State v. Laws, 13671

• Decision Date: 24 September 1985
• Docket Number: No. 13671,13671
• Citation: 699 S.W.2d 102
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Leonard Marvin LAWS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 102

699 S.W.2d 102

STATE of Missouri, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Leonard Marvin LAWS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 13671.

Missouri Court of Appeals,

Southern District,

Division One.

Sept. 24, 1985.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Supreme Court Denied

Oct. 15, 1985.

Application to Transfer Denied Dec. 17, 1985.

William L. Webster, Atty. Gen., Victorine R. Mahon, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for plaintiff-respondent.

David Robards, Joplin, for defendant-appellant.

TITUS, Presiding Judge.

A Greene County jury found defendant guilty of capital murder in violation of § 565.001, RSMo 1978, repealed by Laws 1983, p. 922. ¹ He received a life sentence without possibility of probation or parole for a period of fifty years. The judge, in his discretion, ordered that the sentence be served consecutively to another life sentence without probation or parole for fifty years which had been previously imposed against the defendant after a capital murder conviction by the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, Missouri, Case No. 449765. Defendant appeals.

A summary of the pertinent facts suffices. In the early morning hours of December 29, 1980, a passerby noticed the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Roderique was on fire. He went into the house to try and locate her, but could not find her. Paul Wood investigated the fire for the State Fire Marshall's Office. His investigation disclosed: 1) a set of keys lying on the ground just beneath an open door of a shed near the house; 2) a hasp securing a door to a lean-to type structure attached to the garage had been pulled away from the wood to which it had been fastened; 3) wires leading into the house had been cut; 4) a portable TV stand was found outside the house; 5) a car in the garage with its battery cables cut, battery removed, glove compartment open, papers strewn about its interior, and its trunk open; 6) the charred body of Mrs. Roderique lying on the remains of a bed, and 7) a gasoline can in the bedroom where the body was found. A pathologist testified that Mrs. Roderique's body was so badly charred and burned that the cause of her death could not be determined by his autopsy findings. However, he went on to testify that the "[b]urning would have caused [her] death."

Laws contends that he was convicted by a death-qualified, conviction-prone jury and thereby denied a fair and impartial trial. At his trial, jurors who stated on voir dire they had an opinion or belief making it impossible for them to impose the death penalty under any circumstances were challenged by the state and striken by the trial court for cause. In his second point defendant contends that the trial court erred in submitting the case to the jury because the state failed to prove the corpus delicti independently of his extrajudicial admission that he killed Mrs. Roderique.

As support for his argument in his first point, Laws relies upon Grigsby v. Mabry, 758 F.2d 226 (8th Cir.1985), which holds that excluding for cause jurors who hold absolute scruples against imposing the death penalty under any circumstances violates the cross-sectional requirement of the Sixth Amendment. Grigsby has been rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court. The assignment of error is without merit. State v. Kenley, 693 S.W.2d 79, 82-83 (Mo. banc 1985).

Laws' second point relied on is that the state did not prove the corpus delicti by evidence independent of his extrajudicial admission that he killed Mrs. Roderique. The general rule is that...