State v. Patterson

• Decision Date: 29 May 1917
• Docket Number: No. 20058.,20058.
• Citation: 271 Mo. 99,196 S.W. 3
• Parties: STATE v. PATTERSON.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

196 S.W. 3

271 Mo. 99

STATE v. PATTERSON.

No. 20058.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

May 29, 1917.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; William T. Jones, Judge.

Walter F. Patterson was convicted of robbery by extortion, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Information was filed in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis at the April term, 1915, charging the defendant, jointly with Frederick W. Deuser and Edward C. Butler, with robbery in the third degree, under section 4532, R. S. 1909, by threatening to accuse one Peter Ibsen of a felony, and thereby extorting from him certain promissory notes, signed by him and payable to the appellant. The defendant Patterson was granted a severance, and on his separate trial was convicted, and his punishment assessed at a term of five years in the penitentiary. From this judgment he appealed.

Ibsen was 53 years of age, a native of Denmark, but a naturalized citizen of the United States, and vice counsul for Denmark. According to the evidence produced by the state, Patterson, Deuser, and Butler conceived a scheme to extort money from Ibsen; and in pursuance of the scheme Butler, who was a boy about 19 years of age, sought the acquaintance of Ibsen at the latter's candy store, 912. Olive street. After Ibsen and Butler had become acquainted, they took several car rides together in different parts of the suburbs, and on one occasion, about the 13th of August, 1914, while they were at Creve Cœur Lake, and in an obscure part of the park, Deuser and Patterson suddenly came upon them, and made the threats which are the basis of the charge set out in the information. Presently Deuser took Butler to one side, and pretty soon returned with him. Butler was crying, and Deuser said he had "confessed." Before they separated they got Ibsen in a state of fear which remained with him for some days. He was induced to sign a statement which he testified contained only his name, address and occupation, and the name and address of Butler. In the subsequent negotiations Patterson produced this paper, in which Ibsen asserted additional words had been written, and among them the words "for immoral purposes." The defense claimed that the paper was in the same shape when produced afterwards as when it was signed.

Patterson continued to work on Ibsen's fears, with threats of exposure, and the next day extorted $97 in cash from him, and a few days later induced him to sign two notes, one for $200 and one for $650, both payable to Patterson. These notes, which are the ones mentioned in the information, were subsequently paid by Ibsen to some trust company to whom Patterson negotiated them. On the delivery of these notes Patterson burned in Ibsen's presence the statement which the latter had signed at Creve Cœur Lake.

Patterson, finding Ibsen easy and productive, continued to work him with effect. Some months after he got the two notes he went to Ibsen and told him that he had lost $150 in discounting the notes, and induced Ibsen to pay him another $150. Some time in March, 1915, about a month after Patterson got the $150, he again got in communication with Ibsen, and told him, "Deuser has played a trick on us," by retaining a photographic copy of the statement Patterson had burned in Ibsen's presence. He produced a note for $800 and induced Ibsen to sign it for the purpose of quieting Deuser. During the previous negotiations Patterson, in his talks with Ibsen, had always mentioned Deuser as the person who was to be feared, intimating that there was danger of both Ibsen and himself getting into trouble through the instrumentality of the police if Deuser were not hushed up. Ibsen made no complaint to any officer about the matter, but kept it to himself. The $800 note mentioned was found on Patterson while under arrest on another criminal charge; the police department, with this clue, hunted up Ibsen, and discovered the story of his robbery.

Patterson nowhere in his defense denied having received the notes mentioned in the information or having cashed them, but says they were given by Ibsen voluntarily, so that he could cash them and raise money "to get Butler out of town." His defense throughout was that Ibsen was guilty and in constant terror lest Butler would charge him with an unmentionable crime. Patterson did not remember receiving the $97 cash, but admitted Ibsen gave him a check for $50 at one time.

Frank W. McAllister, Atty. Gen., and John T. Gose, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

WHITE, C. (after stating the facts as above).

