State v. Cole

• Decision Date: 18 December 2012
• Docket Number: No. SD 31344.,SD 31344.
• Citation: 384 S.W.3d 318
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff–Respondent, v. Christy Weatherford COLE, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

384 S.W.3d 318

STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff–Respondent,

v.Christy Weatherford COLE, Defendant–Appellant.

No. SD 31344.

Missouri Court of Appeals,

Southern District,

Division Two.

Sept. 17, 2012.

Motion for Rehearing and or Transfer Denied Oct. 9, 2012.

Application for Transfer Denied Dec. 18, 2012.

Kent Denzel, Columbia, MO, for Appellant.

Chris Koster, Attorney General, and, Richard A. Starnes, Assistant Attorney General, Jefferson City, MO, for Respondent.

DON E. BURRELL, J.

Christy Weatherford Cole (“Defendant”) appeals her bench-trial convictions for first-degree endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree murder based upon the perpetration of a felony (“felony murder”) related to the April 2003 killing of her three-year-old son (“Child”) by her “male friend,” Mike Griffin (“Griffin”).¹Seesections 568.045 and 565.021. In two points relied on, Defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting each of her convictions, and she also asserts that we should be able to re-weigh the evidence when making our sufficiency determinations. Finding no merit in her first claim, and no authority in support of her second, we affirm.

Applicable Principles of Review

We first address Defendant's challenge to our usual standard of review. That standard is the same in a bench-tried criminal case as in a jury-tried case. State v. Hall, 201 S.W.3d 599, 602 (Mo.App. S.D.2006). “When the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged in a criminal case, [our] review is limited to whether there is sufficient evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” State v. Pike, 162 S.W.3d 464, 475–76. (Mo. banc 2005). Defendant's proposed change is in conflict with our high court's directive that we must review the evidence, and the reasonable inferences drawn from it, in the light most favorable to the verdict and disregard all contrary evidence and inferences. Id. at 476. While acknowledging this current state of the law, Defendant claims that the existing state of our jurisprudence “is completely backwards.” She argues that failing to “apply the ‘weight of the evidence’ standard in [Defendant's] appeal [provides Defendant], as a criminal defendant, with less stringent review than a civil litigant and therefore denies her equal protection of the law.”

Defendant cites no direct authority for her claim that her constitutional rights to due process and equal protection of the law requires us to weigh the evidence in her criminal case. Instead, she analogizes to other decisions, most notably Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715, 730, 92 S.Ct. 1845, 32 L.Ed.2d 435 (1972), in which the United States Supreme Court held that subjecting someone charged with a crime to a more lenient mental health commitment standard than that applied in other situations violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendant's case does not involve differing mental health commitment requirements for civil and criminal cases; it addresses what type of deference must be given to the finder of fact in a criminal case. On that issue, in the context of a state habeas case, our highest court recently stated:

We have said that “it is the responsibility of the jury—not the court—to decide what conclusions should be drawn from evidence admitted at trial,” Cavazos v. Smith [––– U.S. ––––], 132 S.Ct. 2, 4 (2011)(per curiam). The evidence is sufficient to support a conviction whenever, “after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Parker v. Matthews, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2148, 2152, 183 L.Ed.2d 32 (2012) (emphasis as stated in original) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979)).

Appellate review of a bench-tried civil action is governed by the principles articulated in Rule 84.13(d) ² and Murphy v. Carron, 536 S.W.2d 30 (Mo. banc 1976). We must affirm a civil judgment in a court-tried case “unless it is not supported by substantial evidence, it is against the weight of the evidence, or it erroneously declares or applies the law.” Salem United Methodist Church v. Bottorff, 138 S.W.3d 788, 789–90 (Mo.App. S.D.2004). These principles of civil appellate review do not apply in a criminal case.³See City of Kansas City v. McGary, 218 S.W.3d 449, 451 n. 1 (Mo.App. W.D.2006). An appellate court does not engage in a weight-of-the-evidence review in a criminal case. See State v. Miller, 499 S.W.2d 496, 499 (Mo. banc 1973); State v. Goddard, 34 S.W.3d 436, 438 (Mo.App. W.D.2000); State v. Colson, 829 S.W.2d 669, 669 (Mo.App. S.D.1992).

