Court Opinion

ID: 9674775
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:35:05.93649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:29.636823
License: Public Domain

BILLINGS, Presiding Judge
(concurring).
I concur fully in the principal opinion. The thought provoking and exhaustive analysis of the serious and broad scope of the questions posed by the enactment of § 562.076 RSMo 1978, by the General Assembly of Missouri makes one wonder if the legislature fully considered the impact of such a statute on criminal prosecutions in this State. As Judge Maus notes, the courts of this country are in disagreement as to which crimes involve a specific intent and the effect to be given to voluntary intoxication or voluntary drugged condition. By injecting the issue of intoxicated or drugged condition into the case, the defendant in a criminal case casts the burden upon the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his voluntary condition negated his “specific” intent. This in turn will call into question the sufficiency of the evidence of the requisite intent of the defendant and whether “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), reh. den. 444 U.S. 890, 100 S.Ct. 195, 62 L.Ed.2d 126. Notwithstanding the problems of finality and federal — state comity, a single federal judge may ultimately rule this issue in federal habeas corpus. Jackson v. Virginia, supra.
Somewhere along the path of enlightenment in the field of criminal law the rights *808of society have been cast by the wayside and § 562.076 is a further step in that direction.