State v. Moffitt

431 P.2d 879, 199 Kan. 514, 1967 Kan. LEXIS 422
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedAugust 31, 1967
Docket44,573
StatusPublished
Cited by48 cases

This text of 431 P.2d 879 (State v. Moffitt) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Moffitt, 431 P.2d 879, 199 Kan. 514, 1967 Kan. LEXIS 422 (kan 1967).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Schroedeb, J.:

This is an appeal in a criminal action wherein the appellant was found guilty by a jury of murder in the first degree; possession of a pistol after conviction of a felony; two counts of attempted first degree kidnapping; and two counts of felonious assault.

The principal points presented on appeal concern questions of law based upon the instructions given by the trial court as applied to the evidence in the . case.

The material facts disclosed by the evidence in the record are not in dispute.

Shortly after midnight on the 8th day of August, 1965, a young colored housewife twenty-two years of age named Mary Alice Downing was sitting on the seat of a motorcycle parked on the street in front of the house at 1324 Wabash in the city of Wichita, Kansas, waiting for a man with whom she had been riding, one L. C. Goines. He had gone into the house where he resided to *516 check on the welfare of an aged mother. While seated on the motorcycle which was headed north and near the east curbline of the street, she was struck in the back of the head with a bullet, part of which lodged in her brain. Goines had just gone into the house when he heard a report, which sounded like a shot, and heard a car speeding away. He ran out of the house and found Mary Alice Downing slumped over his motorcycle and saw blood running. She was immediately taken to the St. Francis Hospital at Wichita where she was pronounced dead at 2:40 a. m.

Although the exact chronology of events which occurred in the early morning hours of August 8, 1965, is not definitely established, the evidence discloses that a white 1953 or 1954 model Oldsmobile automobile driven down Ohio Street from the north in the 1000' block pulled over to the side of the street at 1037 Ohio and stopped where a man named Augustus Wells, Jr., and a woman named Lucretia Brown were walking north on the sidewalk along the west side of the street. As the automobile came to a halt a man told them to get into the car, and immediately a pistol was projected outside the right hand window of the automobile, snapped twice, and then fired four times. At the time the gun fired they were only six or seven feet from the automobile. No one was hit and none of the slugs that were fired from the gun on this occasion was recovered.

Also, in the early morning hours of August 8, 1965, a white automobile drove north on Washington Street to the intersection of 11th Street where it made a left trun and pulled up at the northwest quadrant of the intersection. At that place a young woman named Victoria Johnson was proceeding southward and had just reached the intersection. As she reached the corner the white automobile pulled up and a voice from the automobile said, “Get in,” and then a gun was immediately fired two, three, or possibly four times. The young woman was four to six feet from the automobile, according to her testimony, but she was not hit. She could not identify the person in the automobile and she did not actually see the gun, although she saw the flash when the gun was fired.

Police officers who were originally called to the scene at 1324 Wabash upon being told that a white automobile had come by and sped away after the gun was fired, immediately began to look for such an automobile. Officer Fletcher was only about one block away when he observed an automobile at the corner of 11th and Washington Streets, which was light in color. He saw the head *517 lights and then heard what he thought were three or four shots fired in rapid succession. He thereupon drove toward this automobile at which time the automobile started toward him, and the man driving the car informed him that someone was shooting down there. Whereupon the officer said, “Yes, it was you.” The driver of the white automobile then took off at a high rate of speed. The officer immediately reversed the direction of his patrol car and gave chase, never losing sight of the white automobile. The chase was at high speeds and made rounds of several blocks in the immediate location. When the white automobile finally got onto Murdock Street it headed in a westerly direction and drove across to the west side of the city to Riverside Park where the driver missed a turn and rolled the automobile.

At the scene of this accident the driver of the white automobile, dressed in a pair of pants, socks and shoes, with no shirt or underpants, was found to be the only occupant of the vehicle. The wrecked vehicle was described as a white 1954 Oldsmobile 2-door hardtop bearing Kansas license plate SG1574. In the automobile was found an automatic pistol, described as a 7.65 Millimeter Pistola Beretta, Serial No. 408474, part of a box of live ammunition, a clip for the pistol, and two brass empty shell casings of a .32 caliber bullet.

When first seen the appellant appeared to be unconscious and was removed to St. Francis Hospital for treatment. Upon his release from the hospital later the same morning, he was placed under arrest and identified as Robert Lewis Moffitt (defendant-appellant. )

In the investigation which followed empty shell casings were found at the scene of the various shooting incidents: At 1324 Wabash they found one empty .32 caliber shell casing, part of a copper jacket from a bullet, and a lead slug lying in the street; at 1037 Ohio three empty .32 caliber shell casings were found; and at 11th and Washington Streets one empty .32 caliber shell casing was found. Besides this, the copper jacket from a bullet and the lead base of a bullet were both recovered from the brain of Mary Alice Downing.

Captain Bevis, the laboratory supervisor of the Wichita police department and an expert in firearms identification, supervised the investigation and testified that all of the expended cartridges as well as the slugs which were found in connection with this case *518 were all fired by the automatic pistol which was found in the automobile being operated by the appellant.

The automobile which the appellant had been driving was registered in the name of his father.

The evidence established that early in the evening of August 7, 1965, Robert Lewis Moffitt (defendant-appellant), a white male, had run into a person he had known prior to that time by the name of Donald McDonald, a colored male. They began drinking beer and whiskey in a place known as Frank Jones’ beer tavern in the 900 block on North Washington Street. The appellant was furnishing the beer and whiskey, and during the course of the evening they came into contact with a colored female named T. Esther Hearns who sat in the same tavern and drank whiskey with them. In the course of the evening arrangements were made to go to the house of T. Esther Hearns- at 1301 Estelle Street. Two other colored men accompanied them, one being L. V. Rogers who lived with T. Esther Hearns. The four men in this party of five upon meeting at 1301 Estelle drank whiskey and engaged in a dice game. When the evening began, the appellant is reported to have said he had a bunch of money. After the gambling had proceeded for a while, T. Esther Hearns went to bed and left the four men gambling. L. V. Rogers testified the gambling broke up after about an hour because he had all the money.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
431 P.2d 879, 199 Kan. 514, 1967 Kan. LEXIS 422, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-moffitt-kan-1967.