State v. Jones

Citation172 S.W.3d 448
Decision Date04 October 2005
Docket NumberNo. WD 63842.,WD 63842.
PartiesSTATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. William JONES, Jr., Appellant.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Missouri

Kent Denzel, Columbia, for appellant.

Deborah Daniels, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

Before JOSEPH M. ELLIS, Presiding Judge, PAUL M. SPINDEN, Judge and VICTOR C. HOWARD, Judge.

JOSEPH M. ELLIS, Judge.

The State charged Appellant, William Jones Jr. ("Jones"), with the Class D felony of abandoning a corpse, section 194.425.1.1 A Boone County jury found him guilty as charged, and the circuit court sentenced him to a four-year term of imprisonment in the custody of the Missouri Department of Corrections. Jones appeals the circuit court's judgment of conviction, advancing two points relied on.

In his first point, which resolves his appeal, Jones asserts that, because he could not be found to have committed the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt on the evidence presented at trial, the circuit court erred in overruling his motion for a directed verdict of acquittal at the close of the State's case.

"A directed verdict of acquittal is authorized only where there is insufficient evidence to support a guilty verdict." State v. Morovitz, 867 S.W.2d 506, 508 (Mo. banc 1993). "The function of the court is limited to determining whether there was sufficient evidence from which reasonable persons could have found defendant guilty as charged. In evaluating this issue, trial and appellate courts must view the evidence and all of its reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the State, disregarding any evidence or inferences to the contrary." Id. (internal citations omitted). Resolution of this case also involves statutory interpretation. "Questions of statutory interpretation, of course, are questions of law, which this court reviews de novo." State v. Harney, 51 S.W.3d 519, 532 (Mo.App. W.D.2001).

Viewed in accordance with our standard of review, the facts of this case are straightforward. On the morning of December 31, 2002, Jones and his girlfriend drove to the rural Callaway County mobile home of Justin Eric Hazlett, Jones' friend and "fishing buddy" of seven or eight years, to pick up a wood-burning stove Hazlett had promised to give to Jones. Jones saw what appeared to be Hazlett lying on the front lawn, and he got out of the car to check on him. He thought that Hazlett, whose body was prone and facing upward, might be sleeping, unconscious after drinking heavily or having being beaten, or dead. He kicked the heel of one of Hazlett's shoes. When he noticed that Hazlett's body looked "kind of yellow" and that there was dried blood on his face and coming out of his nose, Jones concluded that Hazlett was dead. He then returned to his vehicle and drove away. He told his girlfriend that Hazlett was dead and, if asked, not to tell the police that they had been at Hazlett's house. Jones did not report the corpse's location to Callaway County law enforcement officials. Someone else did, apparently around noon the same day. Hazlett, who was last seen alive at a local gathering place called Crane's Store on the evening of December 30, had been shot twice in the head sometime between then and when Jones discovered his corpse the following morning.

The jury convicted Jones of violating section 194.425.1, which provides, in its entirety: "A person commits the crime of abandonment of a corpse if that person abandons, disposes, deserts or leaves a corpse without properly reporting the location of the body to the proper law enforcement officials in that county."2 As mentioned above, abandonment of a corpse is a Class D felony, § 194.425.2, and the circuit court sentenced Jones to a four-year term of imprisonment in the custody of the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Jones did not testify and presented no other evidence at trial. However, his motion for a directed verdict of acquittal at the close of the State's evidence was overruled, and this was assigned as error in his unsuccessful motion for new trial and point relied on, thus fully preserving the sufficiency issue for appellate review. See State v. McClunie, 438 S.W.2d 267, 268 (Mo.1969). Our primary objective in interpreting section 194.425.1 is to give effect to the General Assembly's intent, and we discern that intent from the plain and ordinary meaning of the statute's words. State v. Grubb, 120 S.W.3d 737, 739 (Mo. banc 2003). The plain and ordinary meaning of the words of a statute is their meaning "found in the dictionary ... unless the legislature provides a different definition." Lincoln Indus., Inc. v. Dir. of Revenue, 51 S.W.3d 462, 465 (Mo. banc 2001). In this regard, our Supreme Court's recent interpretation of section 194.425.1 in State v. Bratina, 73 S.W.3d 625 (Mo. banc 2002), is instructive.

