Court Opinion

ID: 9683314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:26:31.665393+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:47.067685
License: Public Domain

NORWIN D. HOUSER, Senior Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Finding no merit in any of appellant’s points seeking to overthrow his conviction, I concur in the analysis of those points made in the majority opinion. I respectfully dissent, however, from the final disposition of the case affirming the death penalty, for the reason that I find no evidence to support the conclusion that appellant killed *512Robert Jordan for the purpose of receiving money.
The law allows the state to take the life of a person as the penalty for capital murder only in cases where one or more of the aggravating circumstances specified in RSMo § 565.012 exist. One of these circumstances is the situation in which the offender commits the offense of capital murder “for the purpose of receiving money or any other thing of monetary value.” Section 565.012(4). This is the aggravating circumstance relied upon by the state in its attempt to justify the death sentence, but neither from the facts in evidence nor from the inferences which reasonably may be drawn therefrom may it confidently be said that the aggravating circumstance relied upon existed in this case. The facts do not fit the statute, and vice versa.
Under the evidence appellant commenced and completed the robbery, and received into his possession the fruits of the crime (the wallet containing money), before the fatal shot was fired. There is no question that at the time the fatal shot was fired appellant had already possessed himself of the money. It is clear that appellant fired the fatal shot not for the purpose of obtaining or “receiving” money, which he had just taken and obtained, but for other reasons. The most obvious inference is that appellant fired the fatal shot for the purpose of keeping, securing and retaining possession of money previously taken from his victim at gun point. Other reasonable inferences may be drawn from the facts on the question of appellant’s purpose or motive in committing capital murder: (1) that when appellant opened the wallet, thereby revealing the police badge, appellant fired the fatal shot to eliminate an officer of the law as a potential witness against him should he be apprehended; (2) that appellant, realizing that a police officer in plain clothes might be carrying a service revolver, deliberately killed the officer to insure appellant’s safe retreat and facilitate his escape from the scene of the robbery. (Before the fatal shot finally incapacitated him the officer produced his revolver and fired at appellant, inflicting three wounds upon him).
On this evidence, however, it is neither a reasonable nor a permissible inference, under any accepted definition of the term “receiving,” that appellant fired the fatal shot for the purpose of receiving money.
In approving and endorsing that inference, and in interpreting § 565.012(4), the majority opinion fails to apply the well-established rule of construction mandating that in the application of § 565.012 to a particular set of facts the law requires the Court to construe the statute literally and strictly and not broadly and expansively. In its regard for the sanctity of human life, which is part and parcel of the American legacy, the courts, as guardian of that legacy, should not pull and stretch a penal statute beyond its plain and evident intent and purpose, or substitute an aggravating circumstance not prescribed by law, in order to attain what may be deemed substantial justice in a particularly revolting case.
Subsection four of § 565.012 was meant to apply to situations of which the following are typical examples: where a person murders or causes to be murdered an insured in a life insurance policy and the person causing the death is a named beneficiary in the policy or otherwise stands to gain financially from the death; where the maker of a will is murdered by or through the agency of a legatee, devisee or other person who would gain financially from the death.
Appellant’s crime was a repulsive killing. The shot was fired in the presence of the victim’s child, while the victim was down on his knees, kneeling before the gunman — an atrocious, shocking slaughter, performed in a pitiless, merciless manner. One recoils with horror on reading the record of this tragedy, but no matter how evil the act, an accused’s life may not lawfully be forfeited for the deed in the absence of a statutorily prescribed aggravating circumstance, and there was none present in this case.
This was a killing in the perpetration of a robbery. By § 565.032.2(11), effective July 1, 1984, the General Assembly has provided that it is an aggravating circumstance authorizing the extreme penalty if murder in *513the first degree was committed while the defendant was engaged in the perpetration of robbery, but this new law was not in force and effect at the time of this occurrence, and is not to be applied retroactively.
I concur in the affirmance of the conviction of capital murder. I dissent from the order of execution, and would remand the cause for resentencing under RSMo § 565.-014.5(2).