State v. Hendren

524 S.W.3d 76, 2017 WL 1055660, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 182
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 21, 2017
DocketWD 78751
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 524 S.W.3d 76 (State v. Hendren) 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. Hendren, 524 S.W.3d 76, 2017 WL 1055660, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 182 (Mo. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

AlQk Ahuja, Judge

■ Following a bench trial in the Circuit Court of Johnson County, Appellant Christopher Hendren was convicted of felony murder, armed criminal action, and burglary in the first degree. On appeal, Hen-dren argues that the circuit court erred in convicting him of felony second-degree murder, and the associated armed criminal action charge, because the charging instrument charged him only with conventional second-degree murder. Hendren further contends that there was insufficient evidence to prove that he entered the house of the victim unlawfully, as required to support his burglary conviction. We affirm.

Factual Background

On January 25, 2012, Walter Feldman was found dead in the bedroom of his home in Centerview. He had died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head.

In investigating the murder, the police searched the cellular phone of Walter’s biological son, Jacob, with Jacob’s consent.1 The phone’s contents included a photograph of two white males dressed in dark-colored clothes' with hoods ’ up and bandanas covering their faces. The two males were Jacob and Hendren. Jacob was holding a shotgun or rifle.

Jacob was not living with his father at the time of Walter’s murder. In November 2011, Jacob moved out of his father’s house and moved in with Jane Terrell and Mandy DeWitt for approximately one month, because (Jacob claimed) his father was physically abusive. While "staying with Terrell, Jacob talked about doing violence to his father, but Terrell did not take him seriously. Even when living away from his father, Jacob made contact with his father and visited, his father, at his house. Jacob visited Walter with at least one of his friends, Matt Thomas, and was seen at Walter’s house during a social gathering by Walter’s employer. At the time of the homicide, Jacob was living with his grandparents.

On February 28, 2012, Detective David Mayhew interviewed Hendren. During the interview, Hendren admitted that he participated in Walter’s murder on the night of January 22, 2012. According to Hen-dren, Jacob told Hendren that he was going to sneak into his father’s house without waking him up, and steal some marijuana that Jacob could sell. According to Hendren, Jacob told him that the last time Walter had caught Jacob stealing marijuana, Walter threatened that Jacob would pay “in blood.” Jacob told Hendren that he was going to carry something for protee[79]*79tion just in ease his father woke up “swinging.” Hendren stated that he did not believe that Jacob intended to carry out his plan.'

On the' night of the murder, Jacob and Hendren took five firearms from Jacob’s grandparents’ home, loaded them into Jacob’s grandfather’s car, and drove to Walter’s home-. Prior to entering the home at approximately 11:15 or 11:30 p.m., Jacob and Hendren took a photo of themselves in an alley behind the house; Jacob was holding one of the guns taken from Jacob’s grandfather’s house.,

Initially, Hendren told Detective May-hew that he had stayed outside Walter’s house, and that only Jacob 'had entered. Later, Hendren admitted that he entered the house with Jacob through the side door. Both Jacob and Hendren were carrying .22 caliber firearms. Hendren claimed that his gun was not loaded, and that Jacob had all the shells.

Jacob looked into his father’s bedroom and told Hendren to shoot his father. Hen-dren refused. Hendren stepped to the side, and Jacob shot his gun. Jacob said that he did not know if his father was dead, but he was worried that the shots could be heard from the outside, and he asked Hendren to shut the outside door. After Hendren shut the door, Jacob grabbed the other gun from Hendren, loaded it, re-entered the bedroom, and fired two additional shots.

Jacob then went into his father’s bedroom and walked out with a big box that had marijuana in it. Before leaving, Jacob went back into the bedroom, fired a- fourth shot, and picked up the shell casings. He told Hendren not to tell anybody what had happened. .Afterwards, Jacob and Hendren returned to Jacob’s grandfather’s house, where they put the guns away. Hendren spent the rest of the weekend with Jacob. During his interview with Detective Mayhew, Hendren also completed the following written statement as to what transpired on January 22,2012:

Around 10:30 Jake decided he was gonna kill his dad. I didn’t know what to do. So I helped him put the guns away in the car. He told me he had been waiting for this for a long time, I went with him. We parked the car by his dad’s house. He shut it off, and he told me to grab a gun. I grabbed a gun and followed him in. Repeatedly he asked me to do it. I couldn’t, I was scared, and I didn’t want to get any more involved. I didn’t even want to go to begin with. I stood by the fridge. He fired off a shot. Then told me to shut the “entrance” door. I did then walked back to the fridge. He asked for the other gun, I gave it to him, he walked around the corner and I heard him load it and fire again. I heard him unload and shoot again. Then he walked in and grabbed something out of the room, it was a shoebox for boots, he said it had his dad’s stash in it. He picked up the shells and put them in his pocket. Then we left and went back to his grandparent’s house and put the guns back. We went upstairs. He started going through the box, I was setting on the bed. I was afraid if I ever said anything to any one, that he would kill me. I played it cool like I was there for him. I didn’t sleep that night, I thought he might have thought I was going to tell someone, and possibly shot me in my sleep. I stayed another day at his house so he would trust me, and not try to hurt me at all. Up until tonight, I have not told anyone about this incident, and I was hoping that I could find a way to slowly lose contact with Jake for good.

Although Hendren was sixteen years old at the time of the' alleged offenses, an order was entered by the juvenile division [80]*80allowing Hendren to be prosecuted under general law.

Hendren was charged, acting alone or in concert with another, with: conventional second-degree murder2 for knowingly causing the death of Walter Hayes Feld-man by shooting him, in violation of § 565.021.1(1)3 (Count I); an associated count of armed criminal action (Count II); and burglary in the first-degree, for knowingly entering Feldman’s home unlawfully “for the purpose of committing murder therein, and in effecting entry [Hendren] was armed with a deadly weapon” (Count III).

Hendren waived his right to a jury trial, and was tried to the court. After the close of the evidence and closing arguments, the trial court overruled Hendren’s motion for judgment of acquittal, and found as follows:

The Court has reviewed the evidence that was presented here at trial in this case. It also looked at the second degree murder statute which is what we were operating under in this case that was amended by the State of Missouri under 565.021 with regards to murder in the second degree.
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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
524 S.W.3d 76, 2017 WL 1055660, 2017 Mo. App. LEXIS 182, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-hendren-moctapp-2017.