State v. Marshall

410 S.W.3d 663, 2013 WL 4104082, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 872
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJuly 25, 2013
DocketNo. SD 31463
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 410 S.W.3d 663 (State v. Marshall) 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. Marshall, 410 S.W.3d 663, 2013 WL 4104082, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 872 (Mo. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

GARY W. LYNCH, P.J.

Eddie Lee Marshall (“Defendant”) appeals his first-degree-murder conviction, see section 565.020,1 for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Defendant presents five points on appeal, claiming that the trial court erred in (1) excluding a taped telephone conversation between Defendant and his sisters, as well as not granting a mistrial when, during closing arguments, the State argued that the jurors had not “heard any other explanation” for what happened to the victim; (2) admitting the [666]*666victim’s out-of-court statements regarding her meeting with Defendant on the night of her murder; (3) overruling Defendant’s motion to suppress all evidence obtained from his trailer; (4) overruling Defendant’s motion to suppress Defendant’s DNA samples; and (5) refusing to give an instruction on the lesser-included offense of voluntary manslaughter. Finding no merit in any of Defendant’s claims, we affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

The first trial in this case ended in a mistrial after the jury informed the trial court it could not reach a unanimous verdict. In the second trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, see State v. Cole, 71 S.W.3d 163, 168 (Mo. banc 2002), the following facts were adduced.

Defendant and his wife, Penny Marshall,2 moved to Doniphan, Missouri, from Oklahoma when Defendant took a job stringing electrical line for C and H Electric Company. Defendant and his wife took up residence in a trailer park owned by Bill Kenley. At some point, Defendant built a wire fence on the porch of his trailer to house his wife’s two dogs. After finishing its construction, Defendant stored the hammer he used to construct the fence in an end table in the living room of his trailer.

Heather Donnell (“Victim”) and her boyfriend, Brent Dees, also lived in Henley’s trailer park in a trailer adjacent to Defendant’s trailer. The couple had been together nine years and had a young son. Defendant often spoke of Victim to his coworkers, saying that he would sit drinking on his porch until 2:30 a.m. or 3:00 a.m., watching Victim’s house in the hope of seeing her through a window, and making several lewd and debasing comments regarding the sexual liberties he wanted to take with Victim. Defendant insisted that Victim “wanted him[.]” On one occasion, Victim and her sister drove past Defendant’s trailer and observed him standing on his porch, clad only in his underwear; when Defendant observed them driving by, he began “shaking his whole body at” them. On another occasion, Defendant told Victim and her sister they were beautiful and, if he were not with Penny, he would be with Victim.

In mid-April 2007, Defendant came to Victim’s trailer and tried to purchase drugs from Dees. When Dees stated that he did not have any drugs, Defendant said he “hates a liar” and hit Dees in the jaw. Defendant then left.

On Saturday, April 21, 2007, Defendant was informed by Bill Kenley that he and his wife were being evicted from their trailer because Defendant was behind on his rent. Kenley told Defendant that he needed to vacate the trailer by Tuesday, April 24.

Sometime later that day, Defendant was driving his wife’s truck inside the trailer park when he lost control of the vehicle while making a u-turn and ran the truck into a tree. Defendant was found to be drunk and was arrested. After the crash of her truck that day, Penny moved out of the trailer, upset by Defendant’s drinking and recent arrest. Another resident of the trailer park took Penny, her dogs, and her personal effects to a nearby motel. Penny left Defendant a note.

When Defendant arrived at the jail after his arrest, he discovered that Dees, Victim’s boyfriend, was being held there on an unrelated matter. Dees had been unable to make bond. The two men talked, and [667]*667Defendant apologized to Dees for hitting him, asking for Dees’s forgiveness. Defendant then offered to get money from his brother to make Dees’s bond and, though Dees did not take Defendant’s offer seriously, he did mention the offer while on the phone with Victim the following day.

The day after his arrest, Sunday, April 22, after getting released from jail, Defendant called a coworker, William Crutz, and asked him to help pull Penny’s truck from the tree. Crutz arrived around noon and observed that the truck was “totaled.” Defendant told Crutz that he had gotten drunk and wrecked the truck. Defendant also told Crutz that Penny had left him, and he blamed Victim.

That same day, Victim dropped off her son at the house of Dees’s mother, Diane Silman, and went to work at the Casey’s General Store in Doniphan. Victim told Silman she expected to get off work at 11:00 p.m. that night. While at work, Victim received two telephone calls. Immediately after receiving the second call, which occurred sometime between 6:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., Victim told a coworker, Sandra Hoefer, that she had the money to get Dees out of jail. Victim stated that she was going to get the money that night from the neighbor who had hit Dees.

After leaving work at 8:45 p.m., Victim went to a tattoo parlor, where she had a conversation with Julie Crook. The owner of the tattoo parlor, Belinda MacDonald, overheard Victim tell Crook that she was trying to meet a man named Eddie to get $3,000 in order to get Dees out of jail.

At 11:30 p.m., Silman became concerned because she had not heard from Victim, and Victim had never before failed to pick up her son after work or called to say she was running late. Silman called a few of Victim’s friends in an attempt to locate her but was not successful. When she still had not heard from Victim the following morning, Silman drove to Victim’s trailer to find Victim’s blue Pontiac Aztek missing. No one answered when Silman knocked on the door of the trailer. She also knocked on Defendant’s door but no one answered there, either. Silman then went to Victim’s mother’s trailer, but Victim’s mother, Sherrie Gunter, knew nothing about her daughter’s whereabouts. Gunter then went to the police department to file a missing persons report, but she was told that she could not do so because Victim had not yet been missing for twenty-four hours. When Gunter relayed this information to Silman, Silman made a missing persons report to the Ripley County Sheriffs Department.

Around noon that day, Monday, April 23, Raymond Dickson of the Ripley County Sheriffs Department, who had taken the missing persons report from Silman, went to the trailer park to try and make contact with Victim. In furtherance of that effort, Dickson knocked on Defendant’s door, but no one answered. Dickson could hear what sounded to him like a radio or television playing inside the trailer.

Also on that day, Kenley became concerned that Defendant might have damaged the trailer, so he called the sheriffs department and asked for a deputy to accompany him to Defendant’s trailer. Deputy Richie Phillips met Kenley outside of Defendant’s trailer and, together, they went onto the porch. Kenley knocked on the door and called Defendant’s name, but there was no answer. Deputy Phillips also knocked and shouted Defendant’s name, but there was still no answer. They observed the wrecked truck next to the trailer and heard what sounded like a television playing inside the trailer.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
410 S.W.3d 663, 2013 WL 4104082, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 872, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-marshall-moctapp-2013.