State v. Hughes

748 S.W.2d 733, 1988 Mo. App. LEXIS 201, 1988 WL 10654
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedFebruary 16, 1988
DocketNo. 50185
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 748 S.W.2d 733 (State v. Hughes) 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. Hughes, 748 S.W.2d 733, 1988 Mo. App. LEXIS 201, 1988 WL 10654 (Mo. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinion

STEPHAN, Presiding Judge.

Defendant was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of probation or parole for a period of fifty years. She appeals the conviction; we affirm.

The sufficiency of the evidence has been questioned. We, therefore, present the facts in a light most favorable to the verdict.

Defendant and the victim, Donald Hughes, were married to each other. Defendant managed a hog farm and the victim worked as an “over-the-road” truck driver. Defendant employed Melvin Saunders to assist her in running the hog farm.

Defendant controlled the family finances. At the time of the murder, defendant was the beneficiary of approximately $280,-000.00 in life insurance on the victim. The policies were obtained through five different insurance companies. On May 28, 1983, the victim gave defendant a handwritten will, which left all his property to her, as a birthday gift.

On January 19, 1984, while the victim was working out-of-town, defendant called her friend Karen Ruble. She wanted Ruble’s address so that Social Security would send defendant’s daughter’s checks there. Defendant talked to Ruble two more times during the day. She told Ruble that she was planning to leave her husband and move to another state. Defendant never mentioned any “good news” regarding her health to Ruble.

The victim called defendant at approximately 6:00 to tell her he would be home in a few hours. Defendant told her hired hand, Saunders, that she wanted him to drive her to the truck port to meet her husband so that she could tell him the good news that she had been cured of cancer. On the way to the truck port defendant complained to Saunders that her husband had been “running around” with his ex-wife. Saunders dropped defendant off at the gate to the Ryder Truck Port in Fen-ton. She gave Saunders some money and told him to go to the Pizza Hut in DeSoto. Defendant wanted Saunders to follow them home because “they were going to have an accident, and Don wasn’t going to be coming home.” Saunders went to the A & W Drive-In on Highway 21 in DeSoto just prior to midnight and ordered food from his car. Saunders never looked at the waitress who brought his food because he was watching the road at all times, but the waitress was able to identify him.

After Saunders saw the victim’s pick-up truck pass, he waited approximately ten minutes and followed. He eventually saw defendant walking along Highway 21 and stopped to pick her up. A witness from the Union Pacific Railroad in DeSoto was driving home from work at approximately 12:30 a.m. He saw a woman walking beside the road and stopped to offer her a ride. She told him to “get out of here”. A van then drove up and the woman got in. The witness later identified defendant as the woman he saw that night.

Defendant and Saunders returned home. Defendant told Saunders that he should tell the police they spent the night at the farrowing house waiting for one of the hogs to give birth. Saunders left between 1:45 and 2:10 a.m., at which time defendant telephoned the Ryder truck plant telling them she was concerned because her husband had not returned home.

A Chrysler worker returning home from work discovered the victim’s truck on a side road near Highway 21 and informed [736]*736the police. Police officials reported to the scene and found the victim. The autopsy established that he had been shot five times: once in the back of the head, twice in the back, once through the arm and into the chest, and once in the cheekbone. Death was determined to have been caused by either the head wound or the chest wound.

The ignition key was still in place and there was a shaving kit and a carton of cigarettes on the seat next to the victim. The police were unable to locate a gun or shell casings, but they did find a set of small footprints in the snow heading south on Highway 21.

The next day, January 20, 1984, after having been informed of the victim’s death, defendant and Karen Ruble went to a bank to get the victim’s handwritten will notarized. This request was refused. They also made some other inquiries regarding property and funeral arrangements. A few days later defendant began to make claims on the insurance policies.

Defendant spoke with the police on January 20, 1984. She told them that on the evening of the 19th she and Saunders had been at the farm all night, that the victim carried a .22 Colt pistol in his truck, that the police should investigate Paul Coleman and that she wanted the body released immediately. None of the police who were present at the meeting noticed any bruises or signs of a physical fight.

On January 21, 1984, Saunders saw the defendant holding a .22 caliber revolver with six empty shell casings. Defendant asked him to help her take the gun apart and, wearing gloves, put the pieces, which had been coated with cooking oil, in a plastic bag. She stated she was going to discard the pieces along the highway.

Defendant was arrested for her husband’s murder on January 25, 1984. Eventually she made a taped confession admitting she shot the victim in self-defense. She was found guilty at trial.

Defendant’s first point is that she was denied a fair trial by virtue of juror misconduct and improper procedure in juror orientation.

Defendant asserts that there was juror misconduct because a juror failed to answer certain questions. The rules to be considered in our determination of whether there has been juror misconduct are well settled. A prospective juror may not fail to answer questions on voir dire. It is the duty of a juror to answer all questions fully, fairly and truthfully so that the attorneys’ challenges can be meaningful. Beggs v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corporation, 387 S.W.2d 499, 503 (Mo. banc 1965). Not every failure of a prospective juror to answer a question is sufficient to entitle defendant to a new trial. State v. McGinnis, 622 S.W.2d 416, 421 (Mo.App.1981). Generally, this issue is left to the discretion of the trial judge and will only be overturned if the record indicates there has been an abuse of discretion. Beggs, 387 S.W.2d at 503.

The defense alleged that two questions asked during voir dire were not answered by Larry Arnold, the foreman, when they should have been. The questions were “whether or not a juror or any member of his family had been a victim of assault” and “whether any juror had prior dealings with the Prosecuting Attorney’s office?”

At the hearing on the Motion for New Trial, Mr. Arnold told the court that during the original juror orientation he told Judge Anderson (who was not the trial judge) that his son had been the victim of an assault in a pending case in County Circuit Court. The judge told him that it would probably not affect his ability to serve as a juror. Mr. Arnold also testified that he did not respond to the court’s questioning of whether he had been the victim of an assault because he had not been a victim. He testified that he had been in contact with the prosecuting attorney’s office to check the status of his son’s case. Finally, he told the court that the fact he had been in contact with the prosecutor’s office did not affect his decision in the underlying trial and that he had not attempted to mislead the court.

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Bluebook (online)
748 S.W.2d 733, 1988 Mo. App. LEXIS 201, 1988 WL 10654, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-hughes-moctapp-1988.