Court Opinion

ID: 9660306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:09:54.440793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:17.601159
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in the dissent of Chief Justice Bardgett, but add these remarks on what I consider an unacceptable practice inherent in all dangerous offender (and persistent offender) cases — misinforming the jury. In this case, the jury was instructed on kidnapping, rape, and robbery in the first degree under MAI-CR2d 19.20.2, MAI-CR2d 20.02.-1, and MAI-CR2d 23.02 respectively. In each case the jury was told that if it found the defendant guilty, it would “assess and declare the punishment” and the prosecutor argued to the jury that the range of punishment was up to the jury “as to what you feel a crime like this is worth”. This was not the case. The jury was misinformed. Under the dangerous offender provision, § 558.016 RSMo 1978, the court extended the term by sentencing the defendant to thirty years for rape and twenty-five years for kidnapping when the jury had assessed the punishment at fifteen years for each crime, the maximum which could be given under the instructions.
The problem of misinstructing the jury is even more pronounced when the jury is instructed under MAI-CR2d 2.60 for class C and D felonies. In that instruction the jury is told that if they find the defendant guilty, then the court may sentence the defendant to a term of imprisonment to be fixed by the court, “but not to exceed the term assessed and declared by the jury in its verdict.” If a defendant is found guilty of a class C or D felony, he may, however, be sentenced under § 558.016 as a dangerous offender or as a persistent offender. In a letter to this court regarding MAI-CR2d 2.60, a trial judge candidly remarked that advising “the jury that the Court cannot increase the punishment which they mete out in those instructions is an outright lie.” We are misleading the jury when we give them erroneous information. The jury is led to deliberate under a false assumption.
I would further point out that the dangerous offender portion of § 558.016 appears to be unique. There is no precedent for a statute so worded, either in this state or in others. What troubles me in this case is that by not having a hearing on dangerousness, the trial court extended the sentence by using exactly the same evidence heard by the jury — that defendant had struck the victim with the cigarette lighter shaped like a gun and had threatened to kill her with an empty soda bottle. Yet the jury had already given defendant the maximum punishment based on what they had *958heard and on the arguments to the jury made by the prosecutor, wherein he referred to the threats and violence. In addition, these were identifiable elements of the instructions on rape and kidnapping. Each instruction required a finding of “forcible compulsion”, which was defined as either physical force overcoming reasonable resistance or a threat producing reasonable fear of death or serious physical injury.
Defendant did not bring himself within the dangerous offender provisions merely by virtue of his previous conviction. To come within the act it was required that he also be a dangerous offender and the only evidence on this is what the jury heard in convicting him and assessing maximum punishment.
As defendant points out in his brief, the dangerousness part of the statute does not go solely to the status of the defendant’s previous record (as was the case in our former Second Offender Act, § 556.280, RSMo, 1959), but instead goes also to the activities of the defendant in the present case for which the jury convicted him and assessed his penalty. The trial court held a hearing and assessed additional punishment singly, so far as dangerousness is concerned, on the merits of a trial which had already ended in conviction and assessment of penalty by the jury. This would appear to be double punishment for the same offense.
The double jeopardy claim is not included in defendant’s Points Relied On, but it is discussed in defendant’s brief, with a response thereto being made in the state’s brief, and it was alluded to in oral argument. It seems to me that the issue deserves our consideration.