State v. Bradford

• Decision Date: 11 January 1971
• Docket Number: No. 2,No. 54831,54831,2
• Citation: 462 S.W.2d 664
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Samuel BRADFORD, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 664

462 S.W.2d 664

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Samuel BRADFORD, Appellant.

No. 54831.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

Jan 11, 1971.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court En Banc Denied

Feb. 8, 1971.

John C. Danforth, Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, Charles B. Blackmar, Special Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Louis, for respondent.

Robert C. Babione, St. Louis, for appellant.

JOHN J. KELLY, Jr., Special Judge.

Defendant was charged with Robbery First Degree by Means of a Dangerous and Deadly Weapon, a shotgun. The jury found him guilty and the Court sentenced him to seventeen years imprisonment in accordance with the jury verdict. This appeal followed.

Because of some of the points relied on by the defendant in his appeal we feel it necessary to set out in detail the facts as the jury could have found them from the evidence in the case. At approximately noon on November 30, 1967, James W. Roady and Lawrence J. Hannegan, employees of the St. Louis Pay Truck Company, Inc., arrived, as was their custom every other Thursday, in an armored truck furnished by their employer, at the Parkview Avenue entrance to the Jewish Hospital in the City of St. Louis. Roady was a cashier and Hannegan a cashier-driver for their employer; each was armed with a Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special sidearm and wore a hat and badge identifying them as employees of the check cashing service. Their purpose in being at the hospital was to cash payroll checks for the employees of the hospital on payday. They alighted from the armored truck, each carrying a green bag containing Twenty-Nine Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($29,500.00) in currency and One Hundred Fifty Six Dollars ($156.00) in silver, a total of Fifty Nine Thousand Three Hundred Twelve Dollars ($59,312.00). They then entered the Parkview Avenue entrance to the hospital with the bag of money in one hand and their gun in the other, walked through the lobby of the hospital, through a doorway and down a staircase to the door into the basement hallway of the hospital. As they entered the hallway, they observed a table similar to tables used in a morgue, and two colored men standing one on each side of the table with their lower arms and hands covered by their coats, and resting on the table. When Roady entered the basement each of the colored men displayed a sawed-off shotgun from under his coat and defendant, who was attired in a dark blue 'Shane' guard uniform, told Roady: 'I'll take that.' Defendant then seized the bag of money and gun from Roady and ran from the scene; another of the robbers (Hill) took the other bag of money and gun from Hannegan, and then a third colored man (Lee) ordered Roady and Hannegan into a locker room nearby and told them to stay there for five minutes, and not to stick their heads out of the room or they would have their heads blown off. All three of the robbers left the building and escaped in a getaway car driven the one 'White' which had been waiting near the Newstead Avenue entrance to the hospital. The entire incident took maybe a little more or a little less than two minutes.

After the robbery was completed, the four robbers went to 'White's' house where they split the loot, defendant getting Ten Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($10,500.00) as his share. After this he went to East St. Louis, Illinois, where he remained for a short time, and then to Chicago, Illinois, where he remained until he was taken into custody by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on December 13, 1968.

During the course of the trial Roady identified the defendant as the robber who was dressed in the Shane uniform and took the bag of money and gun from him. Hannegan was not asked if he could identify defendant as one of the robbers. One witness for the State, Charles Noble, testified that he had known the defendant as a fellow employee of the Jewish Hospital for almost three years prior to the probbery and that he had seen and talked with the defendant just a few minutes prior to the robbery near the scene described by Roady and Hannegan as the place where the robery occurred. Noble further testified that the defendant was at that time dressed in a blue guard's uniform like those worn by Shane employees. A confession made by the defendant was introduced in evidence over defendant's objection and defendant took the stand in his case and testified that he did not disclaim the statement he had given the Assistant Circuit Attorney after his return to St. Louis from Chicago, Illinois, and also, on both direct and cross-examination, he made damaging admissions tying him to the robbery for which he was on trial. During his testimony he stated that he was, on the day of trial--May 20, 1968--twenty-four years of age, a high school graduate and had been employed by the Jewish Hospital as an adult psychiatry worker. He also admitted that he had been employed by the Shane Detective Agency as a part-time guard. The statement he told his defense counsel that he did not disclaim was admitted into evidence as State's Exhibit 1, and contained a comprehensive account of how the idea arose in the defendant's mind to executed the robbery some two weeks prior to its actual commission, its planning stage with Hill, Lee and White, the actual facts of the robbery events, the escape, and the splitting of the loot. On cross-examination, defendant admitted entering the hospital with a sawedoff shotgun under his coat and stated that the uniform he was wearing at the time of the robbery was one issued to him by the Shane Detective Agency.

