State v. Gomez
| Docket Number | SD37330 |
| Decision Date | 30 June 2023 |
| Parties | STATE OF MISSOURI, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. SETH ANDREW GOMEZ, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF GREENE COUNTY The Honorable Jason R. Brown, Judge
Seth Andrew Gomez ("Gomez") waived his right to a jury trial and, following a bench trial, the Circuit Court of Greene County ("trial court") convicted him of first-degree murder and armed criminal action.[1] Gomez appeals the trial court's judgment convicting him of first-degree murder, claiming the trial court erred in overruling his motion for judgment of acquittal at the close of the State's evidence because the evidence adduced at trial was insufficient to prove Gomez deliberated before killing Calvin Allen Jr. ("Victim").[2] While Gomez's brief fails to comply with the mandatory provisions of Rule 84.04 governing appellate briefing, the State argues the merits of Gomez's point in its Respondent's brief, and we are nonetheless able to discern he is raising a sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge.[3] Our Supreme Court "'long has held that sufficiency claims are considered on appeal even if not briefed or not properly briefed in the appellate courts.'" State v Lehman, 617 S.W.3d 843, 847 n.4 (Mo. banc 2021) (quoting State v. Claycomb, 470 S.W.3d 358, 361 (Mo. banc 2015)). We therefore review Gomez's appeal on the merits and affirm the trial court's judgment.[4]
On March 1, 2019, Amanda Simrin ("Simrin"), a friend of both Gomez and Victim, booked a motel room, room 230, at the Ozark Inn on North Glenstone in Springfield, Missouri. Simrin, Gomez's girlfriend Rachel Slobig ("Slobig"), Victim, and Gomez met that afternoon at room 230 to talk, listen to music, and use illicit drugs.
Several other individuals also came to and from the motel room to use drugs throughout the day.
When Gomez arrived at the motel room, he and Victim had a conversation to "clear up some issues" they had been having about "somebody having more money than the other person and they weren't happy about that" stemming from a "lick" they were involved in. Tensions were "pretty high" in the room during that time. After several people left the room, it was calm and quiet.
Simrin left the motel room sometime around 8:00 p.m., leaving Gomez Slobig, Victim, and Bailey Stoddard ("Stoddard"), who had joined the group sometime that afternoon, in the room. The individuals were "doing [their] own thing" listening to music, doing drugs, and being on their phones. Gomez texted Simrin between 11:06 p.m. and 11:07 p.m., told her he needed a ride "asap" and it was an emergency, and directed her to wait in the car with it on. Gomez texted further, "It's an emergency, hotel, don't tell Domo or Russell you're picking me up and let [Stoddard] know low key in the bathroom." Gomez told Simrin, "Not in the bathroom you wait in the car have the car still on." He also instructed Simrin to delete their text conversation and told her Victim was "fine."
After several hours of relaxation, continued drug use, and "quiet" in the room, Victim was in and out of sleep around midnight. Gomez was putting on Victim's clothes, trading shoes, and asking to wear Victim's stuff. Specifically, green boots, a black shirt with gold bees around the neck, and a green backpack. Around midnight, Gomez told Slobig and Stoddard to go into the bathroom.
Slobig heard "what sounded like a fight or like a scuffle" on the other side of the bathroom door. She tried to get out of the door, but Stoddard would not move her arm. When Slobig finally left the bathroom, she saw Gomez standing over Victim next to the bed while stabbing Victim in the back of the head and then the throat with a knife. Slobig asked him to stop, but Gomez "wouldn't look up from what he was doing." Victim raised his arms to defend himself from Gomez.
Slobig saw Stoddard leave the room, so Slobig turned and departed too. Stoddard and Slobig heard gunshots as they left the Ozark Inn. Slobig then saw Gomez "five or ten minutes later" after the incident when they met up at the "Glenwood Manor" and caught a ride together to a house on Florida Street.
