State v. Beatty

• Decision Date: 05 April 1989
• Docket Number: No. 15862,15862
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Sharon Annette BEATTY, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 387

770 S.W.2d 387

STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Sharon Annette BEATTY, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 15862.

Missouri Court of Appeals,

Southern District,

Division One.

April 5, 1989.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to

Supreme Court Denied May 3, 1989.

Application to Transfer Denied June 13, 1989.

William L. Webster, Atty. Gen., John P. Pollard, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for plaintiff-respondent.

Anne E. Hall, Public Defender, Springfield, for defendant-appellant.

GREENE, Judge.

Defendant, Sharon Beatty, was charged in a two-count information with the crimes of first degree robbery and armed criminal action. A jury returned a verdict of guilty on both counts, and Beatty was given a ten-year sentence on the robbery conviction, and a three-year sentence on the armed criminal action conviction with the sentences to run concurrently.

On appeal Beatty relies on three points of alleged trial court error, the first of which is that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence testimony regarding statements she made to police officers concerning the robbery, and evidence seized by officers from her apartment because the information the police received linking Beatty with the crime had come from her psychiatrist in violation of Beatty's right that statements she made to the doctor be kept confidential.

The point is an interesting one, and is a matter of first impression in Missouri. A brief outline of the facts is as follows. In the fall of 1987, Sharon Beatty shared an apartment at 722 South Jefferson, Springfield, Missouri, with a female companion, Glenda Beth Woods. Beatty was older than Woods, and considered herself responsible for paying the rent and providing groceries for the two women. In September of 1987, Beatty was hospitalized for treatment of extreme depression, and was placed under the care of Dr. Donald R. Butts who was a licensed psychiatrist. Butts was employed by the Burrell Mental Health Center. The Burrell Center is a private, nonprofit corporation that contracts with the state of Missouri to provide psychiatric and other mental health services to the people of this area. The patient pays according to his/her ability to pay and the State pays the rest of the bill. In Beatty's case, the charges were $55 an hour, of which amount Beatty paid $2. The State paid the rest. Dr. Butts prescribed an antidepressant, Desyrel, and a tranquilizer, Serax, for Beatty. One effect of the drugs was an energy loss because of which Beatty lost her job as a cook at Whorton's Restaurant. This situation left Beatty with no job and no money.

On December 4, 1987, Beatty had an appointment with Dr. Butts. Beatty seemed anxious and excited. In response to questions from the doctor, Beatty told him that she had just robbed a place, leaving the impression that it was "a convenience store or something from her description." The place turned out to be an APCO Service Station, because ' "I had to have some money and I got it." ' She told him that she had used a .22 caliber long barrel pistol to effectuate the robbery, which weapon she had previously described to Butts while she was confined in the hospital. Beatty told Butts not to tell anyone what she had told him. Butts gave Beatty some Xanax, which is a tranquilizer used to calm anxiety. Later that same day, Dr. Butts called Crime Stoppers, which is a private crime reporting agency. He did not give his name or Beatty's name, but suggested that if police wanted to find out about the robbery case, they should go to Whorton's Restaurant and inquire about a female who used to work there, and implied that there was "a causal connection between that person and what had happened" (the robbery). This information was relayed by Crime Stoppers to the Springfield Police Department.

Based on the information in the Crime Stoppers report, all of which information had been obtained from Dr. Butts, police officer Dana Carrington called Whorton's Restaurant and spoke to Mr. Whorton. Carrington described the robbery suspect, which description was taken from the offense report, and asked Whorton if he had any present or past employees matching that description. Whorton told him that he did know such a person, and that her name was Sharon Annette Beatty, and that she lived at 722 South Jefferson, Apartment 304, in Springfield. Carrington then entered Beatty's name in the MULES computer, and obtained a physical description of Beatty from her automobile driver's license, which was similar to the physical description given in the offense report. Carrington received more information concerning Sharon Beatty from a report in police files regarding an automobile accident she had been involved in on October 7, 1987.

Based on the above information, Carrington applied to an associate circuit court judge of Greene County for a search warrant, which warrant was issued. Armed with the warrant, Carrington and other police officers went to the Beatty apartment. Glenda Woods opened the apartment door, and the officers entered. Carrington started to read the warrant to the two ladies, at which time Beatty said, "All right, I'm going to confess, I did it, but I want a lawyer." She told the officers that Miss Woods had nothing to do with the robbery, and showed them the closet where the coat she wore and the gun she used during the robbery were. Beatty then told the officers that the sweat shirt they were looking for was in the dirty clothes. The police retrieved these articles, as well as several other items connecting Beatty with the robbery. Beatty was then charged with first degree robbery and armed criminal action.

Defense counsel filed a motion to suppress statements made by Beatty to the police, and the articles seized by them from her apartment. The motion to suppress contended that the statements made by Beatty concerning the robbery, and the articles seized in her apartment linking Beatty with the robbery, were the fruits of an illegal search in that there was no probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant since the police action in seeking the warrant was based on information provided by an anonymous caller and that there was no way to verify the truthfulness of the anonymous caller. It also alleged that Dr. Butts was the anonymous caller, and that the information he gave Crime Stoppers in his telephone call "was a gross violation of defendant's rights under the doctor-client privilege and use of that information, and its subsequent use in the search warrant, was a violation of defendant's constitutional rights." Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial judge denied the motion. In regard to the matters regarding Dr. Butts that were alleged in the motion, the judge said:

THE COURT: Well, first of all with respect to Dr. Butts, I don't believe there is any state action involved there. If the state had a law which required that a psychiatrist reveal such statements and report such statements then there would be state action. But our law is exactly the opposite, he's prohibited from doing these things. So the state has done all it could to avoid disclosure.

The articles seized by the police during the search, as well as testimony concerning Beatty's admission of guilt were introduced in evidence against Beatty, over objections made by defense counsel on the same basis as the matters raised in the motion to suppress. The State had no other evidence other than that obtained as a result of the revelations made by Dr. Butts during his call to Crime Stoppers.

At the close of the State's evidence, Beatty moved for judgment of acquittal which was overruled. Beatty then took the stand in her own defense and admitted the robbery, but said that she did it out of desperation (no job, no money, etc). She said she had talked to her mother after the robbery and told her what she had done, and her mother told her to "[w]ait a little while and see what happens, but if they come to the door tell them everything." She said she did not think she would have committed the robbery had she not been on the prescription drugs and that because of the drugs her judgment was off. The jury found Beatty guilty of first degree robbery and armed criminal action. She was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment on the robbery charge and three years on the armed criminal action charge, in accordance with the jury verdicts, with the sentences to run concurrently.

On appeal, Beatty raises the following issues:

The court erred in overruling appellant's objections to the admission of testimony regarding any statements made by appellant to any police officer and the admission of any evidence seized from defendant's apartment in that said statements and evidence were seized in violation of appellant's right to the physician-patient privilege under Section 491.050(5), RSMo., because when appellant told Dr. Butts that she had robbed a place she made the statement in the course of treatment and as a patient of Dr. Butts and made the statements confidentially under the physician-patient privilege and she had not waived the privilege.

The court erred in not suppressing from evidence any evidence found in appellant's apartment and any statements made by appellant in that seizure of said evidence violated appellant's rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution against illegal search and seizure because the search warrant was based on the minimally verified unsworn statement of an anonymous caller with whom the police had no previous contacts.

The court erred in giving Instruction No. 10, MAI-CR3d to the jury in that this...