In ruling on defendant's appeal we have presented to us for consideration six points of alleged error committed by the trial court. The first three points relied on by defendant concern alleged errors which we can consider together because of the result we have reached hereinafter. Point number one is that the trial court committed error in overruling defendant's pretrial motion to suppress the testimony of James Roady insofar as his identification of the defendant as one of the robbers is concerned, and that he further erred in failing to sustain defendant's objection to the identification of the defendant by Roady during the trial because such testimony was hearsay. Point number two is that the trial court erred in not sustaining defendant's pretrial motion to suppress defendant's statement because the record fails to disclose (1) that the defendant was truly in a position to exercise his right to counsel, (2) that he intelligently waived his right to counsel, or (3) that he made his statement voluntarily. Defendant's third point is that the trial court erred in refusing to give an instruction tendered by the defendant on voluntary statements even though there was evidence of mental coercion and lack of an intelligent waiver of counsel.

To fully comprehend defendant's contentions it is necessary to state the evidence offered in support of his position on these three points. As stated previously, the offense occurred on November 30, 1967, and there is no evidence that Roady had ever seen the defendant before that time or recognized him from any other meeting. The actual robbery, in Roady's words, took: 'Oh, I would say about--that is hard to say; maybe two minutes, maybe more, maybe less. P. It seemed like a very short time? A. Yes, a very short time.' The next time Roady saw defendant was on December 27, 1968, when he was present in Division No. 16 of the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis at the instigation of the Circuit Attorney's Office and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to see if he could identify the defendant while he was being arraigned on an indictment returned by the Grand Jury for St. Louis on January 30, 1968, charging him with this robbery. According to the testimony of the only witnesses offered both in support of defendant's motion to suppress and in opposition thereto--defendant himself and Detective Oscar Farmer--the following occurred on that occasion. Roady, Hannegan, Noble, Farmer, and another Detective, William Bradely, came to the courtroom in which defendant was to be arraigned and took seats together a couple of benches from the front of the courtroom. A Public Defender, who was appointed to represent the defendant, was in the courtroom but defendant first learned of this after he had been brought into the courtroom and approached the Bench to enter his plea. Nor had the Circuit Attorney's Office advised this court-appointed counsel for the defendant of the proposed confrontation between the defendant and his accusers. Three other men had been brought before the Court for arraignment and at least two of them were black men. When the defendant entered the courtroom, Charles Noble exclaimed: 'Here comes Samuel Bradford now.' Roady made no comment, but, according to Detective Farmer, Hannegan 'implicated Bradford as being involved in the robbery.' At the time Noble made his exclamation all the witnesses and the officers were seated in close proximity to one another. Detectives Farmer and Bradley were the St. Louis police officers who had gone to Chicago and returned the defendant to St. Louis to face this charge. We can draw only one conclusion, and that is that both the victims, Noble, and the two detectives present at the arraignment knew that the defendant was under indictment at that time for this offense.

At the hearing on defendant's motion to suppress his confession the same two witnesses were presented as on his motion relative to the identification issue. There it was developed that the two detectives were sent to Chicago to bring defendant to St. Louis to face this charge for which he was on trial. While in custody in Chicago the defendant had consulted with a member of the Public Defender Bureau of Chicago and according to defendant, he was advised to come back to St. Louis, plead guilty, and throw himself on the mercy of the Court. The St. Louis detectives arrived in...