State v. Saffold

639 S.W.2d 243, 1982 Mo. App. LEXIS 3644
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedAugust 31, 1982
DocketNo. WD 32101
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 639 S.W.2d 243 (State v. Saffold) 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. Saffold, 639 S.W.2d 243, 1982 Mo. App. LEXIS 3644 (Mo. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinion

SHANGLER, Presiding Judge.

The defendant Saffold was convicted by a jury of robbery first degree [§ 569.020, RSMo 1978] and sentenced to a term of ten years. The appeal contends errors in instruction and admission of evidence, and contests the sufficiency of the proof for a circumstantial evidence submission.

The defendant Saffold was a security guard at the Chrisman Sawyer Bank. He commenced employment on Monday, November 5, 1979. The bank was robbed on Friday, November 9, 1979. The sum of $80,000 in currency was taken. The actual theft was performed by another [identified by evidence as one Johnson] garbed in the uniform used by Saffold for the bank duty. There was prosecution evidence that Johnson and Saffold were companions and coworkers as security guards. There was also evidence that Johnson owned a 1972 brown Mercury automobile capped by a distinctive hood ornament. The defendant Saffold owned a white over blue Buick.

On the day of the robbery, Leach, a part-time bank employee, arrived at 7:15 a. m. to park on the business lot. She noticed a large brown car in her accustomed space. The car sported a silver hood ornament and was equipped with whitewall tires. A white over blue Buick was the only other car on the lot. The blue car was not occupied. She parked her car — a Gremlin — next to the brown car in the preempted space. A half-hour later, the assistant manager Cannon arrived to open the bank. She noticed three cars on the lot: a Gremlin [the Leach vehicle], a brown Mercury and a white over blue car. The brown Mercury displayed a winged hood ornament. The white over blue car she knew belonged to guard employee Saffold. As she walked by the Saffold car, a black man [whom she took to be the defendant, but actually was Johnson] dressed in a guard uniform and sunglasses, came out of the car and followed her through the bank door [which she unlocked]. She disengaged the alarm system, obtained the keys to the vault, and as she turned, heard the man say: “Is that all you got to do?” She then realized that he was not the guard Saffold. The man [Johnson] at gunpoint ordered Cannon to open the vault and fill a bag with currency. She complied, and the robber made escape with $80,000 in twenty, ten, five and one dollar bills.1 She ran to the window immediately, and saw that the Saffold [white over blue Buick] was still parked there, but that the brown Mercury was gone. She activated the alarm and the police arrived. The witness testified also that on the very first day of work, that Monday, Saffold had asked her whether the bank was equipped with surveillance cameras and at what times the employees reported for work.

There was prosecution evidence — and evidence by the defendant himself — that Saf-fold spent $9,800 in the month following the robbery. That evidence was that Saffold paid $8,300 for a truck, $1,800 for a guard dog, $4,000 as a downpayment on the purchase of a home, and more than $500 to pay his accounts. These transactions were all in cash and within days of the robbery event. The payments for the truck, home and jewelry were in twenty-dollar bills. The defendant explained that he kept a cache of $10,383.30 in a briefcase in the basement accumulated from the earnings of his two employments as well as the earnings of his [246]*246wife and girlfriend. The defendant was prompted to the various purchases by the danger of his new employment as a security guard — and was merely a provision for his companion who was by then with child.

The defendant Saffold offered a version of the events: On that morning, as he awaited in the car the arrival of manager Cannon to open the bank premises, he was accosted by three men, one brandished a pistol and demanded his guard uniform garments. Saffold complied and was then disarmed and fettered with his own handcuffs. He was ordered to lie face down on the back seat. The armed assailant donned the guard clothes and sat in the front seat; the other two left. [The defendant denied that the armed assailant was William Johnson, identified at the trial as the active perpetrator of the robbery.] Saffold saw manager Cannon walk past the car and watched the robber as he followed her into the bank. Some few minutes later, the defendant heard the bank door close, saw the robber run out of the bank and jump into the Saffold car, pull the car up to the end of the lot, enter his own car and drive off. The escape vehicle, Saffold described, was a blue 1965 Chevrolet. Saffold then sounded the car horn with a foot, managed to open the door and ran to a nearby house to summon the police. He described the three assailants to the police, as well as the escape car.

The prosecution presented evidence that the robber was William Johnson2 and [as we noted] a companion and co-worker of Saffold. There was testimony by yet another co-worker that when they were all in the common employment of a security guard enterprise Saffold sought out Johnson at job sites. The witness confirmed that Johnson owned a brown 1972 Mercury embellished with a distinctive chrome hood ornament. There was other testimony that Saffold accompanied Johnson more than once to the car lot where the Mercury was purchased. That same witness testified also that on November 19, 1979 [ten days after the robbery] Johnson paid off the $800 balance. Saffold acknowledged Johnson was an acquaintance but that their friendship was ruptured some two months before the robbery date.

The defendant contends that there was error in the submission of circumstantial evidence Instruction No. 8 [MAI-CR2d 3.42] because the evidence was not sufficient to raise an inference of guilt. In exposition, the defendant argues that there was no legitimate proof that Saffold aided the robbery by an affirmative act, and only by an inference piled on a more remote inference could the jury have found guilt. The instruction the defendant proscribes is not shown in the record and so the validity of that submission is not preserved for our review. Rule 30.04(a); State v. Bartz, 544 S.W.2d 86, 88[3 — 5] (Mo.App.1976). The defendant neither defines the purport of the compounded inference argument nor cites authority for any such peremptory principle of evidence. [See, among others 1 Wigmore on Evidence § 41 (Third Edition 1940); State v. Ross, 602 S.W.2d 816, 818[1] (Mo.App.1980); State v. Feger, 340 S.W.2d 716, 721[3-5] (Mo.1960); State v. Ashcraft, 342 Mo. 608, 116 S.W.2d 128, 132[2] (1938)]. Thus, the argument presents only an unre-viewable cliché. These disparate points, therefore, are not preserved for review. Nonetheless, divested of these technical aspects, the essential assertion of the defendant is that the evidence did not make a submissible issue of the circumstantial guilt of the defendant. We review that contention.

To warrant conviction on evidence wholly circumstantial the facts must so clearly indicate the guilt of the accused as to exclude any reasonable hypothesis of innocence. The circumstances, however, need not demonstrate that innocence was absolutely impossible. State v. Maxie, 513 S.W.2d 338, 343[5] (Mo.1974). These inferences probative of the role of the defendant as an aider-participant in the robbery, and [247]

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Bluebook (online)
639 S.W.2d 243, 1982 Mo. App. LEXIS 3644, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-saffold-moctapp-1982.