At first glance, it might seem that permitting a weight-of-the-evidence attack on a judgment rendered in a civil case gives a civil litigant some “extra” measure of appellate review not afforded a criminal defendant. But Defendant overlooks the fact that a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence in a criminal case invokes a review of whether a reasonable fact-finder could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that each of the elements of the charged offense occurred—a much higher standard of proof than the preponderance of the evidence standard required in a civil case. See State v. Grim, 854 S.W.2d 403, 405 (Mo. banc 1993); Pike, 162 S.W.3d at 475–76;State v. Nash, 339 S.W.3d 500, 508–09 (Mo. banc 2011).

In State v. Northern, 472 S.W.2d 409 (Mo. banc 1971), the defendant contended that it was a violation of his constitutional rights to due process and equal protection for an appellate court to apply different standards of review in bench-tried civil and criminal cases. The heightened burden of proof in a criminal case was the primary basis for our high court's rejection of the challenge:

Defendant contends we should review the case de novo and that not to do so is an unconstitutional discrimination between civil and criminal litigants in jury-waived cases, and destroys the concept that findings of fact should be examined at least once before they are given any degree of finality. But the Missouri constitution expressly provides the findings of the trial court in a jury-waived criminal case shall have the force and effect of a verdict of a jury, Art. I, Sec. 22(a), V.A.M.S., and so the question on appeal is whether there was substantial evidence to support the finding, State v. Hatfield (Mo.Sup.[1971]), 465 S.W.2d 468, 470.

We do not see why Missouri cannot constitutionally handle appeals in jury-waived criminal trials this way. No discriminating application is made against defendant. If a justification is needed for not having a de novo review of the facts in a jury-waived criminal appeal, it could be found in the different degree of proof required in criminal and civil cases—proof beyond a reasonable doubt as compared to proof by preponderance of the greater weight of the evidence. Facts must be more firmly established in the former to begin with. We note, too, the same limited review prevails in the federal courts on appeals from jury-waived convictions.

Id. at 411.

In sum, our supreme court has clearly stated that an appellate court “will not weigh the evidence anew since ‘the fact-finder may believe all, some, or none of the testimony of a witness when considered with the facts, circumstances and other testimony in the case.’ ” State v. Freeman, 269 S.W.3d 422, 425 (Mo. banc 2008) (quoting State v. Crawford, 68 S.W.3d 406, 408 (Mo. banc 2002)). We are constitutionally bound to follow that precedent. Mo. Const. art. V, sec. 2; State v. Merchant, 363 S.W.3d 65, 69 (Mo.App. E.D.2011). Thus, our “review of the sufficiency of the evidence is limited to whether the State has introduced sufficient evidence for any reasonable juror to have been convinced of the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Nash, 339 S.W.3d at 508–09.

Facts

The evidence as viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts was as follows. Around 9:30 p.m. on March 23, 2003, Griffin contacted paramedic Steve Duffel at an “ambulance base” in Gainesville, and “told [Duffel that] he had an emergency with a child.” Duffel recognized Griffin as a former marshal in Theodosia and past-president of the area's ambulance district. Duffel went to Griffin's vehicle and found Defendant holding Child in the front seat. The paramedic “ascertained that [Child] was not responsive[,]” but he “had a faint carotid pulse.” Child also had a lump like “a goose egg on the back of his head[.]”

Defendant told Duffel that Child “slipped and fell in the bathtub.” Based on Child's physical appearance, Duffel doubted this explanation because he “had never seen anyone that had fell [sic] from their own height and [suffered] an injury like that.” Duffel also observed that Child “was clothed, and he was wearing a diaper. He didn't look particularly clean.” Defendant carried Child to the ambulance, which then transported Child to a Gainesville clinic that had a helipad. Child was eventually “air evacuated” to a hospital in Springfield, where he was subsequently removed from life support and died on April 1, 2003.

Dr. Shelley, a pathologist who performed an autopsy on Child, testified that Child had suffered soft-tissue injuries to both sides of his head, suggesting blows to both sides. He also observed a minor bruise “over the shoulder” that he did not think Child could have caused himself. Dr. Shelley concluded that Child died from “[s]evere trauma with hemorrhage and brain necrosis.”

Geoffrey Hand, who worked for the Ozark County Sheriff's Department, contacted Defendant at the hospital in Springfield on March 24, 2003. Hand advised Defendant “of her Miranda⁴ rights[,]” and she agreed to speak with him. Defendant told Hand “that she had been bathing the children in the bathtub. And the children—she had taken the two older children out to dry them off and get them cared for. She heard a noise. And she ...