State v. Vinson

800 S.W.2d 444, 1990 Mo. LEXIS 111, 1990 WL 179948
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedNovember 20, 1990
Docket72609
StatusPublished
Cited by104 cases

This text of 800 S.W.2d 444 (State v. Vinson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Vinson, 800 S.W.2d 444, 1990 Mo. LEXIS 111, 1990 WL 179948 (Mo. 1990).

Opinions

HIGGINS, Judge.

Ivan Vinson was convicted by a jury of two counts of first degree robbery, two counts of armed criminal action, and one count of kidnapping. The trial court, Sweeney, J., sentenced Vinson to a total of thirty years’ imprisonment. Judgment was entered accordingly. Vinson filed a motion to vacate the judgment pursuant to Rule 29.-15. After an evidentiary hearing, the motion court, Romines, J., denied relief and entered judgment accordingly. On consolidated appeal, the Court of Appeals, Eastern District, affirmed the judgments and transferred the appeal to this Court pursuant to Rule 83.02. Affirmed.

I.

Vinson does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence. The evidence shows that Vinson robbed a gas station and kidnapped a customer at gunpoint. Vinson ordered the customer to drive him to a location thirty minutes from the robbery scene, where he forced the customer to leave the car and drove away alone. The gas station attendant and the customer identified Vinson from a photo array three months later. In his direct appeal, Vinson alleges the trial court erred in failing to dismiss a venire-woman for cause, erred in denying his request for a mistrial based on a detective’s alleged comment on prior crimes committed by Vinson, and erred in admitting an in-court identification by the attendant and customer. This Court finds no merit in these contentions.

Vinson argues that because venire-woman Anne Sebold said her husband had been murdered in the line of duty as a police officer thirteen years earlier, she should have been discharged for cause. Vinson used a peremptory challenge to remove Sebold. While failure to grant a legitimate challenge for cause constitutes reversible error, State v. Lingar, 726 S.W.2d 728, 734 (Mo. banc 1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 872, 108 S.Ct. 206, 98 L.Ed.2d 157 (1987), this Court finds no abuse of discretion in denying this challenge for cause. “In exercising this discretion, the decision of the trial court should rest upon the facts stated by the juror with reference to his state of mind and should not be allowed to depend upon the conclusions of the juror whether he could or would divest himself of a prejudice he admitted to exist in his mind.” State v. Lovell, 506 S.W.2d 441, 444 (Mo. banc 1974). Nothing in the record indicates Sebold lacked impartiality, nor did she acknowledge any prejudice. Her relationship to a police officer and to a victim of a violent crime does not disqualify her, State v. Hopkins, 687 S.W.2d 188, 190 (Mo. banc 1985), especially in light of her assertion that she thought “justice was done” in her husband’s case and that her husband’s experience would not prevent her from considering objectively the evidence in this case. Vinson cites State v. Land, 478 S.W.2d 290 (Mo.1972), and State v. Kayser, 637 S.W.2d 836 (Mo.App.1982), for the proposition that the trial court cannot base its ruling on the [446]*446venirepersons’ subjective claims that they will be objective. The venirepersons in those cases, unlike Sebold in this case, expressly stated a bias toward the prosecution before professing their ability to remain objective.

Vinson claims the trial court erred in denying his request for a mistrial based on the testimony of Detective Phillip Law during his direct examination:

Q. (By Prosecutor) What did you all do in your investigative role?
A. We investigated the particular incident that happened at [what] we call the Lindbergh Shell. During the course of that investigation we developed leads to a suspect.
[Based upon the prosecutor’s assurances that the witness had been cautioned not to reveal Vinson’s suspected involvement in other crimes, the court overruled Vinson’s objection to questions concerning the police department’s investigative methods.]
Q. (By Prosecutor) Detective, then how did you go about solving this crime?
A. Solving the entire crime?
Q. Well, you said you developed leads. A. Correct.
Q. What did you do then in an attempt to determine the actual robber and kidnapper of the incident at the Shell station?
A. We reviewed all the circumstances, the facts that we had in the original report. We didn’t have a lot of facts to go on at the time. What we did was converse with other departments that would have crimes of a similar nature.

Vinson maintains this testimony served as a comment on prior crimes committed by him. Vinson moved for a mistrial; the trial court denied the motion, and the trial court instructed the jury to disregard the testimony.

This is not a case of “extraordinary circumstances in which prejudice to [Vinson could] be removed in no other way.” State v. Schneider, 736 S.W.2d 392, 400 (Mo. banc 1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1047, 108 S.Ct. 786, 98 L.Ed.2d 871 (1988) (quoting State v. Davis, 653 S.W.2d 167, 176 (Mo. banc 1983)). The testimony that the police developed leads by contacting other unknown police departments regarding other unknown crimes committed at other unknown times did not intelligibly allude to any prior conduct by Vinson. Any conjecture by the jury that the “crimes of a similar nature” mentioned by Law involved Vinson was adequately redressed by the trial court’s charge to disregard the testimony. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in preferring this remedial route over the drastic remedy of a mistrial under these circumstances. See State v. Alexander, 729 S.W.2d 467, 468-69 (Mo. banc 1986), and State v. Harris, 547 S.W.2d 473, 474-75 (Mo. banc 1977).

Vinson argues the trial court improperly permitted the victims to make in-court identifications of him. To prevail on this point, Vinson first must demonstrate that the investigative procedures employed by the police were impermissibly suggestive, and then that the suggestive procedures made the identification at trial unreliable. State v. Williams, 717 S.W.2d 561, 564 (Mo.App.1986). While “reliability is the lynch-pin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony,” Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 2253, 53 L.Ed.2d 140, 154 (1977), Vinson must clear the suggestiveness hurdle before procuring a reliability review. See Williams, 717 S.W.2d at 564, and State v. Higgins, 592 S.W.2d 151, 159 (Mo. banc 1979), appeal dismissed, 446 U.S. 902, 100 S.Ct. 1825, 64 L.Ed.2d 254 (1980). The record reveals no pretrial suggestiveness in this ease. Rather, the victims testified to the objectiveness of the pretrial identification procedures. Vinson grounds this point entirely in the factors relating to reliability, which absent a showing of impermissible suggestiveness “go to the weight of testimony and not to the admissibility of the identifications.” State v. Morant,

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Bluebook (online)
800 S.W.2d 444, 1990 Mo. LEXIS 111, 1990 WL 179948, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-vinson-mo-1990.