State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 12 November 1974
• Docket Number: No. 1,No. 58264,58264,1
• Citation: 515 S.W.2d 463
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Steven Lee WILLIAMS, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 463

515 S.W.2d 463

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Steven Lee WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. 58264.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

Nov. 12, 1974.

John C. Danforth, Atty. Gen., G. Michael O'Neal, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

Moore, Pettit & Meyer, Walter S. Pettit, Jr., and Joseph D. Woodcock, Aurora, for appellant.

WELBORN, Commissioner.

Appeal from judgment and sentence to life imprisonment entered on jury verdict finding Steven Lee Williams guilty of murder in the first degree.

The questions presented on this appeal require only a brief summary of the facts. The following statement is taken essentially from appellant's brief:

On January 30, 1971, Steven Lee Williams was an 18-year-old Army private on weekend leave from Fort Leonard Wood. He was staying with his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Johnson, in rural Lawrence County, Missouri, in the vicinity of Pierce City. He was the product of a broken home and had been shuffled around a great deal as a child. He had lived with his grandparents prior to entering the service.

Appellant had been drinking on the day in question, a Saturday, and had an accident in an auto belonging to his uncle, Jim Johnson. He had returned to his grandparents' home where an argument arosc between appellant and his grandfather about appellant's drinking. Appellant was struck by his grandfather and knocked to the floor. He went upstairs and got a gun he had been cleaning prior to the argument. He returned downstairs and entered the living room where his grandparents were watching television. He shot his grandfather and then his grandmother, killing both of them. He took the keys to his grandfather's pickup and left, driving to Sarcoxie to a basketball game because he wanted to see his girl and later to Joplin where he was arrested.

Appellant's statement, introduced in evidence by the state on his trial for first degree murder in the death of his grandfather, provided the details of the killing, there being no other eyewitnesses.

His plea was not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect excusing responsibility. Both the defendant and the state presented psychiatric evidence and the issue was submitted to the jury.

The transcript filed on this appeal also contains a transcript of proceedings in which appellant entered a plea of guilty to first degree murder in the death of his grandmother, with a sentence of life imprisonment thereon.

On this appeal, the appellant's first point is that the verdict-directing instruction on the first degree murder charge was erroneous because it made no reference to his defense of mental disease or defect excluding responsibility. The instruction, in conventional form, made no reference to the defense. The instruction on second degree murder did refer to the defense. The instruction on manslaughter did not.

Instruction No. 9 was as follows:

'If you find that at the time of the offense charged against the defendant he had a mental disease or defect sufficient to deprive him of ability to act wilfully, feloniously, premeditatedly or with malice aforethought then you may not find him guilty either of first, or second degree murder, or manslaughter.'

Instruction No. 10 submitted the defense of mental disease or defect. Instruction No. 11 told the jury the effect of a verdict of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

Appellant relies upon the rule applied in cases such as State v. Winn, 324 S.W.2d 637 (Mo.1959). In that case the court reversed a conviction for assault and with intent to kill without malice because the verdict-directing instruction relating to that offense ignored the defendant's self-defense claim. That case applied the rule stated in State v. Dougherty, 358 Mo. 734, 216 S.W.2d 467, 473 (1949), as follows: 'An instruction which purports to cover the whole case and entirely ignores a defense supported by evidence is erroneous and constitutes reversible error.'

The court in Winn noted that the deficiency may not exist when the instruction, although not expressly referring to the defense, requires the finding of facts which negative the defense. See State v. Pruett, 425 S.W.2d 116, 118--119(1, 2)(3) (Mo. 1968); State v. Cook, 428 S.W.2d 728, 732(2) (Mo.1968).

In State v. Murphy, 338 Mo. 291, 90 S.W.2d 103, 112(9) (1936), the court held that a first degree murder instruction which required a finding that the defendant 'feloniously, willfully, deliberately, premeditatedly, and of his malice aforethought' killed the deceased was not required to make specific reference to a defense of insanity. The court reasoned that if the jury found the mental elements necessary for murder in the first degree it could not find that the defendant was insane and therefore the jury could not have been misled by the omission of a provision mentioning the defense of insanity.

Anticipating that the state, as it has done, would rely on Murphy, appellant argues that Murphy should be overruled. He points out that Murphy relied in part upon State v. Douglas, 312 Mo. 373, 278 S.W. 1016, 1025--1026(23, 24) (1925), in which the court held that a verdict-directing instruction in a forgery case need not refer to the insanity defense, the court reasoning that the requirement that the forgery have been with intent to defraud would require a finding that the defendant was sane when he did it. Appellant states that the court in Winn criticized the underlying reasoning of Douglas. The court in Winn did reject the dictum of Douglas in which that case 'gratuitously' criticized the reasoning of self-defense cases. 324 S.W.2d 641. It did not criticize the reasoning of the court on the issue actually in Douglas, the necessity of reference to insanity in the forgery instruction.

The actual holding in Douglas was followed in State v. Sapp, 356 Mo. 705, 203 S.W.2d 425, 431--432(17--18) (1947), a robbery case in which the insanity defense was not referred to in the verdict-directing instruction. See also State v. Falbo, 333 S.W.2d 279, 288--289(20, 21) (Mo.1960).

In the interest of avoiding the nice distinctions which the above cited cases have laid down, the pattern criminal instructions approved by this court, effective January 1, 1974, require the verdict-directing instruction to cross reference 'each special negative defense upon which a separate numbered instruction has been given.' See Notes on Use, MAI--CR No. 2.04. However, at the time of the trial of this case, the verdict-directing instruction on murder in the first degree was correct, under State v. Murphy, supra, and the trial court should not be charged with error for having given it.

Another aspect of the question here is the claim that the reference to insanity in the second degree instruction might have misled the jury into believing that the defense applied only to that offense. The appellant cites State v. Howard, 354 Mo. 38, 188 S.W.2d 17 (1945), in which an instruction on murder in the second degree referred to self-defense but failed to notice the additional defense of insanity. The court held that the instruction had the effect of depriving the defendant of his insanity defense. That is not the case here.

To obtain the connection with the second degree instruction, it must be presumed that the jury read and considered that instruction. However, the presumption does not stop there, but extends to all instructions, including No. 9, which clearly advised the jury that the defense applied to murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree and manslaughter. Lack of responsibility was the only defense before the jury. The defendant took the stand and admitted the shooting. To say that the jury would not have understood that the defense applied to...