State v. Buggs

547 P.2d 720, 219 Kan. 203, 1976 Kan. LEXIS 353
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedMarch 6, 1976
Docket47,928, 47,950
StatusPublished
Cited by225 cases

This text of 547 P.2d 720 (State v. Buggs) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Buggs, 547 P.2d 720, 219 Kan. 203, 1976 Kan. LEXIS 353 (kan 1976).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Foth, C.:

Charles L. Buggs, Jr. and Ronald G. Perry have separately appealed from convictions of multiple felony counts in the district court of Sedgwick county. Buggs was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, kidnapping, aggravated robbery, rape, and aggravated weapons violation; Perry was convicted of kidnapping and aggravated robbery. All charges arose out of a single series of transactions, the defendants were jointly charged in one information and were jointly tried, and in their appeals they raise (with one *205 minor exception) substantially identical claims of error. The appeals are therefore consolidated for decision.

The facts are basically undisputed: On April 12, 1974, Mrs. JoAnn Penner and her seventeen year old son Larry were working at the Penners’ Dairy Queen store in Wichita. At 11:00 p. m. they closed the store for the evening. Just prior to leaving Mrs. Penner put the day’s receipts, over $300, into a bank bag and placed the bag inside her purse. As she and her son were outside the store after locking the back door, defendants approached. Perry said he had a gun and told the Penners “not to try anything.” (The “gun,” it later developed, was merely a piece of pipe taped to a handle and was not functional.) Mrs. Penner was directed to -unlock the door and get back inside; she did so, followed by her son Larry and the defendants Buggs and Perry. After all were inside Mrs. Penner was asked where the money was; she said it was in her purse and handed it to Perry.

At this point defendants forced both Penners to lie down on the floor, Larry face down, Mrs. Penner on her back with her face to the wall. Buggs then removed Mrs. Penner’s undergarments and proceeded to rape her. She testified she did not resist because she feared for the life of her son, who was guarded by Perry wielding the “gun.”

In the meantime, two Wichita police officers arrived at the store in response to a silent alarm, which had been set off when Mrs. Penner unlocked the back door. One of them testified that upon arriving at the store he looked through a window and saw Buggs, with Mrs. Penner underneath, holding a knife at the side of her throat. The officer called out, and then circled the building in an attempt to enter. Buggs thereupon released Mrs. Penner, who ran and opened the back door. When Buggs ran to the same door he was apprehended by the entering officer. Perry was found in the restroom, along with the money bag and the “gun.” A knife with a six inch blade, a pair of black leather gloves, and a ski mask were found in the area where Buggs and Mrs. Penner had been. Mrs. Penner testified that she first saw the knife when she got up after Buggs released her.

One of the officers testified without objection to a conversation with Buggs early the following morning, after his rights had been explained to him and a waiver signed. In that conversation Buggs protested that he didn’t get any money from the robbery, but admitted the rape at knife point.

*206 Perry took the stand in his own behalf. He testified to planning the robbery with Buggs, but disclaimed any part in the rape. He told of accosting the Penners outside the Dairy Queen, telling them he had a gun, directing Mrs. Penner to unlock the door and go back inside, asking for the money, taking the bank bag from Mrs. Penner, and of trying to hide the money and “gun” in the restroom.

The jury convicted only Buggs of the aggravated kidnapping and rape of Mrs. Penner; it acquitted Perry of both those charges. Both defendants were convicted of the kidnapping (without harm) of Larry Penner, and both were convicted of aggravated robbery. As to the last charge, it should be noted that the “dangerous weapon” relied on by the state to make the robbery aggravated under K. S. A. 21-3427 was the knife employed by Buggs, and not the homemade “gun” brandished by Perry. The knife also furnished the basis for the aggravated weapons violation charge against Buggs, who had been convicted of rape in 1971 and released from the reformatory in 1973.

Before proceeding to defendants’ main point on appeal we shall dispose of their secondary contentions. They first contend the trial court should have instructed on the lesser included offenses of simple robbery and attempted robbery. The trial court had a duty to so instruct only if the evidence would have justified a conviction of one of those offenses. State v. Masqua, 210 Kan. 419, 502 P. 2d 728.

Looking first to the claimed “attempt,” we find the term defined inK.S.A. 21-3301 (1):

“(1) An attempt is any overt act toward the perpetration of a crime done by a person who intends to commit such crime but fails in the perpetration thereof or is prevented or intercepted in executing such crime.”

Robbery, in turn, is defined in K. S. A. 21-3426:

“Robbery is the taking of property from the person or presence of another by threat of bodily harm to his person or the person of another or by force.”

The completed crime of robbery is thus the “taking” of property from the person by the proscribed means; an “attempt” to commit robbery occurs only when the taking is not accomplished. Here all the evidence is that the bank money bag was “taken” from Mrs. Penner by Perry, and later removed by him to the restroom. There is no evidence to the contrary. The robbery was complete when Mrs. Penner handed over the bag, and there was no call for an instruction on an attempt.

The contention that the robbery was simple and not “aggravated” rests on the dual proposition that the “gun” was not a dangerous *207 weapon and that the presence of the knife was not known to either of the Penners until after the police arrived.

Aggravated robbery is defined in K. S. A. 21-3427:

“Aggravated robbery is a robbery committed by a person who is armed with a dangerous weapon or who inflicts bodily harm upon any person in the course of such robbery.”

The statute requires only that the robber be “armed with” a dangerous weapon, not that he use it or that the victim be aware of its presence. The mere presence of the weapon makes the crime aggravated — presumably because of the increased danger of personal harm the legislature foresaw from such presence, whether the weapon is used or not. As previously noted, the harmless “gun” was not an element in the charge, but only the knife. The knife was seen in Buggs’ hand by the officer looking in the window, seen by the Penners after they got up from the floor, and was photographed and picked up by other officers. Although Perry professed no prior knowledge of the knife’s presence, the crime actually committed was aggravated robbery and he either aided and abetted in that crime or nothing. There was no evidence but that Buggs was “armed” with the knife and that it was a dangerous weapon; that is all that was required to make the robbery “aggravated” under 21-3427. There was therefore no necessity for an instruction on simple robbery.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
547 P.2d 720, 219 Kan. 203, 1976 Kan. LEXIS 353, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-buggs-kan-1976.