Hall v. State

• Decision Date: 25 April 2000
• Citation: 16 S.W.3d 582
• Parties: (Mo.banc 2000) . Stanley L. Hall, Appellant, v. State of Missouri, Respondent. Case Number: SC81782 Supreme Court Of Missouri Handdown Date: 0
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

16 S.W.3d 582 (Mo.banc 2000)

This slip opinion is subject to revision and may not reflect the final opinion adopted by the Court.

Stanley L. Hall, Appellant, v. State of Missouri, Respondent.

Case Number: SC81782

Supreme Court Of Missouri

Handdown Date: 04/25/2000

Appeal From: Circuit Court of St. Louis County, Hon. Emmett M. O'Brien

Counsel for Appellant: Susan S. Kister

Counsel for Respondent: Cassandra K. Dolgin and John M. Morris

Opinion Summary:

In January 1994, Stanley Hall kidnapped a woman in the South County Shopping Center in St. Louis County. His accomplice shot her, and Hall threw her alive over the McKinley Bridge. Hall was convicted of first-degree murder, among other crimes, and sentenced to death, which this Court affirmed on appeal. He now appeals denial of post-conviction relief.

AFFIRMED.

Court en banc holds: For each of Hall's three claims on appeal of ineffective assistance of counsel, the factual allegations are refuted by the record or are insufficient to establish such a claim.

(1) The state's rebuttal argument in the guilt phase, that Hall is a shadow that touches you and people like him threaten our female relatives, was not improper personalization made to place jurors or their families in the victim's place.

(2) A police sergeant testified that he continued to question Hall because he did not believe some of Hall's statements. This was not one witness commenting on the credibility of another but, rather, was the witness's belief regarding the truthfulness of an out-of-court statement of a non-witness, Hall. The testimony was inconsequential.

(3) The photos of the corpse at the scene and at an autopsy were properly admitted as corroborative of the testimony that tended to identify the victim and connect the torso to the crime.

Opinion Author: John C. Holstein, Judge

Opinion Vote: AFFIRMED. All concur.

Opinion:

After a jury trial, movant Stanley Hall was convicted of first degree murder, kidnapping, first degree robbery and two counts of armed criminal action. He was sentenced to death on the first degree murder count. All convictions were affirmed on appeal. State v. Hall, 955 S.W.2d 198 (Mo. banc 1997). Hall then filed a motion for post-conviction relief pursuant to Rule 29.15. He now appeals the denial of his post-conviction motion. Since this appeal involves the imposition of the death penalty, this Court has jurisdiction of the appeal. Mo. Const. art. V, sec. 3.

I.

On January 15, 1994, Hall and Rance Burton went to the South County Shopping Center in St. Louis County looking for a vehicle to steal and use in a drive-by shooting. The two noticed Barbara Jo Wood pulling into a parking lot, approached the vehicle and forced her to accompany them at gunpoint. With her sitting on the passenger side, they drove the vehicle to the McKinley Bridge, which traverses the Mississippi River from the city of St. Louis to Illinois. Once there, Wood was forced to exit the car. Burton shot Wood, firing several rounds. He got back into the vehicle and left. However, Hall remained outside the vehicle. Though bleeding from her wounds, Wood struggled with Hall and begged for him to spare her life. After some initial difficulty, Hall lifted the woman over the bridge guardrail, dropping her some ninety feet to the icy river below. Hall was later identified by witnesses in a passing vehicle as the person seen struggling with Wood. After being arrested, Hall confessed that Wood was the woman he forced over the guardrail. Some seven months later, a lower torso identified as Wood's was recovered alongside the Mississippi River near Chester, Illinois. The site is about seventy miles downstream from the McKinley Bridge. On this evidence, Hall was convicted and sentenced to death.

II.

Hall's amended post-conviction motion asserts fifty-eight claims of ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. Seven were withdrawn. Pursuant to the state's motion to dismiss, the court below dismissed all but two of the remaining claims without an evidentiary hearing. Following an evidentiary hearing, the remaining two claims were denied. Extended findings of fact and conclusions of law were included in the trial court's judgment. Neither of the two claims upon which a hearing was held is before us on appeal. Only three claims, each of which was denied without an evidentiary hearing, are raised here.

