State v. Brown

• Decision Date: 18 November 2011
• Docket Number: No. SD 30787.,SD 30787.
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff–Respondent, v. Bradley L. BROWN, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

353 S.W.3d 412

STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff–Respondent,

v.Bradley L. BROWN, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.

No. SD 30787.

Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, Division One.

Nov. 18, 2011.

Alexa Irene Pearson, Columbia, MO, for appellant.

Chris Koster, Attorney General, and John M. Reeves, Assistant Attorney General, for respondent.

GARY W. LYNCH, Judge.

Bradley L. Brown, Jr. (“Defendant”), appeals the trial court's judgment convicting him of domestic assault in the first degree, see section 565.072, RSMo Cum.Supp.2007, and armed criminal action, see section 571.015, and sentencing him as a prior and persistent offender to consecutive sentences of twenty years' imprisonment and ten years' imprisonment, respectively.¹ Defendant challenges the trial court's admission of testimony identifying the specific controlled substances involved in his prior convictions for possession and distribution of controlled substances and testimony about his demeanor at the police station after his arrest. Finding Defendant suffered no prejudice as a result of such alleged errors, we affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

Defendant was charged with one count of domestic assault in the first degree, one count of armed criminal action, and one count of felony resisting arrest, see section 575.150, RSMo Cum.Supp.2005. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, State v. Stanley, 124 S.W.3d 70, 72 (Mo.App.2004), the following evidence was adduced at Defendant's jury trial.

Victim and Defendant started dating in December 2007. In late January or early February 2008, they leased a house at 119 Black Street, in Chaffee. On March 7, 2008, Victim returned home from work and was upset to find Defendant drunk when he was supposed to have been looking for a job. She left and went out with a friend to a bar. Victim spent the night at her friend's house and returned home the following morning. Defendant was there, and they went about their day as usual.

Early that evening, Defendant and Victim joined others at a mutual friend's house, where they planned to watch a UFC fight. At some point in the evening, the women went to the store to buy liquor and margarita mix while the men remained at the house. While they were gone, the conversation among the men turned to pocket knives. Defendant pulled out a knife to show the other men and told them to feel how sharp the blade was, saying that he had just had it sharpened. The knife was described as an “old-timer fishing knife” with a straight blade about four inches long and a brown handle. The women returned from the store and made some margaritas, and the men watched the fight. Defendant was on his telephone from time to time, and at one point, he asked Victim to take him to his cousin's house, but she refused and did not want to leave. They eventually left around 10:00 and returned home because Defendant wanted to grill steaks he had set out to thaw.

At home, Victim made a salad and set the table for Defendant while he went outside to grill. Victim was not hungry, and she went to bed. When Defendant came back inside with the steaks, he became “aggravated” that Victim did not stay up to eat with him, and he told Victim that she was rude and disrespectful. Defendant got his pillow, told Victim that he was sleeping on the couch, and slammed the door on his way out of the bedroom. Soon, Victim heard a crash and got up to discover that Defendant had broken a plate. An argument ensued and escalated into a physical struggle. Victim wanted Defendant to leave, but when he refused, she went into the bedroom to get her purse so she could leave. Defendant came after her, and as she tried to hold the bedroom door closed, Defendant tried to kick it in. When Victim let go of the door to retrieve her purse, Defendant grabbed her and threw her out of the bedroom. Victim picked up a telephone and told Defendant she was calling the police; he grabbed the telephone and threw it into the kitchen. Victim tried to reach the front door, but Defendant caught her by her hair and threw her to the floor. As Victim fought and pleaded with him to stop, Defendant told Victim that he loved her, did not want her to leave, and the only way she “was going to leave him was in a body bag.”

Defendant produced a knife and started stabbing Victim. As she spun around and struggled to escape, Defendant continued stabbing at her back, neck, shoulders, head, and chest. When he stabbed her in the neck, she felt blood “shoot out[,]” and she became “deathly sick.” She closed her eyes and exhaled, and Defendant got up, locked the front door, and walked into the bathroom. When Victim heard running water, she ran out of the house to the home next door and began pounding on the front door yelling for the neighbor to call 911.

