State v. Burks

34 S.W. 48, 132 Mo. 363, 1896 Mo. LEXIS 35
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedFebruary 4, 1896
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 34 S.W. 48 (State v. Burks) 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
State v. Burks, 34 S.W. 48, 132 Mo. 363, 1896 Mo. LEXIS 35 (Mo. 1896).

Opinion

Uantt, P. J.

At the November term, 1894, of the circuit court of Boone county the defendant was indicted. We are informed by his counsel that the indictment, which was lost during the trial or since, contained two counts, one charging him with burglary with intent to rape a minor under the age of fourteen years, and the other, with a burglarious assault with intent to rape a minor under the age of fourteen years. At the same term defendant filed his motion to quash and it was sustained as to the second count and overruled as to the first. The cause was continued to the March term, 1895. On the fourth day of March, 1895, the cause came to trial and resulted in a general verdict of guilty without assessing any punishment. A motion for new trial was filed and overruled and the defendant’s punishment assessed by the court at ten years in the penitentiary. Erom that sentence this appeal is prosecuted.

[367]*367I. The clerk certifies in his transcript that “the indictment mysteriously disappeared during the time the jury was trying the case and has never been found; ” that since the adjournment of the court the prosecuting attorney had furnished him with a copy of the indictment and asked its insertion in the transcript and defendant had objected to his so doing because the indictment could not be thus supplied but that he did insert said copy so furnished him by the prosecuting attorney.

The clerk had no right to incorporate the paper purporting to be a copy of the indictment in the record even though requested by the prosecuting attorney and it can not be treated as a part of. the record. A lost indictment, like any other record, may be supplied by the court of whose record it constitutes a part. Of this there can be no doubt. State v. Simpson, 67 Mo. 647; State v. Smith, 71 Mo. 45. But it is one thing for a court to order a pleading substituted for one that is lost after a hearing and after being satisfied that the substituted copy is the same or substantially the same as that which has been lost or destroyed, and quite another for one of the parties in vacation or even in term time to substitute a copy of a lost pleading without notice to his adversary and without the knowledge or permission of the court whose record is to be thus affected. The so-called indictment incorporated in this record can not be considered by us.

That an indictment was found and filed; that one count of it was quashed; that defendant was duly arraigned on the remaining count and pleaded not guilty; that defendant was tried and convi cted on that indictment, there can be no doubt. He now seeks to have that indictment declared insufficient on this appeal. In the absence of any evidence of its form or allegations it must be presumed that it was a valid and [368]*368sufficient charge of the offense of which he was convicted. It follows that it was the duty of the defendant to have the indictment certified to this court and if lost or destroyed without his knowledge or connivance, if he desired to have this court pass upon its sufficiency, he should have taken appropriate steps to supply it in the circuit court, which had the power to do so even at a subsequent term. The circuit court of Boone county is required to hold a term on the second Monday in June of each year. Defendant was convicted and sentenced in March, 1895. The court extended the time for filing the bill to the June term, 1895. In preparing his record counsel was either apprised of the loss of the indictment, or by ordinary care could have been, and the indictment could have been supplied at the same term at which he filed his exceptions, but he made no effort whatever to do so. He who asserts error must show it.

II. It is now asserted that the jury were deceived into disobeying the instructions of the court by failing ’to assess the amount of the defendant’s punishment because of oral communications or instructions of the jury by the sheriff to the foreman and by the foreman to the jury. A charge of so grave a character against a judge should not be made by counsel in an appellate court without having given the judge an opportunity to refute it in his own court. The motion for new trial does not contain any such a charge as this and hence it is not open to review. It seems to be based entirely upon an affidavit of the sheriff in charge of the jury to the effect that pending the deliberations of the jury the foreman called to him and desired him to say to the court they could not agree upon a verdict owing to their inability to agree upon the length of the term of punishment and he desired an instruction for a less punishment. The court told him to inform the foreman that he had fully instructed them under the law. What [369]*369connection this had with the failure of the jury to agree upon a term of punishment we are unable to see. The affidavit of the four jurors that they only agreed to the verdict because the foreman assured them that the court could and would reduce the punishment as stated in his instructions was clearly incompetent to impeach the verdict.

III. The court correctly defined a reasonable doubt and there was no error in not giving another instruction on the same subject.

IY. To sustain his defense that he had entered the house of the prosecuting witness in pursuance of an agreement with one Maud Bentley, a negro woman who had stayed in Rachel Cowden’s house with her children during a visit shortly prior to the time of the alleged burglary, and had not forcibly entered for the purpose of ravishing the girl Emma Cowden, defendant called said Maud Bentley as a witness. She denied having had the conversation and agreement with defendant which he sought to prove. She denied that she slept at Rachel Cowden’s house that night. She was fully corroborated by Rosa McAfee, another of defendant’s witnesses, as to the fact of sleeping at Rosa McAfee’s that night. She was asked if she did not state to one or more parties (not naming them) inRocheport after the preliminary trial, and in Columbia during the trial, that Burks did ask and tried to pursuade her to consent to his coming to her room that night and that she told him not to come and had refused to consent to anything of the kind and she answered she did not.

At this point the prosecuting attorney objected to questions by defendant’s counsel laying a foundation to impeach his own witness and for the reason that his questions were leading. Thereupon counsel for defendant asked to be allowed to treat the witness as adverse [370]*370and hostile, to prove her answers were wholly different from her declarations theretofore made, and from what defendant and his counsel had been informed she would state, which offer the court refused.

Few questions in the practical administration of justice have given rise to a more pronounced difference of opinion between English judges than whether it be competent for a party to prove that a witness called by him, who has given evidence against him, has made at other times a statement contrary to that made by him at the trial. It is conceded on all sides that such a statement can not be admitted as proof of the facts therein asserted, and if admissible at all is permitted solely for the purpose of discrediting or throwing suspicion upon his testimony which is in conflict with such previous statements. Perhaps in no case have the reasons for and against the rule been more clearly stated than in Wright v. Beckett, 1 M. & Rob. 414, (1833) by Lord Chief Justice Denman asserting the admissibility of such statements, and by. Bai’on BoLland denying their competency.

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Bluebook (online)
34 S.W. 48, 132 Mo. 363, 1896 Mo. LEXIS 35, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-burks-mo-1896.