State v. Hefflin

89 S.W.2d 938, 338 Mo. 236, 103 A.L.R. 1301, 1936 Mo. LEXIS 543
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJanuary 4, 1936
StatusPublished
Cited by81 cases

This text of 89 S.W.2d 938 (State v. Hefflin) 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. Hefflin, 89 S.W.2d 938, 338 Mo. 236, 103 A.L.R. 1301, 1936 Mo. LEXIS 543 (Mo. 1936).

Opinion

ELLISON, J.

The appellant was convicted in the Circuit Court of Gentry County upon a charge of having in his custody and concealed about his person certain alleged burglar’s tools, in violation *240 of Section 4057, Revised Statutes 1929. The jury assessed his punishment at imprisonment in the State penitentiary for a term of three years. His motion for new trial in the circuit court contained numerous assignments of error which are grouped under fourteen points in his brief on this appeal. These challenge the sufficiency of the information, the trial proceedings and evidence; complain of the circuit court’s action in overruling a motion to suppress evidence, a motion for a continuance, and a motion to discharge the jury; and assail rulings on the admission and exclusion of evidence, and in giving and refusing instructions.

In outline the evidence presented by the State showed that the appellant and an accomplice named Leslie Wheeler on Sunday morning, February '4, 1934, held up Ogden’s Cafe in the suburbs of St. Joseph in Buchanan County with a pistol, taking five slot machines. State Highway Patrolman David Harrison of Bethany was notified by telephone and he and Sheriff Webb of Harrison County set out to patrol State Highway No. 4. They met the appellant and Wheeler, gave chase, and captured them in Albany, the county seat of Gentry County, some fifty miles northeast of the scene of the robbery and about two hours after it occurred. In the Ford automobile of the fugitives were found the slot machines, which they admitted having taken from the Ogden Cafe; also a .45 caliber automatic Colts army pistol, loaded and with trigger cocked; some .45 automatic shells atad a leather pistol holster; a dry battery flashlight, cafled a “peep' light;” a prying bar, called a “jimmy;” and a blackjack. The two men were taken back to St. Joseph and charged with the robbery of the slot machines from the Ogden Cafe. The prosecuting attorney of the county dismissed this charge whereupon both the appellant and Wheeler were surrendered to the officers of Gentry County and the instant prosecution was there begun against the appellant for having possession of burglar’s tools. It seems that a; similar separate charge was filed against Wheeler. Other facts will be stated as necessary in the course of the opinion.

I. The information charged the appellant under -the prior conviction or so-called Habitual Criminal Statutes, Sections 4461, 4462, ■ Revised Statutes 1929, this part of the charge alleging he had previously been convicted of burglary in Page County, Iowa, and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in the Men’s Reformatory at Anamosa, Iowa; that- he was paroled, returned to the reformatory for violation of said parole, and later, in 1931, discharged on expiration of his sentence. The first assignment of error in appellant’s brief is that the information was fatally defective in! failing to allege “that the appellant was discharged from said institution upon being paroled. ’ ’ This criticism to us is unintelligible.- The information substantially followed the language of Section 4461, Revised Státutes 1929, by stating, he was discharged on expiration of his *241 sentence. Why appellant thinks it should have been alleged that he was discharged when he was let out on a parole (not a pardon) which he violated, forcing his return to the reformatory, is more than we can see. The parole did not operate as a discharge and the information need not have said anything at all about it. The assignment obviously is without merit both for this reason and another stated in the next paragraph.

Appellant maintains further that his-conviction cannot stand because it was not proven he was discharged from the Iowa penal institution ; and it is a fact that the State failed to make this proof and abandoned the prior conviction part of the charge. But it does not follow that the case could not still be submittéd under the same information on the charge therein of possessing burglar’s tools, or that the jury could not convict him on that charge as a first offender. As has been held several times the Habitual Criminal Statutes themselves do not create a separate offense but merely subject second offenders to heavier punishment for the crimes they commit. [State v. Bresse, 326 Mo. 885, 894, 33 S. W. (2d) 919, 922.] It is well established that though the jury disbelieve the evidence offered to show a prior conviction they can still convict the defendant of the crime charged in the information and assess his punishment in accordance with the statute «applicable thereto in the first instance. [State v. McBride, 334 Mo. 890, 68 S. W. (2d) 688.] And there is no reason why the conviction and punishment cannot follow along in the same way where the prosecutor has abandoned the prior conviction part of the charge. This was done in State v. Jackson, 336 Mo. 1069, 83 S. W. (2d) 87. In other words, it is not vital to a prosecution under an information alleging a prior conviction and discharge, that the pleading and proof on this point be unexceptionable. They go only to the amount of punishment to be inflicted, and the defendant is not entitled to an acquittal merely because the State falls short of the mark in either respect. He can still be punished as a first offender. •

II. As stated,, when the defendant and Wheeler were apprehended at Albany their automobile was searched and in it were found the slot machines and alleged burglar’s tools above mentioned. On the day of the trial in the circuit court the defendant filed a motion to suppress this evidence on the ground that it was obtained by a wrongful search and seizure. The circuit court overruled the motion, and appellant’s next assignment of error complains of that .ruling. We will not go into the merits of the assignment because the record shows the motion to suppress was filed too late to entitle it to consideration from the trial court. The bill of exceptions and ■an entry in the record proper brought up both recite the motion was filed “at the close of all the evidence submitted in said cause.” Furthermore, the next preceding entry in the record proper shows *242 the jury had been sworn, all the evidence heard, and the jury had retired under the instructions of the' court, befpre the motion to-suppress was filed. At that stage of the case it was clearly out of time. [State v. Jackson, 336 Mo. 1069, 83 S. W. (2d) l. c. 91; State v. Tull, 333 Mo. 152, 160, 62 S. W. (2d) 389, 392.]

III. Error is assigned in the overruling of appellant’s application for a continuance.. The application was filed the day the case was tried, March 26,. 1934. It alleged that the original information in the cause was filed on the first day of the term, March .19, but that appellant’s counsel did .not receive a copy of it until the next day, March 20; that the names of several witnesses were indorsed on the. back of the information, of whom two, Hazel Thompson and R. E. Truman, or Tenman, were unknown to appellant and his counsel; that- the name of Truman or Tenman was written in longhand and was illegible; that appellant was not prepared to meet the testimony of these witnesses.

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Bluebook (online)
89 S.W.2d 938, 338 Mo. 236, 103 A.L.R. 1301, 1936 Mo. LEXIS 543, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-hefflin-mo-1936.