State v. Caffey

• Decision Date: 11 February 1963
• Docket Number: No. 1,No. 49364,49364,1
• Citation: 365 S.W.2d 607
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. James Robert CAFFEY, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 607

365 S.W.2d 607

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. James Robert CAFFEY, Appellant.

No. 49364.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

Feb. 11, 1963.

Motion for Rehearing and for Transfer to Court En Banc

Denied March 11, 1963.

James Robert Caffey pro se.

Thomas F. Eagleton, Atty. Gen., George D. Chopin, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

ELMO B. HUNTER, Special Judge.

James Robert Caffey has appealed from a judgment, entered pursuant to jury verdict, imposing a sentence of twenty years' confinement for the offense of having under his control a narcotic drug, to wit, cocaine hydrochloride, Section 195.020, RSMo 1959, V.A.M.S.

At the trial in the Circuit Court of Greene County Missouri, the defendant was represented by a licensed and practicing attorney with law offices in Springfield, Missouri. The defendant did not offer any evidence.

Mrs. Caffey, the defendant's mother, who lived in Springfield, Missouri, testified on behalf of the State that sometime in November, 1960, her son telephoned her from Portland, Oregon, and requested her to rent for him a safe deposit box in a bank, directing her to rent the box in the name of Dr. James Robert Caffey. On November 14, 1960, she rented the safe deposit box for him at Union National Bank in Springfield, Missouri, and listed his name as Dr. James R. Caffey. When asked about her son's use of the title 'doctor' defendant's mother stated that when he was about 19 years' old and while working as an orderly or male nurse in a hospital, 'they started calling him 'doc.' And then he had a church (The Disciples of Truth) in, oh, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he got the name of 'doctor' there, and, of course, everybody called him 'doc' and the name has just stuck.' She inferred his title was just a nickname.

It was the bank's practice to require a renter to sign a rental contract. However, Mrs. Caffey did not do so, advising that her son would sign it later. She stated she put nothing in the box. When defendant arrived from Portland, she gave him the two duplicate keys which she had received from the bank. She did not return to the bank thereafter, nor did she ever again have the keys.

The written rental agreement which the bank used restricted access to the safe deposit box to the renter and his named deputy if one be named in the rental agreement. It is undisputed that the only way a safe deposit box can be opened, other than by force, is by the combined use of the renter's key and a 'guard' key retained by the bank.

A bank attendant testified that on December 5, 1960, defendant came to the bank and signed the rental card for the safe deposit box. He had at least one of the keys in his possession and opened the box. According to the bank records, no one else entered or opened the box until November 28, 1961. On that date the Sheriff of Greene County, acting on information received from one or more persons to whom defendant had confided he was keeping narcotics there, obtained a search warrant and pursuant to it forcibly opened the safe deposit box, finding in it a sealed bottle containing one ounce of cocaine hydrochloride. The parties stipulated that this is a narcotic substance named as a narcotic drug in Section 195.010 RSMo 1959, V.A.M.S., and succeeding subsections.

According to the evidence, defendant had stated the bottle containing the narcotic was his property and had admitted he had put it in the safe deposit box quite a while prior to the time it was discovered, and that he had obtained it from a doctor in Illinois.

The defendant's motion for a judgment of acquittal filed at the close of all the evidence was overruled, and the cause was submitted to the jury. After the unfavorable jury verdict, defendant through his attorney filed a timely motion for new trial alleging seven charges of error. This motion was duly heard, overruled, the defendant given allocution, and judgment entered accordingly.

On this appeal defendant, who was allowed to proceed as a poor person, appeared pro se, orally arguing his cause and submitting a main brief, and a reply brief to the State's brief. He advised the court that although he had counsel on this appeal there was some disagreement between them and that he chose to proceed pro se.

It is the established rule that the appellate court and the parties are bound by the record presented for review, and that assignments or contentions of error which are based on matters, which if they occurred, are not shown by the record will not be considered or determined on appeal. State v. Burnett, En Banc, 365 Mo. 1060, 293 S.W.2d 335, 339, cert. den. 352 U.S. 976, 77 S.Ct. 367, 1 L.Ed.2d 326.

