STATE OF MISSOURI, ) 

 ) 

 Appellant, ) 

 ) 

vs. ) No. SD36366 

 ) 

CODY GENE WORKMAN, ) Filed: July 24, 2020 

 ) 

 Respondent. ) 

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF CRAWFORD COUNTY 

Honorable Judge Megan K. Seay 

REVERSED AND REMANDED 

Cody Gene Workman ("Defendant") was charged with first-degree assault and 

armed criminal action. See §§ 565.050, 571.015.1 The trial court entered an order 

suppressing the voice identification of Defendant made by witnesses, finding law 

enforcement's actions were impermissibly suggestive. The State appeals pursuant to 

section 547.200. The trial court's order suppressing the identification is reversed. 

 

1

 All statutory references are to RSMo. Supp. (2014). 
2 

Standard of Review 

 A trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence prior to trial is 

interlocutory in nature. This Court's review of a trial court's order sustaining a motion 

to suppress "is limited to the determination of whether substantial evidence existed to 

support the suppression order." State v. Craig, 550 S.W.3d 481, 483 (Mo. App. W.D. 

2018) (internal citation and quotation omitted). The reviewing court is required to defer 

to the trial court's factual findings and credibility determinations, but to examine 

questions of law de novo. Id. We will reverse a trial court's ruling on a motion to 

suppress only if it is clearly erroneous. State v. Holman, 502 S.W.3d 621, 624 (Mo. 

banc 2016). 

Analysis 

Identifications made solely on the basis of a suspect's voice are admissible. State 

v. Harris, 483 S.W.3d 488, 494 (Mo. App. E.D. 2016). "Identification testimony is 

admissible unless the pretrial identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive and

the suggestive procedure made the identification unreliable." State v. Middleton, 

995 S.W.2d 443, 453 (Mo. banc 1999). 

Three witnesses, Mr. Delmain, Mrs. Delmain, and Ms. Enke, overheard a late 

night argument while camping at a rural campground, subsequently found their friend 

badly injured, and took him to a fire station for emergency medical transport. The 

witnesses were unable to identify who the man was that they heard yelling at the 

campsite. They were asked to come to the Dent County Sheriff's Department later to 

make a statement. Law enforcement proceeded to the campground and located 

Defendant in the woods. Defendant was taken for booking at the Dent County Jail, 

which is located in the same building as the sheriff's department, in the late night or 
3 

early morning hours of that same night. The three witnesses arrived a short time after 

Defendant was brought to the sheriff's department, unaware that a suspect had been 

taken into custody. 

 Police procedures are impermissibly "suggestive if the witness's identification of 

the defendant results from the procedure or actions of the police [] rather than from the 

witness's recollections of his or her firsthand observations." State v. Gordon, 551 

S.W.3d 678, 682 (Mo. App. W.D. 2018) (internal quotation and citation omitted). We 

find the police procedures here were not suggestive because there were no actions or 

procedures employed by law enforcement. The witnesses were not given any specified 

time to come to the sheriff's department and their arrival while Defendant was being 

booked into the jail was completely coincidental. Upon entering the sheriff's 

department waiting room, Mr. Delmain and Ms. Enke spontaneously identified the 

voice they heard yelling as the same voice they heard earlier at the campground. Mrs. 

Delmain said she identified the voice as she was walking down the hall to the interview 

room and while she was completing her written statement. Merely being asked if the 

voice recognized at the sheriff’s department is the same as they heard earlier at the 

campground is not an improper or suggestive question. Each of the witnesses 

unequivocally identified the voice in the jail as the same they had heard at the 

campground. 

The bottom line is, did law enforcement do anything to suggest or cause these 

identifications? While the scene at the sheriff's department described by the various 

witnesses was certainly confusing, we have scoured the record and do not find that any 

law enforcement officer suggested, by word or deed, that the voice the witnesses heard 
4 

at the sheriff's department belonged to the person that they had heard at the 

campground. 

Because no substantial evidence supports the trial court's conclusion that the 

identifications occurred as a result of suggestive police procedure, the trial court clearly 

erred in suppressing those identifications. The State's sole point on appeal is granted, 

and the trial court's suppression order is reversed.

2 

MARY W. SHEFFIELD, J. – OPINION AUTHOR 

JEFFREY W. BATES, C.J. – CONCURS 

DON E. BURRELL, J. – CONCURS 

 

2 We note that a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress is interlocutory and can be revisited by the 

parties and the court before or during trial. State v. Taylor, 965 S.W.2d 257, 260 (Mo. App. E.D. 1998).