Title: Wetherelt v. State

State: wyoming

Issuer: Wyoming Supreme Court

Document:

Wetherelt v. State1993 WY 149864 P.2d 449Case Number: 93-35Decided: 12/01/1993Supreme Court of Wyoming
Kerry 
WETHERELT, 

Appellant 
(Defendant),

v.

The 
STATE of Wyoming, 

Appellee 
(Plaintiff).

Appeal 
from the District Court, Park County, Hunter Patrick, 
J.

Leonard 
D. Munker, State Public Defender and Deborah Cornia, Appellate Counsel for the 
Public Defender Program, and Linda Burt, for 
appellant.

Joseph 
B. Meyer, Atty. Gen., Sylvia Lee Hackl, Deputy Atty. Gen., Barbara L. Boyer, and 
D. Michael Pauling, Sr. Asst. Attys. Gen., for 
appellee.

Before 
MACY, C.J., and THOMAS, CARDINE, GOLDEN and TAYLOR, 
JJ.

MACY, 
Chief Justice.

[¶1]      Appellant Kerry 
Wetherelt appeals from her convictions for one count of felony larceny and for 
two counts of forgery.

[¶2]      We 
affirm.

[¶3]      Appellant states 
the issues on appeal as follows:

ISSUE 
I

     Whether sufficient 
evidence was presented to sustain Appellant's conviction of larceny under 
Wyoming Statute § 6-3-402 [(a) and (c)(i)]

ISSUE 
II

     Whether sufficient 
evidence was presented to sustain Appellant's conviction of forgery under 
Wyoming Statute § 6-3-602 [(a)(ii) and (iii)]

[¶4]      When reviewing 
the sufficiency of the evidence for a criminal conviction:

"`[T]his 
court must determine whether, after viewing the evidence and appropriate 
inferences in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of 
fact could have found the essential elements of the crime to have been proven 
beyond a reasonable doubt.'"

Jennings 
v. State, 806 P.2d 1299, 1302 (Wyo. 1991) (quoting Munson v. State, 770 P.2d 1093, 1095 (Wyo. 1989)).

Doud 
v. State, 845 P.2d 402, 403 (Wyo. 1993). After we have resolved all evidentiary 
conflicts in favor of the prosecution, the record reveals:

[¶5]      On August 2, 
1991, Appellant and her friend drove a pickup pulling a U-Haul trailer to Thomas 
Kasper's house trailer in Powell. Finding the house trailer door locked, 
Appellant opened it with a key she found hidden underneath the top of a lamp 
fixture which was sitting on the porch. She entered without Kasper's permission 
and removed several items of his property. Appellant also took two check blanks 
from Kasper's business checkbook. She filled out the check blanks, making them 
both payable to herself, in the amount of $350 each. She signed Kasper's name as 
the maker and cashed the checks at a Powell bank.

[¶6]      On the return 
trip to Casper, Appellant stopped in Dayton. She placed a telephone call to the 
Casper Star-Tribune and ordered a garage sale advertisement. The advertisement 
listed several items which would be available for sale on August 3rd and 4th, 
including a rifle, a pair of roller blades, and a television. The advertisement 
identified Appellant's Casper address as being the location of the 
sale.

[¶7]      Kasper returned 
to his residence later in the day on August 2nd. He found the inside of his home 
in disarray. He notified the Park County Sheriff's Department that several items 
of his property were missing, and he provided the sheriff with a partial list of 
the stolen items. The list identified thirty-seven separate missing items, 
including approximately seventy compact disks and three compact disk cartridges, 
a 30.06 Remington ADL rifle, a coffee maker, a pair of roller blades, a 
television, and a video cassette recorder. Kasper later reported that a men's 
twelve-speed bicycle was also missing. On August 15th, Kasper discovered that 
two check blanks, numbered 630 and 638, were missing from the middle of a 
checkbook he used for his business account.

[¶8]      On August 25, 
1991, Kasper met with Appellant at her home in Casper. At that time, she 
returned several items to Kasper, including twenty-two compact disks and the 
men's twelve-speed bicycle. Appellant failed to return the coffee maker, the 
rifle, the roller blades, the television, and the video cassette 
recorder.

[¶9]      The State charged 
Appellant with one count of felony larceny in violation of WYO. STAT. § 
6-3-402(a) and (c)(i) (1988) and with two counts of forgery in violation of WYO. 
STAT. § 6-3-602(a)(ii) and (iii) (1988). Appellant waived her right to have a 
jury trial. On May 29, 1992, the trial court found her guilty on all 
counts.

[¶10]   The trial court based its felony 
larceny finding upon the following property: seventy compact disks; three disk 
cartridges; a men's twelve-speed bicycle; a pair of roller blades; a 30.06 
rifle; a video cassette recorder; a Mr. Coffee coffee maker; and a television. 
The court assigned a total value of $2,500 to these items.

[¶11]   Regarding the guilty verdicts on 
the two forgery charges, the trial court explained:

     The Court finds that 
incredible to imagine or believe or accept [Appellant's] testimony that the . . 
. complaining witness handed her two checks, number 630 and 638, non-consecutive 
checks on July 30th at a time when the checks he was writing were in the early 
six hundreds and authorized her to fill them out for three hundred fifty dollars 
each for child care or anything else. . . .