Defendant's first two contentions of error in his brief are that the trial court failed to make an effective assignment of counsel; that the court assigned counsel deliberately and deceitfully failed to properly advise defendant of his rights, privileges, immunities and in effect misadvised him in favor of the interests of the State. These two contentions are not mentioned in the motion for new trial and are presented for the first time on appeal.

Generally, assignments of error not involving the sufficiency of the information or indictment, verdict, judgment and sentence are not available on appeal unless they have been properly presented to the trial court. S.Ct. Rule 28.02, V.A.M.R.; State v. Smith, Mo.App., 310 S.W.2d 845, cert. den. 358 U.S. 910, 79 S.Ct. 237, 3 L.Ed.2d 231; State v. Brewer, Mo.Sup., 338 S.W.2d 863.

We recognize that a court appointed attorney for personal reasons would be reluctant to charge himself with being incompetent or intentionally remiss in his duties, if such be the case, the that a defendant therefore would be deprived of any opportunity to present such contentions on appeal unless the appellate court would review the matter on the record before it under S.Ct. Rule 27.20(c) providing that plain errors affecting substantial rights may be considered on appeal, in the discretion of the court, though not raised in the trial court or preserved for review, or defectively raised or preserved, when the court deems that manifest injustice or miscarriage of justice has resulted therefrom.

In accordance with S.Ct. Rule 27.20(c), we have reviewed the record and have not found in it anything that supports defendant's contentions concerning his counsel. These contentions are not self proving, and absent their being substantiated by the record, cannot and do not demonstrate injustice or miscarriage of justice. The bare fact that the jury imposed the maximum sentence under the law on defendant in and of itself does not demonstrate that the trial court failed to appoint reasonably competent counsel or that such counsel failed to conduct himself in a proper manner in his representation of defendant. Cf. State v. Johnstone, Mo.Sup., 335 S.W.2d 199, 206(16), cert. den. 364 U.S. 842, 81 S.Ct. 81, 5 L.Ed.2d 66; State v. Whitaker, Mo.Sup., 312 S.W.2d 34.

In his motion for new trial and in his appellate brief defendant charges that the verdict, after the jury had deliberated for less than thirty minutes, and in view of the fact that the evidence failed to disclose any aggravating factors in the control of a narcotic, is so excessive as to shock the conscience and is the result of bias, prejudice and passion against the defendant on the part of the jurors.

In a criminal prosecution not involving the habitual criminal act it is primarily the jury's function to assess punishment subject to the power in the trial court to reduce the extent or duration of the punishment assessed by the jury, if in the opinion of the trial court the conviction is proper but the punishment assessed is greater than, under the circumstances of the case, ought to be inflicted. S.Ct. Rule 27.03; State v. Sheard, Mo.Sup., 276 S.W.2d 191. On appeal, the appellate court will not interfere with the trial court's exercise of its discretionary power in refusing to reduce the sentence imposed by the jury to one of a lesser duration in the absence of a showing that passion and prejudice so clearly appears from the record that the appellate court can confidently say the trial court abused its discretion by declining to reduce the punishment. State v. Laster, En Banc, 365 Mo. 1076, 293 S.W.2d 300.

According to the transcript the jury retired to consider its verdict at 3:40 p. m. and thirty-five minutes later returned with it. The evidence presented in the case was brief, uncomplicated and not contradicted. The fact that it took the jury no more than 35 minutes to return with its verdict is not in and of itself a showing of bias, prejudice or passion on the part of the jury. See, Section 546.240, RSMo 1959, V.A.M.S.; State v. Payne, Mo.Sup., 342 S.W.2d 950. As stated in State v. Richmond, 321 Mo. 662, 12 S.W.2d 34, 36, 'The Legislature in its wisdom has seen fit in defining the powers of a jury to declare that 'when the argument is concluded, the jury may either decide in court or retire for deliberation.' Section 4027, R.S. 1919. * * * The time they may devote to such deliberation if the same is deemed necessary, is left wholly to their judgment Something more must appear therefore to warrant an interference with a verdict than an alleged brevity of their deliberations. To hold otherwise would be to interfere with...