In Bratina, the State alleged that the defendant, James Bratina, left his apartment in Jackson, Missouri, on January 15, 2001, at about 6:40 a.m., leaving behind his three-year-old daughter and the body of his deceased wife. 73 S.W.3d at 626. When Bratina left the apartment, he went to his place of work and returned about three to four hours later, at which time he called 911. Id. at 626, 628. Bratina was charged with the class D felony of abandonment of a corpse and the class A misdemeanor of endangering the welfare of a child in the second degree. Id. at 626. After he moved to dismiss the felony charge, arguing that section 194.425.1 was unconstitutionally vague, the trial court granted the motion and declared the statute to be void. Id. The State appealed, and the Missouri Supreme Court reversed, holding that the statute did not violate the due process clause since it gave Bratina fair notice of the conduct that it declared to be a crime. Id. at 626, 629.

After setting forth the text of section 194.425 in full, the Court began its analysis by noting that "[t]here is a question as to what conduct is made criminal by this statute." Id. at 626. To illustrate this, the Court recounted at length a familiar scene from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Huck Finn and his friend Jim discovered a naked male body in a house located on a flooded island in the Mississippi River but left it where they found it without reporting it to anyone. Id. After canoeing over to the island, they came upon the house and entered through an upstairs window. Id. At daybreak, they looked in the window, and Huck described what they saw:

There was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says: `Hello, you!'

It didn't budge. So I hollered again, and Jim says: `De man ain't asleep — he's dead. You hold still.'

He went, and bent down and looked, and says: `It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in the back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face — it's too gashly.'

I didn't look at him at all. Jim threw some old rags over him but he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him.

[The narrator then recounts how Huck and Jim made a `good haul' of belongings in the house and then left:] I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe.

Id. at 626-27 (internal citation omitted).

Turning to the words used in section 194.425.1, the Court then noted:

The concept of "abandonment" in the statute clearly is based upon a person having an interest in, or duty with respect to, the body. To abandon, the dictionary tells us, is "to cease to assert or exercise an interest, right or title to esp. with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting it ...." or "to forsake or desert esp. in spite of an allegiance, duty, or responsibility." The words that the statute uses to describe the concept of abandonment are "abandons, disposes, deserts or leaves." The first three of these words contain the concept that the person has a relationship or duty with respect to the body. To dispose of something implies that one has possession of it. Similarly, to desert — one of the synonyms of abandon — includes the concept of turning away from or withdrawing support or disrupting the bond of attachment or duty.

Id. at 627 (footnotes omitted).

As to the last word used by the General Assembly in section 194.425.1 to describe the concept of abandonment ("leaves"), the Court noted that it was ambiguous when considered in isolation. Id. "Does it mean leaves," the Court asked, "as in what Huck and Jim did, or leaves, as in mortuary attendants carrying and leaving a body on the front porch of a decedent's home when the relatives fail to pay for its disposition?" Id. That is to say:

If Huck Finn and his friend Jim were real 21st century Missourians, might they be facing a D felony for abandonment of a corpse? They, after all, did `leave' a corpse that they had found. Bratina makes a similar point, that someone walking down the street, an innocent bystander, would be committing a crime if he kept walking without reporting the corpse to the proper authorities.

Id. (original paragraph style omitted).

The Court resolved the ambiguity created by the legislature's use of the word "leaves" by observing that "leaves" was "not used in isolation, but along with the words `abandons, disposes, deserts.'" Id. Applying the maxim of statutory construction known as noscitur a sociis ("it is known from its associates"),3 the Court held that inasmuch as "these terms all have as part of their meaning a relationship or duty with respect to the dead body," that was also the sense in which "leaves" was employed by the legislature. Id. & n. 5. Thus, the Court held that the term "leaves" also has as part of its meaning a relationship or duty with respect to the dead body.

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