[¶12]   The trial court deferred sentencing 
on the three crimes pursuant to WYO. STAT. § 7-13-301 (Supp. 1993). As 
conditions to the deferred sentencing, the court placed Appellant on five years' 
supervised probation with twenty hours of community service to be performed 
during each month of the probationary period. It also ordered her to pay $2,735 
in restitution and $750 to the crime victims' compensation 
account.

Felony 
Larceny

[¶13]   Appellant primarily focuses her 
contention that the evidence was insufficient to sustain her conviction for 
felony larceny upon the element of "intent." Wyoming's larceny statute, § 
6-3-402(a), provides: "A person who steals, takes and carries, leads or drives 
away property of another with intent to deprive the owner or lawful possessor is 
guilty of larceny." Larceny is a felony if the value of the property taken is 
$500 or more. Section 6-3-402(c)(i).

[¶14]   In order to convict Appellant of 
felony larceny, the State had to prove the following elements beyond a 
reasonable doubt: (1) The crime occurred within the county of Park on or about 
August 2, 1991; (2) Appellant took and carried away, (3) with intent to deprive 
Kasper thereof, (4) property owned or lawfully possessed by Kasper with a value 
of $500 or more.

[¶15]   Appellant claims that her actions 
in Powell on August 2nd did not evince an "intent to steal" the property from 
Kasper's house trailer. She made no attempt to conceal her actions in removing 
the property, even though Kasper's landlord was watching her. She notified the 
Park County Sheriff's Department that she had removed some of her personal items 
from Kasper's dwelling because of a domestic dispute. Appellant contends that 
these actions were not those of a person who had an intent to 
steal.

[¶16]   Appellant misinterprets the 
sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard. In addressing her 
sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, we examine whether the evidence was 
sufficient, viewing it in the light most favorable to the prosecution, to 
support the trial court's inference that Appellant possessed the intent required 
by the intent element of the larceny statute. Murray v. State, 855 P.2d 350, 356 
(Wyo. 1993), petition for cert. filed, (U.S. Oct. 21, 1993) (No. 
93-751).

[¶17]   Wyoming's larceny statute contains 
a "specific intent" element. Conviction with respect to a crime involving an 
element of "specific intent" requires the State to prove that the defendant 
intended to commit some further act, or achieve some additional purpose, beyond 
the prohibited conduct itself. Jennings v. State, 806 P.2d 1299, 1303 (Wyo. 
1991).

[¶18]   The State presented sufficient 
evidence at trial to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Appellant intended 
to deprive Kasper of all the property she removed from his residence. Appellant 
admitted that she went to Kasper's residence on August 2nd. Kasper's landlord 
and Appellant's friend testified that Appellant removed several items from 
Kasper's residence. Kasper testified that Appellant did not keep any of her 
property or her children's property at his Powell residence. Appellant conceded 
that she placed the garage sale advertisement in the newspaper. Her 
advertisement offered several items of Kasper's property for sale less than one 
day after she took them from his residence. When Kasper attempted to retrieve 
his property, Appellant told him that she had taken the items because "he owed 
her." Though she returned some of Kasper's property, she refused to return 
several of the items. The trial court could reasonably infer from such evidence 
that Appellant intended to deprive Kasper of the property which she took from 
his residence on August 2nd.

Forgery

[¶19]   Wyoming's forgery statute, § 
6-3-602, provides in pertinent part:

     (a) A person is guilty 
of forgery if, with intent to defraud, he:

. 
. . .

     (ii) Makes, completes, 
executes, authenticates, issues or transfers any writing so that it purports to 
be the act of another who did not authorize that act, or to have been executed 
at a time or place or in a numbered sequence other than was in fact the case, or 
to be a copy of an original when no such original existed; 
or

     (iii) Utters any 
writing which he knows to be forged in a manner specified in paragraphs (i) or 
(ii) of this subsection.

[¶20]   Appellant bases her 
sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge to her two forgery convictions upon her 
testimony that Kasper authorized her to write and cash the two checks. She 
argues that her version of events regarding the two checks provided a more 
plausible explanation of her actions than the State's evidence furnished. The 
sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard "requires us to `leave out of consideration 
entirely the evidence of the defendant in conflict' with the evidence of the 
prosecution." Broom v. State, 695 P.2d 640, 642 (Wyo. 1985) (quoting Harvey v. 
State, 596 P.2d 1386, 1387 (Wyo. 1979)). Even though other inferences may be 
drawn from the evidence presented, the trier of fact has the responsibility to 
resolve conflicts in the evidence. Mendicoa v. State, 780 P.2d 1346, 1351 (Wyo. 
1989).

[¶21]   Appellant admitted that she filled 
out the two check blanks in question and that she signed Kasper's name as the 
maker of the checks. Kasper testified that he had never authorized Appellant to 
sign his name on checks drawn from his business account. Appellant cashed the 
two checks, numbered 630 and 638, at a time when Kasper was using check blanks 
numbered in the early 600's. The district court could reasonably infer from 
these facts that Appellant wrote the two checks without being authorized to do 
so by Kasper.

[¶22]   The trial court reasonably inferred 
from the evidence presented that Appellant was guilty of committing one count of 
felony larceny and of committing two counts of forgery. We conclude that the 
trial court based its decisions upon sufficient evidence.

[¶23]   Affirmed.