Case ID: sw3d_520/html/0522-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Dontae L. CHARLES, Appellant, v. STATE of Missouri, Respondent.
    No. ED 104287
    Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, DIVISION FOUR.
    Filed: June 13, 2017
    FOR APPELLANT: Gwenda Renee’ Robinson, 1010 Market Street, Suite 1100, St. Louis, Missouri 63101.
    FOR RESPONDENT: Joshua Hawley, Shuan J. Mackelprang, 221 West High Street, P.O. Box 899, Jefferson City, Missouri 65102.
    Before James M. Dowd, P.J., Kurt S. Odenwald, J., and Gary M. Gaertner, Jr., J.
   ORDER

PER CURIAM

Dontae L. Charles fíled a Rule 29.15 motion claiming that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request the submission of a lesser-included offense instruction on one of the first-degree assault charges he was convicted of. Specifically, Charles asserts that trial counsel should have requested a lesser-included offense instruction for the class B felony of first-degree assault because the evidence did not support that the victim suffered serious physical injury—the element that differentiates class A first-degree assault from class B first-degree assault. See § 565.050. The motion court granted Charles an evidentiary hearing but denied Charles’s motion, finding that trial counsel’s strategy for not requesting the instruction was reasonable. Because we do not find the motion court’s findings and conclusions to be clearly erroneous, we affirm.

An extended opinion would have no precedential value. The parties have been furnished with a memorandum for their information only, setting forth the reasons for this order pursuant to Rule 84.16(b).