Springfield Police Officer Joseph Pyle ("Officer Pyle") received a call for service during the early morning hours of March 2, 2019, and he arrived at the Ozark Inn about 16 minutes after midnight. When Officer Pyle arrived, he could see "what looked like" a person laying on the second-floor balcony. He went to the second floor and saw a male covered in blood with his shirt pulled up and his pants slightly below his waist. Victim had 14 incised injuries near his left pinky, right thumb, and right finger, and wounds to the upper right portion of his shoulder, one near his right ear and right neck, one on his right inner thigh, and to his back. Victim also had nine gunshot wounds in his arm, elbow, genitals, leg, and back. Keith Norton ("Norton"), a forensic pathologist for the State, testified at trial he determined, "to a reasonable degree of medical certainty," the gunshot to the left side of Victim's back was the cause of death.
Officers eventually entered room 230 and discovered two beds covered in blood, blood splattered about on the south and east walls, blood on the wall above one of the beds, blood on the air-conditioning unit, a grouping of three spent shell casings in the center walkway, one "unspent bullet" approximately one foot away, blood on the doorway inside and leading to it, a flashlight attachment for a handgun, a pink sock that matched the sock on Victim's foot with a bloody shell casing in it, a hospital bracelet with "Rachel Elizabeth Slobig" on it, an empty prescription bottle prescribed to Gomez, and one "spent bullet" near the door on the inside.
Gomez ended up at a home he frequented on Hoffman Street around 8:30 a.m., on March 2, 2019. Gomez informed Angel Perreira ("Perreira"), a resident of the Hoffman Street house and friend, "I just killed [Victim] cuz." Gomez informed her he had stabbed Victim in the room and shot him on the balcony. When Slobig came to the Hoffman Street house around noon, she noted Gomez had changed his clothes. The clothes Gomez had been wearing the day before were in the bathtub and hanging up around the house after already having been washed.
Springfield police officers executed a search warrant for the Hoffman Street house later that evening. Gomez and Slobig were at the Hoffman Street house at the time, and officers located a knife and firearm on Gomez's person. They also located a pair of green Timberline boots and a green backpack with red staining. Garrett Schmitz from the Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime Lab testified that the blood found on the knife taken from Gomez's person and green backpack matched Victim's DNA profile. Slobig was taken to the Springfield Police Department's headquarters where Detective Kelly Patton ("Detective Patton") interviewed her. She told Detective Patton she had no clue what had happened and had seen an article about Victim being found deceased.
Slobig was later arrested for violating the terms of her probation on an unrelated matter. Gomez, after his arrest, used a tablet from the Greene County Jail to ask Stoddard and his mother to "video visit" Slobig to tell her he loved her and that she needed to "keep her head up." Gomez warned his mother, On May 29, 2019, while still in custody, Slobig agreed to speak to Detective Patton about Victim's murder. She decided to speak to Detective Patton because, in her own words, "it was just weighing on [her] shoulders," she "couldn't sleep at night," and she "struggled with what to do with that decision for a while, and thought it was just the right thing to do."
The State charged Gomez with armed criminal action and first-degree murder. See sections 571.015, RSMo 2016, and 565.020.[5] Slobig recounted the events leading up to Victim's murder at trial. She admitted to initially lying to Detective Patton and that she was in custody when she later told him what had happened on May 29, 2019. Slobig testified she understood her prior release from custody to be independent from her providing a statement to Detective Patton, and she further confirmed she did not make a "deal" to testify in order to get out of jail. Following the bench trial, the trial court found Gomez guilty of both charges. This appeal followed.
We consider Gomez's argument as the State interpreted it - that the trial court erred in overruling Gomez's motion for judgment of acquittal at the close of the State's evidence because there was insufficient evidence to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in that the State failed to prove Gomez acted with deliberation or cool reflection before causing the death of Victim as required to sustain a conviction for murder in the first degree - and find the State presented sufficient evidence for a reasonable trier of fact to find Gomez guilty.
"The trial court's findings have the force and effect of the verdict of a jury in a court-tried criminal case." State v. Shands, 661 S.W.3d 381, 382 (Mo. App. S.D. 2023). "Accordingly, the standard used to review the sufficiency of the evidence in a court-tried and a jury-tried criminal case is the same." Id. (internal quotations and citation omitted). "'[W]e review a trial court's ruling on a motion for judgment of acquittal to determine whether there was sufficient evidence from which the trial court could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.'"...
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