Lincoln v. State

• Decision Date: 02 December 2014
• Docket Number: No. ED 100987,ED 100987
• Citation: 457 S.W.3d 800
• Parties: Rodney Lee Lincoln, Appellant, v. State of Missouri, Respondent.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

457 S.W.3d 800

Rodney Lee Lincoln, Appellant
v.
State of Missouri, Respondent.

No. ED 100987

Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, DIVISION ONE.

FILED: December 2, 2014
Motion for Rehearing and/or Transfer to Supreme Court Denied Jan. 27, 2015
Application for Transfer Denied March 31, 2015

Laura O'Sullivan, 510 Rockhill Road, 039 Law School, Kansas City, MO 64110, for appellant.

Edmund Postawko, 1114 Market, Suite 401, St. Louis, MO 63101, for respondent.

Opinion

CLIFFORD H. AHRENS, Judge

Rodney Lee Lincoln (“Movant”) appeals from the judgment of the motion court that denied his Amended Motion for Release pursuant to section 547.037 RSMo (Cum.Supp.2004).¹ Movant contends that the motion court clearly erred denying his Amended Motion for Release because DNA testing proved that the expert hair comparison evidence was false, and that he is more likely than not to be innocent, such that no rational finder of fact could fairly find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes. Movant also argues that the State of Missouri should be estopped from pursuing a new theory of the crime that is factually inconsistent with the State's theory of the case. The State responds that the lack of a DNA hair match did not demonstrate Movant's innocence by a preponderance of the evidence, and that it was the eyewitness identification and testimony by one of the victims that was the crux of Movant's convictions. Finding no error, we affirm.

On April 27, 1982, Joanne Tate and her two daughters were at home in a first-floor apartment in a multi-family flat.² At approximately 4:00 a.m., an upstairs neighbor heard a loud noise from Tate's apartment. Around 10:00 a.m., Tate's brother and her boyfriend entered the apartment and found her dead, lying face down in a pool of blood. Tate's two daughters, M.D. and R.T., were lying in a bed, covered in blood, both with multiple stab wounds.

M.D. and R.T. were interviewed by the police, and a composite drawing was made and released to the media. Movant was identified by two of Tate's relatives, and M.D., then age 7, identified a photograph of Movant in a photo display. She later identified Movant as her attacker in a four-person lineup at the police station. At trial she testified that on the night of the murder, she woke up when she heard a scream, and she saw her mother laying down on her stomach in a pool of blood near the door to her bedroom. She stated that she saw a naked man, who came over to her bed, picked her up, and carried her to Tate's bedroom, put her on the bed and removed her clothes. She said he tried to get her “to do a few things.” He began to hurt her by stabbing her repeatedly, and she tried to play dead until he stopped.

457 S.W.3d 802

She testified that he washed off the knife, and she hid under R.T.'s bed. She heard him hurt her sister. She stated that she got a good look at the killer when she was in Tate's bedroom. M.D. said that she did not recall his name at that time, but she remembered seeing him prior to that night, and a long time ago, Tate, M.D., and R.T. spent the night at Movant's house, which was across from a park with a playground. She said that Movant's mother and some pets lived at his house. She identified the playground at the park from photos.

M.D. examined photos of Tate's boyfriend and of R.T.'s father, and stated that neither was the man who hurt her. She examined other photos and stated that none of them were the killer. She identified a photo of Movant as the man who hurt her, R.T., and Tate. She recalled identifying Movant in a police lineup and verified that identification using a photo of the police lineup. She identified Movant in the courtroom as the man who hurt her, Tate, and R.T. She explained why she initially told people questioning her that “Bill did it[,]” which was that she was sick and hurt and everyone kept bothering her for a name, so she said “Bill.” She stated several times that “Bill” and Movant were the same person, and that at the time of the attacks, she did not really know Movant's name.

