State v. Juralos
This text of 611 S.W.2d 569 (State v. Juralos) 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.
Opinion
Defendant was convicted by a jury of the offense of burglary in the first degree, § 569.160, RSMo 1978, and the jury assessed his punishment at five years in the Department of Corrections. Defendant had been charged as a persistent offender and after a finding by the court that he was a persistent offender, the court enhanced the punishment by an additional fifteen years. Defendant appeals. We affirm.
As his first point, defendant contends the court erred in failing to sustain his motion for a directed verdict at the close of all the evidence, because the only evidence of his guilt was his mere presence in the vicinity of the burglarized house. Since defendant has challenged the sufficiency of the evidence, we must “review the evidence in the light most favorable to the state considering as true all evidence favorable to the state, direct and circumstantial, and all reasonable inferences deducible therefrom, and ... disregard all evidence and inferences unfavorable to the state.” State v. Cox, 527 S.W.2d 448, 450 (Mo.App.1975).
Defendant was charged with burglarizing the house of Mr. and Mrs. Archie Jett, near Fredericktown. The evidence favorable to the state revealed the following: Around noon on October 26, 1979, Mrs. Jett looked out her living room window and observed a shiny silver-colored car in the driveway. There were two men in the car; both men got out, walked onto the Jetts’ front porch, knocked on the door and then “started off the porch.” One of the men was the defendant, the other was Peter Hardimon. Mrs. Jett went into another room to get a gun, and when she returned, Hardimon was again on the porch. He put on brown work gloves, opened the screen door, broke the glass out of the front door, reached in, and unlocked the door. He then entered the house, where Mrs. Jett confronted him with the gun. Hardimon thereupon “ran like hell,” and Mrs. Jett telephoned the sheriff’s office. She did not see the car leave, but did hear it “peel out.”
Shortly thereafter, responding to Mrs. Jett’s call, the sheriff encountered, pursued, and stopped a car matching the description given by her. Hardimon was the driver and defendant was sitting in the passenger seat. The sheriff testified that when the suspect vehicle passed his patrol car, he saw defendant bending over, apparently putting, something under the front passenger seat. Two pairs of brown work gloves were found under the front passenger seat of the vehicle.
Mere presence at the scene of the crime is insufficient, by itself, to support a conviction. State v. Castaldi, 386 S.W.2d 392, 395 (Mo.1965). However, presence, when coupled with other factors such as flight from the scene, companionship with persons directly involved in the offense, and suspicious conduct before or after the offense, may give rise to circumstances upon which guilt may be inferred. State v. Simmons, 494 S.W.2d 302 (Mo.1973). To convict a defendant of burglary, it is not necessary that the state prove that he personally committed each act involved in the offense. State v. Boothe, 364 S.W.2d 569, 571 (Mo.1963). In this case, the evidence showed that defendant was apprehended while in flight from the scene of the burglary, only minutes after it occurred. The evidence further showed that defendant was in the company of Hardimon for the several hours immediately preceding the incident, as well as directly afterward. In fact, defendant was with Hardimon when he knocked on the door just prior to the burglary. In addition, it appears that the sheriff observed defendant, shortly before his arrest, attempting to put something under his seat in the car, where gloves similar to those used in the burglary were subsequently found. This evidence, taken together, was [571]*571sufficient to make a submissible case against defendant for burglary in the first degree.
Defendant next contends that the trial court erred in finding him to be a “persistent offender.” He claims §§ 558.-016 and 558.021, RSMo 1978,1 created an independent criminal offense without affording him a constitutional right to a trial by jury on the question of his persistent offender status. Defendant makes no claim that the trial judge failed to follow the statutory procedures in finding him to be a persistent offender.
Although Missouri courts have not previously passed upon the constitutionality of these persistent offender provisions, the procedures established by the provisions are much like those of the old “Second Offender Act,” § 556.280, RSMo 1969 (repealed). In regard to a similar challenge made to those procedures, the Missouri Supreme Court stated:
The provisions of the [second offender] statute permit the trial judge to hear the evidence of prior convictions outside the presence of the jury, to make findings thereon prior to the submission of the issue of guilt or innocence to the jury, and to assess the punishment of the defendant if he is found guilty by the jury. This procedure does not constitute a trial for separate or different offenses; it goes only to the matter of punishment. The procedure in the statute, and indeed the prior statute, have been held impervious to attacks upon their constitutionality.
State v. Maxwell, 411 S.W.2d 237, 239 (Mo.1967), appeal after remand 430 S.W.2d 152 (Mo.1968). We conclude defendant’s argument, that §§ 558.016 and 558.021, RSMo 1978, created a separate offense, is without merit.
Judgment affirmed.
Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI
Related
Cite This Page — Counsel Stack
611 S.W.2d 569, 1981 Mo. App. LEXIS 3295, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-juralos-moctapp-1981.