State v. Moore
| Decision Date | 22 July 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. WD,WD |
| Citation | 949 S.W.2d 629 |
| Parties | STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Charles Q. MOORE, Appellant. 53087. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
Susan L. Hogan, Appellate Defender, Kansas City, for appellant.
Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, Attorney General, Cathleen A. Martin, Assistant Attorney General, Jefferson City, for respondent.
Before LAURA DENVIR STITH, P.J., and BRECKENRIDGE and HANNA, JJ.
Appellant Charles Q. Moore appeals his conviction of two counts of first degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action claiming that there was insufficient evidence to convict him because the State failed to prove that he acted with deliberation. Finding the evidence sufficient to support the convictions, we affirm.
In the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was as follows. On the night of May 13, 1995, Appellant Charles Moore was at the house where he lived with his aunt, Barbara Miller, and her boyfriend, John Guido. While Ms. Miller was at work, Mr. Moore had been smoking PCP. Later that night in one of the bedrooms, Mr. Moore shot Mr. Guido twice in the back of the head. Mr. Moore then left Mr. Guido's dead body lying across the bed overnight, and the sheets were soaked with blood. When Ms. Miller came home the next afternoon, she found Mr. Guido's dead body and became hysterical. She went to the dining room, where Mr. Moore shot her once in the back of the head. The prosecutor argued the evidence permitted the inference that she was shot while sitting, that she did not die immediately, and that she died either from bleeding or suffocation after Mr. Moore wrapped a throw rug around her head.
To conceal his involvement in the murders, Mr. Moore put both bodies in Ms. Miller's car and drove the car into Troost Lake. He threw the shell casings and bullets into the lake and hid the gun in the rafters of the porch. Mr. Moore also cleaned up some of the blood in the house, removed part of the dining room carpet that was blood-stained, and took the bloody sheets and pillow cases off the bed and hid them in a suitcase in the attic.
On the morning of Monday, May 15, 1995, the Kansas City Fire Department received a report that there was a car in Troost Lake. Fire fighters investigated and discovered a woman's body in the back seat, so they called the underwater rescue team from Lee's Summit. The rescue team recovered two bodies from the car. The bodies were later identified as those of Ms. Miller and Mr. Guido.
Detectives George Barrios and Kent Morton went to Ms. Miller's address, where Mr. Moore answered the door and falsely identified himself as Lamont Miller. The officers told Mr. Moore that they were investigating the reported disappearance of Ms. Miller, and Mr. Moore responded that he did not know where she was. The detectives later returned to the house with a search warrant and were told that the man they had spoken with earlier was, in fact, Mr. Moore. Upon searching the house, police found what appeared to be blood on some clothing, the dining room wall, a plastic runner in the hallway, the back porch steps, and a small throw rug covering a section of carpeting that had been cut out. DNA testing revealed that some of the blood samples obtained were consistent with Ms. Miller's genetic profile.
On May 16, 1995, Mr. Moore voluntarily went to the police station and spoke with Detectives John Thompson and Jay Pruetting. After making a videotaped statement in which he denied any involvement in his aunt's and Mr. Guido's death, Mr. Moore left.
The next day, May 17, 1995, the police brought Mr. Moore back to the police station for further questioning. During this videotaped interview, Mr. Moore said that his original story was not true. Instead, he told police, he had entered the back door of Ms. Miller's house on the evening of May 14, 1995, and seen a man he identified as Shavel Foy standing between the kitchen and the dining room with a gun. Mr. Moore told the detectives that he then ran and hid, and when he later returned to the house, he found his aunt and Mr. Guido dead. After making this statement, Mr. Moore was arrested on an unrelated offense.
On May 18, 1995, police again went to Ms. Miller's residence with a search warrant. In the attic, they discovered a hidden suitcase containing blood-soaked bed linens. The police also found a spent nine-millimeter shell casing underneath the dining room table. That same day, Mr. Moore was brought back to the homicide unit and made a third videotaped statement. During this interview, Mr. Moore confessed to murdering Ms. Miller and Mr. Guido. He said the murder of Mr. Guido occurred during an argument while he was high on PCP, and that he did not know he shot Ms. Miller, but just heard a bang and then saw the gun in his hand and her bleeding body on the floor.
Approximately one week later, Mr. Moore was indicted for two counts of first degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action. After a trial, the jury convicted Mr. Moore on all counts. This appeal followed.
In considering whether the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's verdict, the appellate court views the evidence and all reasonable inferences drawn from the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and disregards all contrary evidence. Review is limited to a determination of whether there is sufficient evidence from which a reasonable juror might have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Grim, 854 S.W.2d 403, 405 (Mo. banc), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 997, 114 S.Ct. 562, 126 L.Ed.2d 462 (1993).
Mr. Moore's sole point on appeal is that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of first degree murder because the State did not establish that he acted with deliberation in killing his aunt or in killing Mr. Guido. He claims that the killings did not amount to first degree murder because the killings took place during "emotionally charged circumstances" and thus constituted second degree murder.
A person commits the crime of first degree murder by knowingly causing the death of another after deliberation. § 565.020.1, RSMo 1994. Deliberation is defined as "cool reflection for any length of time no matter how brief." § 565.002(3), RSMo 1994. Deliberation may be proved by indirect evidence and may be inferred from the circumstances surrounding the murder. State v. Santillan, 948 S.W.2d 574, 575-76 (Mo. banc 1997); State v. Beishline, 926 S.W.2d 501, 511 (Mo.App.1996); State v. Clark, 913 S.W.2d 399, 404 (Mo.App.1996). In most cases, indirect evidence that supports a finding of deliberation will also support a finding that there was no deliberation, and the existence of deliberation is therefore a question of fact for the jury. Santillan, at 576.
We believe this to be the situation here. The trial court submitted both first and second degree murder to the jury. We agree that the evidence was sufficient to support a finding of either deliberation or no deliberation as to either or both victims, depending upon which version of the evidence the jury accepted. Accordingly, the case was properly submitted on both theories.
More specifically, the defendant's evidence and trial strategy were primarily designed to show that he did not commit the murders at all and that they were instead committed by another. Indeed, all but one page of his closing argument was devoted to the claim of alibi and that Mr. Moore had been framed and his confession given involuntarily. His counsel used the final few minutes of closing argument, however, to argue that even if the jury believed he did commit the murders, as he confessed he had done in his third statement to the police, the evidence only permitted the conclusion that the murders occurred while Mr. Moore was high on drugs and that he killed the victims on the spur of the moment, and not as a result of deliberation. 1
The evidence and inferences favoring deliberation were the focus of that argument. Thus, the prosecutor's closing argument first directed the jury to the evidence prior to and during the shootings which supported a finding of deliberation as to Mr. Guido, arguing, without objection:
Now, John Guido, the circumstances of his death, there is deliberation written all over it. The...
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