State v. Weide

775 S.W.2d 255, 1989 Mo. App. LEXIS 939, 1989 WL 68699
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 27, 1989
DocketNo. WD 40095
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 775 S.W.2d 255 (State v. Weide) 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. Weide, 775 S.W.2d 255, 1989 Mo. App. LEXIS 939, 1989 WL 68699 (Mo. Ct. App. 1989).

Opinion

NUGENT, Judge.

Defendant Jerry Marvin Weide appeals from his conviction following a jury trial in which the jury found him guilty of burglary in the second degree. § 569.170.1 The trial court entered judgment on the jury’s verdict and sentenced defendant to seven years’ imprisonment, and the defendant appeals from that judgment and sentence.

We reverse the trial court’s judgment.

Defendant Weide argues on appeal that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction for second degree burglary; that because he had pleaded guilty to a municipal charge of disturbing the peace [256]*256that arose from the same incident, the state’s further prosecution on the burglary charge subjected him to double jeopardy; that the trial court improperly instructed on second degree burglary when the information had charged him with first degree burglary; and that the instruction on second degree burglary was too vague to inform the jury of the evidence necessary to convict him. Because our decision turns on the insufficiency of the evidence, we will consider only that point.

The evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, State v. Falkner, 672 S.W.2d 373, 374 (Mo.App.1984), is as follows. Shortly after midnight on January 16, 1986, the defendant and a companion entered the Country Kitchen Restaurant in Warrensburg, Missouri. The restaurant was open for business at that time. Mr. Weide and his companion took a seat at a booth.

From the moment he came through the front door, the defendant was loud, profane, obnoxious and threatening. He directed obscene insults at the waitress who served him and then turned his verbal abuse toward another customer, Jim Bill-ingsley, having overheard that Mr. Billings-ley was an off-duty police dispatcher. He later expanded the scope of his insults to police officers in general. During his tirade, he invited Mr. Billingsley outside for a fight, threatening to shoot him.

Mr. Weide’s waitress summoned the restaurant manager, Alvin Brownley, to deal with the disturbance. Mr. Brownley told the defendant that he would have to leave the restaurant. After the defendant refused to leave, Mr. Brownley suggested that he was going to call the police and turned toward the kitchen to make his call. The defendant, yelling at Mr. Brownley that he was going to “kick your ass,” jumped from his booth to chase him. Mr. Brownley was unaware of the defendant’s intentions or actions until after he had passed through a swinging door into the kitchen area and a waitress warned him of Mr. Weide’s pursuit. He responded to the defendant’s attack by slamming the kitchen door against the defendant, trapping his arm and shoulder in the door frame.

Another employee then tried to restrain the defendant. After those two passed through the door into the kitchen, the cook, a very large man, subdued him. The cook escorted the defendant out of the restaurant, and he did not return.

Before discussing the question of the sufficiency of the evidence we believe one other aspect of this case should be made clear. Before the trial of this case, defendant filed a motion to dismiss the information on the ground that he had already been “charged and convicted of offenses arising out of the same incident and identical to the charges contained in the ... information,” a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Defendant based his double jeopardy motion on the fact that he had been convicted in the Warrensburg municipal court on a charge of disturbing the public peace for unlawfully disturbing the peace of Karen Jenkins, James Billingsley and Frederick Lews by the use of loud, obnoxious and threatening comments and actions apparently directed at those persons.

The trial court denied defendant’s motion, and the case proceeded to trial. The prosecution presented the case at trial and now argues it on appeal on the theory that the burglary charged against defendant Weide in the information occurred when the defendant entered the kitchen. (The information does not charge him with unlawfully remaining in the building.) The state’s brief argues, “Appellant’s unlawful entry occurred when he entered the north door with his left arm and shoulder during his pursuit of the manager, Brownley. This door led to Brownley’s office and the kitchen.”

The state’s brief further distinguishes defendant’s behavior in the restaurant before he turned toward the kitchen from his conduct upon entering the kitchen. The brief argues that by his loud and lewd shouting and threats to Karen Jenkins, James Billingsley and Frederick Lews defendant disturbed the public peace. Then, the argument continues, by his unlawful [257]*257entry into the kitchen to commit an assault, defendant committed the separate and distinct offense of burglary and that each act had an element not common to the other. That argument addressed defendant’s double jeopardy claim.

The reason the state stresses the distinction between defendant’s assaultive invasion of the kitchen and his loud mouthings that disturbed the peace of Karen Jenkins, James Billingsley and Frederick Lews is that the city had already prosecuted him for that disturbing of the peace. Further prosecution based on that obnoxious behavior was barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Thus the state prosecuted defendant for the burglary based upon defendant’s later conduct in invading the kitchen area to assault Mr. Brownley. The trial court instructed the jury on the same theory.

The prosecutor correctly chose to prosecute defendant for the burglary in entering the kitchen. The facts in this case did create the possibility of double jeopardy. The Missouri Supreme Court in Weaver v. Schaaf, 520 S.W.2d 58, 62-64 (Mo.1975) (en banc), recognized that the United States Supreme Court decision in Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387, 90 S.Ct. 1184, 25 L.Ed.2d 435 (1970), precludes the state’s prosecution of a criminal defendant charged with the same acts for which he had been prosecuted in a municipal court. In Waller, the Court rejected the contention that municipalities and states are separate sovereigns. Because the municipality’s power to prosecute the defendant “springs from the same organic law” that provides the state’s power to prosecute, subsequent prosecution for the same offense violates the Double Jeopardy Clause. Id. at 394-95.

The municipal disturbing the peace ordinance prohibits threatening to commit a crime against any person. Defendant’s threat to kick Mr. Brownley’s ass would have supported a charge under the ordinance. The same threat provides the basis for the state’s proof that he unlawfully remained with the intent to commit a crime. Thus, prosecution of Weide for his acts in the public portion of the restaurant would have been a prosecution for the very offense to which he pleaded guilty in the municipal court. That is clearly why the state prosecutor did not charge defendant Weide with “remaining unlawfully in a building” (MACH-CR 23.52) as he could have, and that is why we say he correctly chose to prosecute defendant for burglary in “entering” the kitchen.

We turn now to the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to convict defendant Weide of burglary in entering the kitchen.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
775 S.W.2d 255, 1989 Mo. App. LEXIS 939, 1989 WL 68699, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-weide-moctapp-1989.