The findings and conclusions of the post-conviction court will be affirmed unless clearly erroneous. Rule 29.15(k). To constitute clear error, an appellate court, after reviewing the entire record, must be "left with the definite impression that a mistake has been made." State v. Clay, 975 S.W.2d 121, 140 (Mo. banc 1998), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 119 S.Ct. 834 (1999). Three requirements must be met to entitle a movant to a post-conviction hearing: (1) the motion must allege facts, not conclusions, warranting relief; (2) the facts alleged must raise matters not refuted by the files and records in the case; and (3) the matters complained of must have resulted in prejudice to the movant. State v. Starks, 856 S.W.2d 334, 336 (Mo. banc 1993). To be entitled to relief based on claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, the motion must recite facts not refuted by the record showing (1) that counsel's performance did not conform to the degree of skill, care and diligence of a reasonably competent attorney, and (2) that movant was thereby prejudiced. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 60 (1985), and Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). In each of the three instances raised on appeal here, the factual allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel are refuted by the record or are insufficient to establish a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.

III.

In his post-conviction motion, Hall asserts his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to object to "improper personalization to the jurors." One way in which improper personalization results is when the prosecutor asks the jurors to place themselves or some other identifiable person in the shoes of the victim or at the crime scene. State v. Simmons, 955 S.W.2d 729, 740 (Mo. banc 1997). However, it is acceptable to argue that society is threatened by the conduct of the accused. Id. Moreover, not every brief, isolated statement in argument that may be construed as improper personalization is of such magnitude that it undermines confidence in the outcome of the case so as to establish prejudice. State v. Tokar, 918 S.W.2d 753, 768 (Mo. banc 1996).

During the defendant's closing argument at the guilt phase, Hall's attorney argued that the killing of Wood was not deliberate. Instead, he maintained it was the result of Hall panicking. During the state's rebuttal argument in the guilt phase, the prosecutor responded:

Barbara Wood was chosen for this for no other reason than she was a victim who [Hall] didn't think would put up a fight. He is a shadow out there that has touched all of you, and people like him make people in our society worried every time our mother, our daughter, our sister, anyone leaves the house because at random for his purpose, his decision, that he was going to go kill.

For Hall's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel to succeed, he must establish that if an objection had been made to "improper personalization" it would have been sustained. In context, the remark was not made to place jurors or their families in Wood's place but to indicate that the defense theory of "panic" and a lack of deliberation was not credible. See State v. Kreutzer, 928 S.W.2d 854, 873 (Mo. banc 1996). Since the comment here did not directly ask any juror to put themselves or another identifiable person in the place of the victim or at the scene of the crime, the argument was not improper personalization. The argument referred only in general terms to "people in our society" who are worried about "our sister, our mother, [and] our daughter" being in danger. The reference was, at most, an indirect reference of danger to jurors or members of their families. Movant cites no authority that would mandate sustaining an objection to "improper personalization" where the only danger alluded to is a general danger to members of "our society" and "our" female relatives.

Nevertheless, citing State v. Rhodes, 988 S.W.2d 521, 528 (Mo. banc 1999), Hall insists that to merely suggest personal dangers to the jurors or their families is improper personalization. However, Rhodes carefully distinguished situations where the comments are not extensive or are insufficiently inflammatory to rise to the level of prejudicial error. Id. at 529. Here the quoted argument refers to jurors and their families only by inference. Even if one would infer that the prosecutor was referring to a specifically identifiable person being in the place of the victim or at the crime scene, the result is no different. An objection to the isolated statement in the argument may have served to highlight the comment to the jury. Not every failure to object to argument is ineffective assistance of counsel, but the alleged improper argument must be considered in the context of the trial as a whole. Tokar, 918 S.W.2d at 768. Viewing the record as a whole, including the eyewitness testimony identifying movant and Hall's own confession, the isolated statement in closing argument does not undermine confidence in the outcome of the case. The motion court's conclusion that counsel was not ineffective in failing to make an objection was not clearly erroneous.

IV.

Hall also claims the motion court was clearly erroneous in denying a claim that his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to request a mistrial in response to police sergeant Tim Hagerty's testimony during the state's case regarding Hagerty's disbelief of some of Hall's statements given during a custodial interview.

Hagerty took Hall into custody in Illinois on March 7, 1994, and transported Hall to the St. Louis County...