State v. Yeager

63 S.W.3d 307, 2001 Mo. App. LEXIS 2270, 2001 WL 1643534
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 26, 2001
DocketNo. WD 59310
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 63 S.W.3d 307 (State v. Yeager) 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. Yeager, 63 S.W.3d 307, 2001 Mo. App. LEXIS 2270, 2001 WL 1643534 (Mo. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

VICTOR C. HOWARD, Presiding Judge.

A jury convicted Curtis T. Yeager (“defendant”) of one count of abuse of a child, § 568.060, RSMo Cum.Supp.1997, and one count of second-degree felony murder, § 565.021.1(2), RSMo 1994. Abuse of a child served as the underlying felony to support the murder conviction. The court sentenced him to serve concurrent terms of twenty years imprisonment for the murder and ten years for abuse of a child.

On appeal, defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient to establish that the child’s death was not the result of an accident.

Finding the evidence sufficient to sustain defendant’s convictions, we affirm.

Standard of Review

Upon review of defendant’s challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we must determine if the State presented sufficient evidence from which a reasonable juror could have found defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Whalen, 49 S.W.3d 181, 184 (Mo. banc), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 122 S.Ct. 567, - L.Ed.2d -- (2001). This standard of review requires that we:

“must look to the elements of the crime and consider each in turn.... [The Court is] required to take the evidence in the light most favorable to the State and to grant the State all reasonable inferences from the evidence. [The Court] disregard^] contrary inferences, unless they are such a natural and logical extension of the evidence that a reasonable juror would be unable to disregard them. Taking the evidence in this light, [the Court] considers] whether a reasonable juror could find each of the elements beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Id. (quoting State v. Grim, 854 S.W.2d 403, 411 (Mo. banc 1993)). Despite our review in deference to the State’s evidence, we cannot “ ‘supply missing evidence, or give the [State] the benefit of unreasonable, [309]*309speculative or forced inferences.’ ” Id. (quoting Bauby v. Lake, 995 S.W.2d 10, 13 n. 1 (Mo.App. E.D.1999)).

Relevant Statutes

The statutes under which defendant was charged and convicted follow:

Second-degree felony murder is defined by the legislature in section 565.021.1(2) RSMo 1994, as follows:

1. A person commits the crime of murder in the second degree if he:
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(2) Commits or attempts to commit any felony, and, in the perpetration or the attempted perpetration of such felony or in the flight from the perpetration or attempted perpetration of such felony, another person is killed as a result of the perpetration or attempted perpetration of such felony or immediate flight from the perpetration of such felony or attempted perpetration of such felony.

Here, the felony underlying defendant’s murder conviction was abuse of a child, section 568.060 RSMo Cum.Supp.1997, which reads:

1. A person commits the crime of abuse of a child if such person:
(1) Knowingly inflicts cruel and inhuman punishment upon a child less than seventeen years old;
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3. Abuse of a child is a class C felony, unless:
* * *
(2) A child dies as a result of injuries sustained from conduct chargeable pursuant to the provisions of this section, in which case the crime is a class A felony.

Felony Murder

Under the felony murder rule, the felonious intent necessary for a murder conviction may be shown by the commission of or attempt to commit a felony. State v. Bouser, 17 S.W.3d 130, 135 (Mo. App. W.D.1999). Upon proof that the defendant intended to commit the underlying felony, there arises a conclusive presumption of the necessary intent to support a conviction for the resulting murder. Id. Put in another way, the rule requires that:

the state must prove every element of the underlying felony beyond a reasonable doubt. This is because the underlying felony is necessary in proving the intent element of felony murder. The felony murder rules make the underlying felony not an element of the felony murder, but rather a means of proving the felonious intent for murder.

State v. Gheen, 41 S.W.3d 598, 605 (Mo.App. W.D.2001) (citations omitted). Thus, we consider whether the evidence was sufficient for a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant committed the offense of abuse of a child under section 568.060 RSMo Cum.Supp.1997, and the child died as a result of the perpetration of that felony.

Facts

The evidence presented at trial, viewed in a light most favorable to the verdict, follows:

Defendant lived with his parents and sister at 5500 E. 101st Terrace in Kansas City, Missouri. At the time of the incident in question, his girlfriend and her eleven-month-old son (“the child”) had also been living there for at least two months.

On the morning of October 11, 1999, the child was left alone with defendant at the house around 8:45 a.m. At around 9:20 a.m., defendant called his mother to report that there was something wrong with the child. A few minutes later, defendant called 911. The fire department and an ambulance arrived in response to the call. [310]*310When Captain Thomas of the fire department first arrived at the residence, he found defendant and the child. The child was not breathing, so CPR was begun while defendant provided background information about the child, such as his history of asthma and that the child had been playing on the floor when defendant discovered he was not breathing. When the ambulance arrived, paramedics intubated the child in an attempt to help him breathe. The child’s lips were turning blue but his fingernail beds were still pink, indicating that he had not gone without oxygen for long and had recently stopped breathing.

The child was first taken to St. Joseph Hospital. The EMT paramedic and police officer who were at St. Joseph Hospital reported that the child had multiple bruises on his body, including his wrists, abdomen, bottom lip, chin and back area in addition to injuries around his eyes. Soon thereafter, the child was transferred to Children’s Mercy Hospital for treatment of a head injury. Testimony later established that these injuries were not the result of emergency attempts to resuscitate the child.

The child died the next day, October 12, 1999. Dr. Thomas Young, the Jackson County Medical Examiner, performed an autopsy on the child the following day, October 13,1999. During the autopsy, Dr. Young observed that the child had bruising to both sides of his face, on the underside of his bps, underneath his chin, on his left shoulder, left arm, chest, abdomen, right leg, and behind his left ear. He also suffered from various internal injuries including bruising in his deep scalp and a “complex fracture” at the back of his skull which consisted of fractures that extended up from the base of his skull and branched off into smaller fractures.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
63 S.W.3d 307, 2001 Mo. App. LEXIS 2270, 2001 WL 1643534, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-yeager-moctapp-2001.