I. Defendant demurred to the information, his demurrer was overruled, and he now challenges its sufficiency on the ground that it did not inform the defendant of the nature of the offense with which he was charged. The information, after the introductory parts, alleges:

"That Walter F. Patterson, Frederick W. Deuser, and Edward C. Butler, on the fourteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fourteen, at the city of St. Louis aforesaid, did verbally accuse and threaten one Peter Ibsen in a certain verbal conversation, which they, the said defendants, Walter F. Patterson, Frederick W. Deuser, and Edward C. Butler, had with the said Peter Ibsen concerning him, the said Peter Ibsen, to accuse the said Peter Ibsen of having committed the crime and offense of sodomy upon and with the said Edward C. Butler, with the felonious intent then and there and thereby to extort from the said Peter Ibsen certain sums of money and certain promissory notes."

It then proceeds to set out with sufficient particularity the threats, intimidation, and extortion of two notes, one for $200 and one for $650, signed by said Peter Ibsen, and payable to the order of Walter F. Patterson.

The claim is that the information should have set forth with precision the crime involved in the defendant's threat; that such crime is neither named in the statute nor is any crime described in the information in the language defining a statutory or common-law offense.

Section 4726, R. S. 1909, made sodomy a felony, mentioning it by name, and describing the offense. The section was repealed by a session act in 1911, and in lieu of it a new section enacted (Session Acts 1911, p. 198), which is in the exact language of the former section 4726, with addition of other particulars descriptive of the crime, but names the offense, in the title of the section, "The abominable and detestable crime against nature," instead of "sodomy." It has been held by this court that the amendment of 1911 did not restrict but extended the scope of section 4726, so that it includes crimes against nature which the common-law terms did not embrace. "Sodomy" is within the condemnation of the section as it now stands; so the information did name a statutory felony, and charged the defendant with having threatened to accuse the prosecuting witness of committing it. State v. Katz, 266 Mo. loc. cit. 501, 181 S. W. 425; State v. Pfeifer, 267 Mo. loc. cit. 27-28, 183 S. W. 337.

Was it necessary to describe the crime with the same particularity and precision as would be necessary in the prosecution of a person for having committed it? Defendant is charged with the crime of robbery. The other crime is only incidental. It is not charged that anyone committed or attempted to commit it. The defendant threatened to accuse the prosecuting witness of it. The threat was the instrument by which the property was extorted and the crime of robbery consummated. In order to make the crime of robbery complete, it was not necessary to prove that the threat should be couched in language which completely described the crime, to escape the association with which the victim was induced to part with his property. If it were, no one could be convicted. The threat in such cases always achieves its purpose without such definiteness. An information charging blackmail or robbery of this kind, in describing the threatened accusation, sufficiently apprises the defendant of what he has to meet when it names the crime which he may identify with his alleged threat. Glover v. People, 204 Ill. 170, 68 N. E. 464; Commonwealth v. Bacon, 135 Mass. 521; Rosen v. United States, 161 U. S. 29, 16 Sup. Ct. 434, 480, 40 L. Ed. 606, 10 Am. Cr. Rep. loc. cit. 255; Regina v. Norton, 8 Carrington & Payne, 671.

Some excuse for the appellant's contention is found in the case of State v. Sekrit, 130 Mo. 401, 32 S. W. 977, cited by appellant, where the defendant was charged with blackmail under what is now section 4534. The indictment set out that the defendant, by letter, threatened to accuse the prosecuting witness of a crime, naming a statutory crime, and purporting to describe the acts constituting it. This court held the indictment bad because the threat, as alleged, did not describe any crime known to the statutes. But an examination of the case will show that the indictment, in stating the threatened accusation, set out in detail certain acts which did not constitue any offense prohibited by the statute, and by those positive averments showed the statute upon which the indictment was framed was not violated. It is not intimated that to name the crime, without more, would not be sufficient. Other cases under the blackmail section, which is similar in purpose and effect to the section defining robbery in the third degree, so far as the opinions show what the indictments contain, indicate that a description of the crime to which the threat refers, by naming it, is sufficient. State v. Linthicum, 68 Mo. 66; State v. Stewart, 90 Mo. 507, 2 S. W. 790. Another reason why more definiteness is unnecessary is mentioned in the books, and that is the abominable crime against nature is such that the record need not be defiled with details of the different acts which go to constitute it. "Peccatum, illud horribile inter christianos non nominatum." Rosen v. United...