State v. Williams

797 S.W.2d 734, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 1316, 1990 WL 123889
Missouri Court of Appeals·Decided August 28, 1990·No. WD 42233·Published·Cited by 20 cases

Opinion

ULRICH, Judge.

Bernard W. Williams appeals his conviction by a jury of two counts of forcible rape, § 566.030, RSMo 1986, 1 forcible sodomy, § 566.060, and stealing over $150, § 570.030. He was charged as a class X offender and was sentenced to consecutive terms of twenty years for each of the forcible rape convictions, and twenty years for the sodomy conviction. The sentence imposed for the felony stealing conviction was either a five or seven year consecutive term. This portion of the sentence is disputed. Mr. Williams was sentenced to a total of sixty-five or sixty-seven years in prison. He appeals his convictions. The judgment is affirmed in part and amended in part.

Mr. Williams raises three points on appeal. He contends that the trial court erred by (1) entering written judgment purporting to sentence him to seven years incarceration for stealing over $150 when the court had actually sentenced him to five years, and (2) by permitting his classification as a class X offender. He also claims that (3) he was prejudiced because four jurors had read a newspaper the second morning of trial which contained inadmissible information about the ease.

FACTS

On the morning of May 24, 1988, A.E., a fifteen-year-old female was at home in Kansas City asleep in her bed. She was awakened by someone pulling her hair from behind, thrown to the floor, and her head was covered with a quilt preventing her from identifying her assailant. She was rolled on her back and raped.

A.E. was placed on her bed, and the assailant left the room. The assailant returned with another blanket and used it as an additional binding for A.E.’s head. The assailant again left the room, returned and raped her again. He then attempted to penetrate her anus with his penis. The assailant moved his victim to the floor and placed her on her hands and knees when apparently he heard the victim’s mother walk into the house downstairs. He left the victim’s room and entered another room on the second floor.

Upon entering the house, the victim’s mother called to her daughter. The victim ran down the stairs crying and yelling that she and her mother had to leave the house because she had been raped by someone who was upstairs. Both mother and victim ran from the house and the victim’s mother placed her daughter in' the family automobile.

A repairman working on the guttering of the house across the street observed mother and victim exit the house. The daughter was crying and screaming. The mother approached him and asked if she could use a telephone. He told her none was available.

The victim’s mother reentered her house and proceeded to the kitchen where she obtained a knife. The mother then approached the stairs and the assailant ran by her, approximately five feet away. She observed the assailant’s apparel, his hair, his complexion, and his mustache.

The mother exited the house and again ran to the repairman across the street. She told him that a man was in her house. The repairman observed a man exit the rear of the victim’s house, enter a vehicle parked in the driveway, drive around the mother’s vehicle over a bush and depart at a high rate of speed. The repairman was standing on the street as the assailant drove by him five or six feet away. He saw the assailant’s face and upper body. He identified Mr. Williams during the trial as the man he saw leave the house and drive by him.

*737 In addition to the observations made within the house, the victim’s mother observed the assailant enter the automobile parked in the driveway next to the house, drive the vehicle at a high rate of speed around her automobile and over a bush. As the assailant escaped in the automobile, she also observed the license plate number on the vehicle driven by the assailant.

When police officers arrived at the crime scene, the victim’s mother reported the license number appearing on the vehicle driven by the assailant. She described the assailant to the first police officer to arrive as a man 5 feet, 8 inches to 5 feet, 10 inches tall, in his early twenties, having long uncombed hair, dark complexion and weighing between 155 to 170 pounds.

The automobile driven by the assailant from the crime scene had been reported stolen on May 21, 1989, three days before A.E. was raped. On May 26, 1989, two days following the offenses for which Mr. Williams was charged, the Olathe, Kansas, Police Department recovered the reported vehicle and arrested the occupant, Mr. Williams. With his consent, Mr. Williams was taken by Kansas City, Missouri, police officers to the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department. After his arrival at the police department, a lineup was conducted. Mr. Williams and three other people participated as persons viewed in the lineup. The victim was unable to identify any of the four people in the lineup as her assailant. The victim’s mother identified Mr. Williams as the person she saw in her house May 24, 1988.

More than two-hundred dollars in currency and items of personal property were taken from the victim’s home. Following the lineup, the victim’s mother identified items found in the vehicle driven by Mr. Williams when he was arrested by Olathe police officers as items taken from her home on May 24, 1988.

POINT 1

For his first point, Mr. Williams claims the court erroneously entered written judgment on July 11, 1989, which purportedly sentenced him to seven years for stealing over $150 when the court had sentenced him to five years orally at the time of sentencing on July 7, 1989. During the sentencing process on July 7, 1989, the court stated:

It is adjudged that the defendant is sentenced and committed to the custody of the Missouri Department of Adult Institutions on Count I for a period of twenty years; Count II, twenty years; Count III, twenty years; Count V, five years. I, II and II [sic] consecutive, Count V concurrent with the others. 2

(Emphasis added.)

During the sentencing proceeding defense counsel informed the court that the law requires that non-sex convictions be served consecutively to sex offenses. The assistant county prosecutor in attendance concurred. Defense counsel suggested that the court make the three sex offenses concurrent penalties to each other and the five year sentence for stealing consecutive to the other three sentences. The court emphatically expressed that the three sex offenses were to be served consecutively to each other and acknowledged that the law requires the non-sex conviction be served consecutively to the sex offenses. The court spoke of the stealing offense saying:

And because, as I said earlier, I consider the clothes or the shoes or whatever the stuff was that he stole out of the house to be considerably less serious than the sex offenses, I was considering making that concurrent. But — you’re right. I remember now that you can’t do that. So it’ll be consecutive, also.

Stealing property valued at $150 or more is a class C felony. § 570.030. The maximum penalty for class C felonies is seven years incarceration. § 558.011. The court’s expressed intent at the sentencing hearing was to assess five years incarceration for the stealing offense.

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State v. Williams, 797 S.W.2d 734, 1990 Mo. App. LEXIS 1316, 1990 WL 123889 (Mo. Ct. App. 1990).

797 S.W.2d 734 (State v. Williams) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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