Court Opinion

ID: 9668367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:10:36.946733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:43.926717
License: Public Domain

KAROHL, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The evidence in the present case was insufficient to support a finding that Defendant had a specific intent to disturb when he called M.B. There is no issue regarding the failure to prove intent to frighten. The State only contends it offered evidence to support finding intent to disturb.
The majority opinion depends upon a conclusion, “The trier of fact could logically infer that unless Defendant intended to disturb M.B., he would have stopped calling M.B. and requesting sex after she repeatedly hung up on him.” All of the evidence was offered by State’s witnesses, M.B. and her father. She testified that she was a friend of Defendant and remained his friend. He telephoned her thirteen times during a three year period and “maybe about six” times in May of 1997. The last telephone call was made on May 28, 1997, after M.B.’s father told Defendant not to call. The availability of an inference depends upon the undisputed facts from State’s witnesses that the majority opinion fails to consider. An available inference regarding a telephone call from a stranger is not equally available regarding a telephone call from a friend where the prohibited conduct is a telephone call made with the intent to disturb.
M.B. never testified that she was disturbed. After receiving telephone calls for a period of three years, she told her father about the calls, “because it started to annoy me.” There is a substantive difference between conduct that is intended to annoy and conduct which is intended to disturb. The criminal statute does not define a crime based upon conduct that may annoy. If it did, it may be authority to prosecute solicitors and salesmen. The statute does not criminalize such conduct.
The majority opinion says M.B. testified she made a prior statement saying she was frightened by Defendant. M.B. testified to the contrary on various occasions during the trial. M.B. concluded Defendant never meant to bother her in terms of frightening, scaring, or being mean to her and she had no reason to conclude that was his intention at all. Her testimony provided no evidence to support a finding Defendant made telephone calls with the intent to frighten or disturb. Father testified and “guessed” his daughter spoke to him about Defendant’s calls on May 20 or 25. Thereafter, he waited until Defendant called his home and told Defendant he was “a jealous husband” and to “stop coming by and quit calling.” Defendant made the last telephone call on May 28.
The majority alludes to State’s Exhibit 1, which was received in evidence without objection. M.B. testified that she wrote State’s Exhibit 1 and signed it. It was a statement she made to the sheriffs department. The majority suggests that the failure of Defendant to present Exhibit 1 to this court for review bars any favorable consideration of his claim the State failed to make a submissi-ble case. The State has not argued that there is any direct or circumstantial evidence in the exhibit that would support any element of the charged offense. On the contrary, it argues that circumstantial evidence contained on the record indicated that Defendant did disturb M.B. It relies on: (1) six calls between May 1 and June 51; (2) Defendant’s conduct in talking to and asking her to have sex with him; (3) her statement that she would usually hang-up; (4) her eventual statement to her father about the calls for the stated reason that it started to annoy her; and (5) father’s admonition not to call again, followed by one additional call. That is the only evidence relied upon by the State. It has not relied upon an unsworn, handwritten statement of M.B. given to the sheriff’s department. On these facts, particularly where the author of the exhibit testified for the State, the intendment and content of the exhibit may not be taken as favorable to the judgment and unfavorable to Defendant.
The evidence, taken in a light most favorable to the finding Defendant called with the intent to disturb, must be considered in the context of the State’s evidence, particularly: *173(1) thirteen phone calls in three years by a friend to a friend; (2) a conclusion by M.B. that the calls were not made with the intent to frighten or disturb; (3) M.B.’s testimony she was not disturbed; (4) M.B.’s testimony that she told her father the calls were beginning to annoy her, but no statement regarding frighten or disturb. The State’s complete reliance upon submissibility of the charge on circumstantial evidence opposes an appellate court presumption that a written document would offer direct evidence of any element of the charged crime.
If the legislature intended to create a misdemeanor crime for making phone calls with intent to annoy, then it failed in its purpose. It is more reasonable to assume that it accomplished its purpose by criminalizing phone calls made with the intent to frighten or to disturb, without including annoying phone calls. It is unreasonable to assume that a telephone solicitor making numerous annoying phone calls is violating Section 565.090.1(4) RSMo 1994.

. There were no calls after May 28.