State v. Dickson, 48653

• Decision Date: 02 April 1985
• Docket Number: No. 48653,48653
• Citation: 691 S.W.2d 334
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Christopher DICKSON, Appellant. . Division Two
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 334

691 S.W.2d 334

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Christopher DICKSON, Appellant.

No. 48653.

Missouri Court of Appeals,

Eastern District.

Division Two.

April 2, 1985.

Motion for Rehearing and/or Transfer to

Supreme Court Denied May 17, 1985.

Application to Transfer Denied

June 25, 1985.

William L. Webster, Atty. Gen., Michael H. Finkelstein, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

Henry Robertson, St. Louis, for appellant.

JOHN C. CROW, Special Judge.

Appellant, indicted for capital murder, § 565.001, RSMo 1978, for the February 25, 1983, killing of Beatrice Gillion in the City of St. Louis, was found guilty by a jury as charged. Punishment was fixed at imprisonment for life without eligibility for probation or parole until appellant has served a minimum of 50 years. § 565.008.1, RSMo 1978.

Appellant insists the evidence was insufficient to establish that the homicide was deliberate and premeditated, being instead "more consistent with a killing in sudden anger." He also complains about the receipt in evidence of the victim's "blue jeans," coat and a "green trilobal fiber" found on the coat by a criminalist of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Lastly, appellant assigns error in the trial court's sustaining of an objection by the prosecutor to a portion of appellant's lawyer's closing argument.

In ruling appellant's challenge of the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction, we view the evidence and all inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to the verdict and disregard all contrary evidence and inferences. State v. McDonald, 661 S.W.2d 497, 500 (Mo. banc 1983). We determine only whether the evidence, so viewed, is sufficient to make a submissible case from which reasonable jurors could have found appellant guilty as charged. State v. Wood, 596 S.W.2d 394, 400 (Mo. banc 1980),cert. denied, 449 U.S. 876, 101 S.Ct. 221, 66 L.Ed.2d 98 (1980).

Cast in that light, the evidence establishes that Beatrice Gillion, age 27 or 28, accompanied by her "two little boys," arrived at 5534 Beacon Avenue, the residence of her sister, Patricia Gillion, on Friday morning, February 25, 1983. According to Patricia, it was Beatrice's habit to come there once a week to wash clothes. Patricia, having departed for work about 7:20 a.m., was not home when Beatrice and her sons arrived. However, Patricia spoke to Beatrice by phone about 9:30 that morning when Beatrice called Patricia at work.

Jo Ann Johnson, who lived with her mother at 5531 Beacon, went to Patricia Gillion's residence about 12:40 p.m., that day to borrow a cup of milk. Jo Ann, who knew Beatrice and appellant, pushed the door open and walked into the living room. There, she saw Beatrice on the floor. Thinking Beatrice had fainted, Jo Ann walked toward her. Asked what she saw, Jo Ann answered, "Blood and her eyes was open, and a knife in her." Jo Ann started screaming and ran outside toward her mother's home.

En route, Jo Ann passed appellant "[s]tanding in the street right by the curb." Jo Ann said, "Chris, Chris, go in there, Beatrice is dead."

Asked whether appellant responded, Jo Ann testified, "No, he just stood there for a little while."

Jo Ann told her mother, who was on their front porch, what she had seen. Jo Ann then saw appellant approach Patricia Gillion's residence. In Jo Ann's words, "He walked up the steps slowly and he opened the screen door and he looked in, then closed it and he came back down the steps."

Police officers Robert Siscel and Joseph Callahan were dispatched to the scene by radio, arriving about 12:45 p.m. Upon entering Patricia's home, they saw Beatrice lying on her back "with blood on her chest, and her clothes disarrayed." Siscel explained, "She had a butcher knife in her abdomen." The officers attempted to take a pulse on Beatrice's wrist and neck, but detected none.

Patricia Gillion was notified and she returned home, finding Beatrice's sons at 5523 Beacon, the home of Eleanor Johnson, appellant's mother. Jo Ann Johnson explained that Eleanor Johnson "baby sat" Beatrice's children and that Beatrice formerly dated appellant's brother. According to Jo Ann, appellant and Beatrice had a "friendly relationship."

Police officers Elmer Morris and John Bernard arrived at the scene and began interviewing bystanders. Their attention was directed to appellant, who was walking in the street near Jo Ann Johnson's home. Morris testified: "I noted that his clothes appeared to have been in a disarrayed condition. The shirt was open at the top and wrinkle [sic] as if he had been involved in a fight. I also noticed that there were blood stains on his coat that he was wearing, and a scratch on the lower part on the chest directly under his neck."