Two criminalists employed by the City of St. Louis Police Department, Joseph Crow and Harold Messier, testified at Movant's trial about hair found at Tate's house. Crow testified that he examined a blanket found in Tate's bedroom for hairs, excluded a number of them, and found one sample of a pubic hair that did not belong to Tate. On cross-examination Crow stated that the information that can be gathered from a hair is limited; that he did not think that it was possible to determine the age of the person, that one could not identify the ethnicity of a hair from a Caucasian “with a great deal of certainty.” He passed this hair sample, Exhibit 22a, to Messier for further examination. Messier testified that he compared Exhibit 22a to a sample from Movant, along with pubic hair samples from 37 other apparently Caucasian people. The thirty-seven other samples were not comparable to Exhibit 22a. Messier testified about the limits of hair comparison. He stated that he could generally tell Caucasian from Oriental or Negroid, but that he could not tell age, sex, “or just about anything else.” On cross-examination, Messier stated that there was no way to determine how long a hair had been removed from the human body, i.e., the hair does not deteriorate with age.

Messier was recalled to testify further on redirect. He stated that he compared Exhibit 22a to pubic hairs from 39 people: Tate, Movant, and 37 others, and only Movant's “matched[,]” and that in two hundred cases that he has handled, he had never found one where a hair recovered from the crime scene matched to more than one person.

The State did not raise the hair sample in the initial part of its closing argument. It stressed M.D.'s testimony, noting that R.T. was too young to testify, and stating that M.D. “bore the responsibility for the three of them [Tate, R.T., and herself] to tell you what happened that night.” The State recapped M.D.'s testimony, and how the physical evidence corroborated what she said. Regarding her identification of the killer at first as “Bill,” the State reiterated her statement that she was hurt and gave a name to stop the questioning. It pointed out how M.D. excluded suspects based on their photos, and described the killer as someone who looked a bit like someone in her neighborhood named “Dennis” though she said that “Dennis”

457 S.W.3d 803

was not the actual killer.³ It emphasized how M.D. told the police that the killer lived across the street from a park, like Movant did, and how she identified a photo of Movant as the killer.

Defense counsel repeatedly attacked M.D.'s credibility and inconsistencies in her statements in its closing argument. Defense counsel's attack on the evidentiary value of the hair sample was brief in comparison to his attacks on M.D.

Defense counsel noted that most of the samples used by Messier for comparisons were taken from people who had not been in Tate's house, despite the large number of people in the investigation that came and went there and were not checked. Defense counsel pointed out that there was no way to determine how long the hair sample had been in the house, and that “[y]ou can't tell anything except that it might have come from [Movant].” Counsel observed that many people have dark hair. Counsel commented on Crow knocking hairs off the blanket with a stick, looking at them, and throwing fifty of them away. Counsel argued that the State wanted the jury to presume that the hair that might have been Movant's was in fact the hair of the killer, and that the State never proved it.

Defense counsel returned to attacking M.D.'s credibility later in the closing argument, pointing out “[w]hat on earth is there to corroborate the testimony of the child[,]” and asserting that he did not think that M.D. saw the killer, or identified anyone because it was dark in the house at the time of the murder and assaults. Defense counsel again hammered at what it saw as inconsistencies in M.D.'s story. Counsel returned to the subject of the hair sample in reviewing the testimony of Messier and Crow, noting that Messier stated that there was no way to know how long a hair has been somewhere because it does not deteriorate, and Crow said that you cannot ever say that that a hair came from a particular person, which left the jury with “a child who is most inconsistent.” Counsel closed out the argument by telling the jury not to make excuses for inconsistencies in M.D.'s testimony that they would not accept from an adult.

The bulk of the State's rebuttal argument was focused on M.D.'s credibility. The State only addressed the hair evidence briefly, arguing that defense counsel was mischaracterizing that evidence.

The jury convicted Movant on two counts of first-degree assault and on the lesser-included offense of manslaughter under the murder count. Movant was sentenced as a persistent offender to a term of fifteen years' imprisonment on the manslaughter count and to life imprisonment on each assault count, with each term to run consecutive to the others. Movant's convictions and sentences were upheld on direct appeal in State v. Lincoln, 705 S.W.2d 576 (Mo.App.1986). Movant's motion for post-conviction relief pursuant to Rule 27.26 was denied by this Court in Lincoln v. State, 755 S.W.2d 706 (Mo.App.1988).

Movant...