1982), the court said:

“[Section 556.046.2] has for its purpose the exclusion of the requirement to instruct down in certain instances. It seems the intent was to not require an instructing down unless there were facts in evidence from which the jury could find the appellant NOT guilty of the higher offense AND guilty of the lesser.” (Emphasis in original.)

At 322 the court said: “Section 556.046.2 limits the requirement of instructing down to those instances where there is some affirmative evidence

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

State v. Christian
184 S.W.3d 597 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2006)
State v. Cobbins
21 S.W.3d 876 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2000)
State v. Barnard
972 S.W.2d 462 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1998)
State v. Smith
902 S.W.2d 313 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1995)
State v. Tims
865 S.W.2d 881 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1993)
State v. Perkins
831 S.W.2d 637 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1992)
State v. Wilson
826 S.W.2d 79 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1992)
State v. Green
798 S.W.2d 498 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1990)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
791 S.W.2d 939, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 975, 1990 WL 86895, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-baker-moctapp-1990.