Morris asked appellant his name, address, and how he had gotten the blood on his coat. According to Morris, appellant stated he had scratched himself on a fence by a garage. Morris continued, "At the time that he was telling me how he scratched himself on the fence, he pulled up his jacket and showed me a mark on his arm that did not appear to be a scratch, but, instead, it appeared to be a human bite mark."

Morris and Bernard arrested appellant, taking him to the district police station. Bernard testified that after they arrived, appellant sat down and, at that time, a white button fell from appellant's shirt to the floor. Bernard, observing that appellant's shirt was "torn," retrieved the button, holding it as evidence.

Police officer Harvey Laux, an evidence technician, processed the scene where Beatrice's body lay. Clothing on the body included a bloodstained coat and blue jeans. Photographs of the body taken by Laux show the jeans open in front with a tear several inches long in the crotch beneath the zipper.

Laux removed the knife from Beatrice's abdomen. He described the knife as a "fourteen and a half inch Chef knife with a nine and three quarter inch blade." Beneath the body, Laux discovered a white button with "[p]ieces of clothing attached by the thread."

Laux went to the police station where appellant was being held. Bernard gave Laux the button that had fallen from appellant's shirt.

Laux took photographs of appellant, including that area of appellant's left forearm where officer Morris had seen what he described as a human bite mark. Laux thereafter accompanied appellant to the police laboratory where Laux took additional photographs of appellant's left forearm. Laux then took possession of several items of appellant's clothing, including his coat and shirt. Laux turned the clothing over to laboratory personnel.

Harold Messler, a criminalist at the police laboratory, examined appellant's left forearm, observing "a damaged place on the skin that appeared to be two puncture marks where the skin was actually broken; and the skin had a raised appearance in this particular area." Messler processed appellant's forearm for the presence of residual saliva, and he also obtained a sample of saliva from appellant's mouth.

A medical doctor specializing in forensic pathology performed an autopsy on Beatrice Gillion's body, observing two bruises on the right upper lip and an abraded area near the corner of the mouth. According to the doctor, these marks indicated some force had been applied to the mouth. Inside the mouth, the doctor noticed bruising on the lining of the mouth and "around the right upper tooth in the canine area."

The doctor found several bruises on the neck, a fracture of the left side of the thyroid bone "right above the Adam's Apple," and a fracture of the left side of the thyroid cartilage. These observations, coupled with some "pinpoint hemorrhaging" in the whites of the eyes and on the gums, indicated to the doctor that "strangulation was present in this case."

The doctor counted "at least twelve and possibly thirteen" stab wounds. Commenting on one of them, the doctor stated: "The instrument has passed through the skin creating this defect; passed through the breast bone, passed through the sac in the heart. So it cut through right ventrical [sic] of the heart, which is one of the lower chambers of the heart. Passed through the esophagus, which is the tube that feeds from your mouth to your stomach; passed below the 9th rib cutting the 10th rib and out through the back."

Asked about the cause of Beatrice's death, the doctor responded, "Strangulation and multiple stab wounds."

A day or two after Beatrice was killed, Patricia was putting her children to bed in an upstairs bedroom when she noticed a curtain had been torn off the window. Plastic, which Patricia had taped around the window, was hanging outside. She also saw a large button which she picked up and later turned over to a detective.

Victor Granat, a criminalist at the police laboratory, examined appellant's shirt and noted two buttons were missing. Using a "polarized light microscope," he examined a sample of the cloth in appellant's shirt, a sample of the reinforcing material for the buttons on appellant's shirt and a sample of the thread attaching the buttons to appellant's shirt. He also examined the thread and cloth attached to the button found by Laux beneath Beatrice's body. Granat concluded, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that the cloth, reinforcing material and thread from appellant's shirt were the same respective types as the cloth and thread attached to the button. Additionally, the cloth attached to the button matched the size and shape of a hole on appellant's shirt where a button was missing. The printed pattern on the cloth attached to the button matched the pattern around the hole in the shirt. Upon observing this, Granat concluded that the button found by Laux beneath Beatrice's body had come from appellant's shirt.

Granat examined the button that had fallen from appellant's shirt at the police station and concluded it was the same type as the one found by Laux beneath Beatrice's body. Shown...