State v. Carpenter

57 S.W.3d 405, 2001 Mo. App. LEXIS 1992, 2001 WL 1335047
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 31, 2001
DocketNo. 23443
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 57 S.W.3d 405 (State v. Carpenter) 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. Carpenter, 57 S.W.3d 405, 2001 Mo. App. LEXIS 1992, 2001 WL 1335047 (Mo. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

C. DAVID DARNOLD, Special Judge.

James L. Carpenter (“Defendant”) was-convicted by a jury of the crime of first degree burglary, Section 569.160, RSMo 1994, and armed criminal action, Section 571.015, RSMo 1994. Defendant was found not guilty of the crime of forcible sodomy. Defendant was sentenced to fifteen years on the burglary charge and forty-five years on the armed criminal action charge to be served consecutively.

In this appeal, Defendant contends the trial court erred in defining assault as it did in Instruction No. 5 on the first degree burglary charge. He also contends the trial court erred because it did not sustain the challenge for cause of one venireper-son who had a relationship with the Joplin [406]*406Police Department and who knew all of the police officers, including the two officers who testified for the State.

Appellant does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction. This Court accepts as true all evidence supporting the verdict, including all favorable inferences therefrom and disregards all contrary evidence and inferences. State v. Dunn, 21 S.W.3d 77, 79 (Mo.App. S.D.2000), State v. Carlile, 9 S.W.3d 745, 746 (Mo.App. S.D.2000).

Judith Ann Seymour (“Seymour”) lived with Defendant from about 1993 until 1996, at which time Seymour asked Defendant to leave as he had started seeing another woman. Seymour would see Defendant from time to time after he moved out, but the two no longer had a romantic relationship.

On July 21, 1998, Defendant went to Seymour’s house wanting to know if she would take him to get his flat tire fixed. Seymour did not have time to do so, but she did drop Defendant off at his house and told him she would come by after work to see if he still needed help with the flat tire. When Seymour got off work at approximately 12:30 p.m., she drove by Defendant’s house and, seeing that Defendant’s truck was gone, assumed that he had gotten the tire fixed. Upon arriving at her home, Seymour called Defendant’s home and left a message that she had been by his house to see if he needed help, but since his car was gone, she assumed that he had the tire fixed.

An hour later, Seymour was in her bathroom getting ready to go out when Defendant entered her house. When she told him she was in a hurry, he said he wasn’t going to stay. Defendant seemed upset, nervous, and scared, saying that he did not know what to do, or how he was going to make it. Seymour’s granddaughter arrived at that time, but Defendant didn’t want to talk in front of her. When Defendant and Seymour went out to the porch to talk, Seymour’s granddaughter followed them and told Defendant if he didn’t leave she was going to call the police. Defendant left, but yelled at both Seymour and her granddaughter that he would get even with Seymour.

Later that evening when Seymour was home in bed, a noise awoke her, she got up and looked in the kitchen and saw a flash go through the kitchen. Defendant had broken in the back door of her house by breaking out the glass and kicking the door open and had shot out the front of her oven. The next thing Seymour knew, Defendant was on top of her with a gun at her throat. Defendant made Seymour take her pajama top off and told her “he was in control.” Defendant grabbed the portable phone, threw it in the bathroom, and jerked another phone out of the wall in the dining room. It was determined later that the phone lines outside the house had also been pulled. Defendant then fired the gun over Seymour’s shoulder hitting a mirror. Seymour ran to another room trying to get away, but Defendant caught her and pulled her pajamas bottoms off, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into the kitchen. While in the kitchen he poured a beer that he had brought into the house on her, and took another beer from the refrigerator and also poured it on her. Defendant kept saying “I’m in control.”

Seymour believed Defendant was going to kill her. She tried to get a hammer to defend herself but Defendant grabbed it and threw it away. Seymour stated she needed to use the bathroom, but Defendant would not allow her to go. Instead, Defendant made her go outside and urinate in the back yard. Seymour then tried to escape by running out the back door, [407]*407but was hit in the back of the neck with something. The next thing Seymour remembered, she was coming to and getting up when Defendant hit her in the jaw. This time she fell on the concrete floor in the utility room and again lost consciousness. At some point, Defendant also shot a family picture and fired several shots into the dining room.

Seymour next remembered Defendant on top of her with his penis out and trying to put it in her mouth. He also unsuccessfully tried to put his penis, as well as a spray paint can, in Seymour’s vagina. He took the handle to a broom or plunger and put it in Seymour’s vagina. Defendant then grabbed Seymour by the hair and dragged her over to the hot water tank. He told her he was going to take her to Arkansas where he thought her boyfriend lived and he would take care of both of them. He stated he had “already killed three men, and one more ain’t going to make any difference.” Seymour stated she did not believe he had killed three men, but was afraid he was going to kill her.

Defendant’s knee collapsed when he got up, and Seymour asked if she could get a warm cloth for it. Seymour went into the bedroom, took the rifle Defendant brought into her house and shoved it under the bed. She went to another room, got a robe, went through the dining room and ran out the front door. Seymour stopped a van going down the street and asked for help. The van driver nodded and drove off. She then started knocking on doors, but got no answer. When she went to her next-door neighbor’s, he let her in and called 911. When the police arrived, Seymour told them Defendant had broken into her house, broken numerous things, shot several appliances, and that she had been sexually assaulted. Seymour was taken to the hospital that night and received care in the emergency room. She declined a rape test however, stating that she had been through enough. Defendant told the police officers that Seymour had assaulted him, that she had cut him with a piece of glass, that they had consensual sexual relations, and that Seymour’s boyfriend came in and beat him up.

Defendant testified at trial that he had gone by Seymour’s house, that they had gotten into an argument, and that she had actually picked up the gun. When Defendant went inside to get the gun away from Seymour, the gun went off several times accidentally. Defendant denied sodomizing Seymour.

This appeal followed the jury’s guilty verdict. Defendant’s first point on appeal alleges that the trial court erred in giving Instruction No. 5 to the jury because that instruction failed to properly define the crime of assault, and that the definition permitted conviction based on a lesser mental state and level of conduct than required by the crime of assault. That instruction was:

INSTRUCTION No. 5
As to Count I, if you find and believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt:

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Related

State of Missouri v. Nathan R. Hendricks
Missouri Court of Appeals, 2021
State v. Guyton
158 S.W.3d 252 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2005)
State v. Carpenter
109 S.W.3d 718 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2003)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
57 S.W.3d 405, 2001 Mo. App. LEXIS 1992, 2001 WL 1335047, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-carpenter-moctapp-2001.