Court Opinion

ID: 9647809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:51:10.83379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:53.672703
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION
SEILER, Judge.
I respectfully dissent, for the reason I believe the rebuttal testimony of the detective quoted in the majority opinion was so prejudicial under the circumstances that its effect was not removed by the action of the trial court and can be cured only by a new trial. The fact that the testimony was not elicited purposefully or deviously by the state does not prevent its being prejudicial if in fact it was.
When Detective Bonzon, who, as a St. Louis detective, would be regarded by the jury as knowledgeable on such matters, volunteered the statement that Lindner said he “knew Abbie previously from the penitentiary”, it clearly got before the jury the information defendant had been previously convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary, a damaging fact the state had no right to show, State v. Levitt, 278 Mo. 372, 213 S.W. 108, 109, as defendant had not taken the stand and defendant’s having been in the penitentiary earlier was in no way admissible to prove the present charge against him. Up to this moment, there was nothing before the jury to indicate that defendant had any previous record or had been in the penitentiary and this revelation unquestionably was harmful to defendant. As was said in State v. Mobley (Mo.Sup.) 369 S.W.2d 576, 581: “ * * * All lawyers and judges know that a jury’s knowledge of prior convictions is, in itself, a most damning thing in the trial of a criminal case.”
As the majority opinion states, the chief issue in the case was the identification of defendant. The identification by the proprietor, Hendin, was not entirely satisfactory: he had been unable to identify defendant when he first viewed him in the police station, even though the defendant was within a few feet of him. The other witness, Talley, an employee at the police garage, was quite positive in his identification. As against this the confessed principal robber, Lindner, testified defendant was not his accomplice. He said he had known defendant 15 or 16 years, but said nothing about when or where, except that they were “just friends”. Then Bonzon volunteered the statement that Lindner told them “he knew Abbie previously from the penitentiary”. This does not in any way rebut Lindner’s testimony, which was that he did know defendant, had known him for 15 or 16 years.
“ ‘ * * * [T]he state cannot, under the guise of impeachment, show facts which tend directly to prejudice the defendant, but which only remotely, if at all, discredit the witness * * *’ ”, State v. Conway, 241 Mo. 271, 145 S.W. 441, 444. The volunteered statement and its implications pretty clearly make it easier for the jury to reason that if Lindner and defendant were friends together at the penitentiary, it was much more likely that defendant was the accomplice, than would have been the case had they not had this information. “Prejudice, as it affects the defendant’s legal rights, is not a matter of degree. If the defendant was prejudiced to any extent by the improper evidence, it was undue and we cannot say that the defendant had a fair and impartial trial according to the law and the evidence.” State v. Bur-chett (Mo.Sup.) 302 S.W.2d 9, 15.
It is true the court asked the jury whether anyone felt this would prevent their giving a fair trial and arriving at a fair verdict, to which there was no response. However, such a question is not one which can or should be resolved by the individual jurors themselves deter*581mining the effect upon them of improper evidence, State v. Spidle (Mo.Sup.) 413 S.W.2d 509, 513, or by the court acting on the basis of the jurors’ silence following his inquiry; rather, it is a question of how such improper evidence would react upon average jurors and how it bears upon defendant’s right to a fair trial and here, it seems to me, defendant’s rights were prejudiced and he is entitled to a new trial where such prejudice will not reoccur.