State v. Gregory

630 S.W.2d 607, 1982 Mo. App. LEXIS 3506
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 9, 1982
DocketWD 32220
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 630 S.W.2d 607 (State v. Gregory) 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. Gregory, 630 S.W.2d 607, 1982 Mo. App. LEXIS 3506 (Mo. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinion

*608 KENNEDY, Judge.

Edward Gregory was convicted upon jury trial of first-degree burglary, § 569.160, RSMo 1978, 1 robbery in the second degree, § 569.030, and attempted rape, § 564.011. In accordance with the jury verdict he was sentenced by the court to consecutive terms of eight, ten and seven years’ imprisonment on the respective charges. § 558.011. (Cum.Supp.1981).

He has appealed to this court, claiming error in the admission of identification testimony, in the denial of his challenge for cause of venirewoman Dorothy McGee, and in the instructions on punishment.

The facts of the case are as follows:

On September 8,1980, at approximately 9 o’clock a. m., a black man (later identified as the defendant) came to the door of the residence of 83-year-old Lillian Townley in Kansas City. Pretending to be responding to a home repair call, he presented a card and stated he was from American Home Repair. As Mrs. Townley opened the door to return his card, he forced his way into her house. He stole some money and a television set, and attempted to rape her. He failed in the last-mentioned undertaking to achieve penetration.

Before the criminal left the house, Mrs. Townley managed to escape from the cords with which she had been bound and fled from her basement to a next-door neighbor’s house. The neighbor, Mrs. Tonjes, called the police. Detective McKinnie actually arrived in time to see the robber enter a car in front of the Townley house. He noted the license number of the car and got a good view of the man. By the time the man had been identified to McKinnie as the robber, he had driven away.

McKinnie later determined that the car was registered to one Edward Thomas. He located Thomas and discovered that he was not the man he had seen at the car in front of the Townley house. The owner told Detective McKinnie that he had lent his car to the appellant. Appellant was arrested and identified both by Mrs. Townley and by McKinnie as the perpetrator.

1. Suppression of identification.

Appellant’s first point is that the trial court erred in overruling his motion to suppress Mrs. Townley’s pre-trial and in-court identification of himself. He claims that her identification was faulty and inadmissible for two reasons — first, that his arrest was illegal and that Mrs. Townley’s ensuing identification was the “fruit of the poisonous tree”; and second, that the pre-trial and in-court identifications of appellant “were the product of unnecessarily suggestive police procedures calculated to single appellant out as her assailant and so conducive of irreparable misidentification as to deny appellant due process of law and a fair trial”.

1-a. Suppression of identification; identification as product of unlawful arrest.

Appellant first undertakes to establish that his warrantless arrest was invalid, then asserts: “Had appellant not been illegally arrested, he would not have been in police custody available for viewing by Ms. Townley. Her identification of him at the lineup was plainly the ‘tainted fruit’ of his illegal arrest and thus inadmissible under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). No intervening circumstances attenuated the taint of that illegal arrest and Ms. Townley should not have been allowed to testify as to the fact that she identified appellant at the lineup.” We need not pause to consider whether defendant’s warrantless arrest was invalid, for even if so, that fact does not require the suppression of Townley’s later lineup identification as the fruit of the war-rantless arrest. State v. Berry, 609 S.W.2d 948, 952 (Mo. banc 1980). See also United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 477, 100 S.Ct. 1244, 1253, 63 L.Ed.2d 537 (1980).

1-b. Suppression of identification; identification as product of suggestive police procedure.

Neither was there any impermissibly suggestive procedure which induced Mrs. *609 Townley’s lineup identification of appellant, or her subsequent in-court identification. After appellant’s arrest, Mrs. Townley viewed a lineup of four men and listened to their voices. She tentatively and cautiously identified appellant as her assailant. After the lineup, Detective Luther took a Polaroid photograph of appellant by himself. After Mrs. Townley had examined the photograph, she was confirmed in her identification of appellant. It made her “doubly sure” of the identification, she testified. Nothing in the above-described police procedure required the suppression either of the lineup identification or of the in-court identification. It is to be noted that the Polaroid color photograph of the appellant was made and shown to Mrs. Townley only after she had tentatively identified him. It is regrettable that she had been informed by the police before she viewed the lineup that “they had the right man this time” (an earlier suspect, the registered owner of the car used by the criminal, had proved not to be the culprit), but it is implicit in the lineup procedure that among the persons in the lineup is one who is suspected by the police as the perpetrator of the crime. State v. Dayton, 535 S.W.2d 479, 488 (Mo.App.1976). However, that did not require the trial court to suppress the pre-trial identification, and the trial court’s denial of the motion to suppress will not be disturbed on this appeal. The trial court concluded, by the criterion suggested by Simmons v. U.S., 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, 971, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968), that there was no “substantial likelihood of irreparable misidenti-fieation”. Of course, all the facts which tended to weaken Mrs. Townley’s identification could have been, and were, brought out in her cross-examination before the jury, so that the jury could evaluate her identification.

2. In-court identification; independent basis for identification.

Aside from the pre-trial lineup identification, Mrs. Townley had a sufficient opportunity to observe her assailant at close range at the time of the offense, and thus had an independent basis for her in-court identification. Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 199, 93 S.Ct. 375, 382, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972); State v. Higgins, 592 S.W.2d 151, 160 (Mo. banc 1979), appeal dismissed, 446 U.S. 902, 100 S.Ct. 1825, 64 L.Ed.2d 254 (1980).

3. Challenge of venireman for cause.

Appellant next claims that the court erred in refusing his challenge for cause of venireman Dorothy McGee. This objection is based upon the following voir dire examination:

[Ms. Chapman, defense counsel:]

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Bluebook (online)
630 S.W.2d 607, 1982 Mo. App. LEXIS 3506, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-gregory-moctapp-1982.