At the house next door, the neighbor peeked outside when she heard someone beating on her door and saw Victim standing on her front porch with blood all over her. She called for help and was still talking on the phone when she saw “some figure of some kind” pull Victim away. Victim had heard the front door from her house open, and when she saw Defendant approaching, she wrapped her arms around a porch column to prevent him from dragging her away. Defendant succeeded in pulling her off the porch and carried her across the yard, but he let her go and ran back into their house when he saw a patrol car coming down the street. Victim saw a patrol car pass by their home, and she moved toward the street to get the attention of the officer.

City of Chaffee police officer Jason Hammontree was responding to a domestic disturbance call in the area around 119 Black Street when he found Victim lying in the street with multiple stab wounds and covered in blood. She told him that her boyfriend, Defendant, had stabbed her. Defendant was known to Hammontree, and when additional officers arrived, Hammontree entered the house where Defendant and Victim lived to search for Defendant. Hammontree did not find Defendant inside the house, but he observed blood on a column on the front porch and door, and inside, he found two spots of blood on the living room carpet, a broken telephone, and blood on the back door and door handle. He further noted that the kitchen was in disarray, with broken plates, utensils, and food on the floor. When he returned to the scene outside, a by-stander pointed Hammontree in the direction of another officer who was in pursuit of Defendant.

Hammontree joined in the chase, which ended when they saw Defendant enter an apartment at 113 Wright. When the officers reached the door of the apartment and identified themselves as police officers, a woman identified as Defendant's mother opened the door. As the officers entered the apartment, they observed Defendant with blood on his hands and clothing, standing in the kitchen. Defendant was arrested and transported to jail. Two searches of the area in and around the house and along the route Defendant ran to reach his mother's apartment failed to turn up the knife that was used in the assault.

Victim was transported by ambulance to the emergency room and subsequently underwent surgery to repair her wounds. It was determined that she had sustained eleven knife wounds. One such wound entered her chest and punctured her right lung, and one on her neck, which came close to cutting an artery or the airway, severed her thyroid gland and hit her esophagus. The trauma surgeon who treated Victim testified that this wound went almost all the way through her neck. Further, there were multiple wounds to her shoulder, neck, back, and head, and a deep laceration to her left thumb that penetrated to the bone and cut a sensory nerve.

Defendant was found guilty by the jury on all counts. Upon Defendant's “Motion For Judgment Of Acquittal Or, In The Alternative, For A New Trial,” the trial court entered judgment notwithstanding the verdict on Count III, resisting arrest, finding that there was inadequate “proof that there was, in fact, knowledge on behalf of the Defendant, either direct evidence or circumstantial evidence to indicate he knew that [law enforcement was] trying to effectuate an arrest.” ² Defendant was sentenced as a prior and persistent offender by the trial court to serve consecutive terms of twenty years' imprisonment on the domestic assault conviction and ten years' imprisonment on the armed criminal action conviction. These sentences were set to run concurrent with a previously imposed sentence in Mississippi County on which Defendant had been paroled at the time he was charged in the instant case. Defendant timely appealed his convictions.

Defendant's Evidence at Trial

Defendant testified at his trial. Before addressing the events surrounding this case, however, he admitted three prior felony convictions: one for selling a controlled substance; and two for possession of a controlled substance. Turning to this case, his defense, in a nutshell, was that Victim stabbed herself in a drug-induced frenzy after Defendant threatened to leave, and then she placed the blame on him. He presented his version of his relationship with Victim and the events of the night in question, as follows:

Defendant testified that Victim used various controlled substances within the week before the night she was injured, that drugs were part of their relationship “on a daily basis” and they smoked marijuana “probably every day” until he stopped smoking it in order to obtain a job. After he quit smoking marijuana, he continued to use methamphetamine. Victim had used methamphetamine every day since the previous Sunday and took three Percocets that Thursday night so she could “calm down, relax and get some sleep.” During the day of the stabbing, he and Victim smoked a “half of a quarter” gram of methamphetamine, the last of their supply, and Victim smoked some marijuana around 2:30 p.m. and smoked approximately three bowls of marijuana after they arrived at their friends'...