Court Opinion

ID: 9660545
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:15:30.37048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:20.391556
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I believe that it was plain error to admit into evidence appellant’s handwriting expert’s report. However, if this conviction is to be affirmed, I concur in the dissenting opinion of the Chief Justice insofar as it would vacate the order of the trial court which directs that the sentences be served consecutively.
With respect to the plain error aspect of the case, much of what follows is from Judge Dowd’s dissent in the court of appeals where he, too, would uphold the claim of plain error. Appellant’s handwriting expert’s report stated that appellant had signed the checks involved. The expert was not called to testify for appellant nor the state; consequently, appellant was denied his right as guaranteed by the sixth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution to confront and cross-examine witnesses against him. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 403, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1067, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965); State v. Hall, 508 S.W.2d 200, 208 (Mo.App.1974).
Appellant’s expert’s report was clearly hearsay and, therefore, incompetent evidence of its contents. State v. Hegwood, 558 S.W.2d 378, 383 (Mo.App.1977). The state did not lay a proper foundation for the introduction of the report into evidence. The report was, therefore, improperly admitted into evidence. The state cannot argue that appellant’s expert’s report was cumulative and therefore harmless because the report and the state’s expert’s statement that appellant’s expert was in agreement with him were admitted into evidence prior to the admission of the state’s expert’s opinion concerning appellant’s signature. The jury undoubtedly assumed that the state’s expert, as its witness, would testify that the examplars of appellant’s handwriting matched the signature on the check but prior to that testimony being elicited the jury was already aware of the fact that the expert retained by appellant agreed with the state expert. The damage had been done before the state’s expert expressed his opinion that the signatures matched. The appellant’s expert’s report was the first evidence received by the jury that appellant’s handwriting exemplars matched his signature on the checks. It could not have been cumulative of any evidence previously introduced.
The state presented the following evidence: First, testimony of Winifred Corden, assistant treasurer of Pioneer Bank and Trust, who identified the state’s exhibits *574Nos. 4 — 9 as checks issued to an account which had been closed in 1976 and never reactivated. She could not say whether the checks in question were signed by appellant. Second, Thomas Buel, a forensic analyst for the highway patrol, testified that he had given appellant forms to sign to obtain a handwriting exemplar. He said that he did not, however, make any comparison of the exemplar with the checks. Third, August Nilges, also a forensic analysis for the highway patrol, testified. He said he did not receive any formal training in handwriting analysis but had received over the years on-the-job training at the highway patrol. Nilges was asked whether he knew of William H. Storer. He replied that Storer was a “very well-known, reputable handwriting expert.” Then Nilges was given a copy of Storer’s written opinion as to whether appellant wrote the cheeks in question and asked to look at it. He was asked if Storer’s opinion was the same as his own, to which he replied affirmatively. Only after bolstering Nilges opinion and conclusions by establishing that the report of appellant’s own “very well-known, reputable handwriting expert” arrived at the same conclusion, did the prosecutor have Nilges state his own opinion that appellant did sign the checks. Fourth, Terry Bowling, manager of the supermarket where all of the checks in question were cashed, testified. Then four cashiers who had actually cashed the checks testified. And finally, the state called Deborah Bowling, the store’s bookkeeper, before resting its case.
In hindsight, it appears that the state had a solid case against appellant, but that may not have been the way it appeared while the trial was in progress. A closer inspection of the record indicates that the state had reason to feel uneasy about its case against appellant and felt compelled to emphasize the handwriting expert’s report because it was so prejudicial to appellant and could not be subject to the scrutiny of cross-examination.
Appellant and the manager of the supermarket who authorized the cashing of appellant’s checks were neighbors whose yards adjoined. Soon after the store opened appellant and the manager became friends; in the manager’s words “we might have become, started friendship at that time. I considered myself to know him a little better than I did anyone else in town at that time.” The manager authorized the cashing of two of appellant’s checks even after the first of appellant’s checks was returned to the store as a “no account” check. The manager testified that “When you first open a store to keep from making a bunch of enemies you have to be a little bit more liberal [in authorizing the cashing of checks].”
When appellant was contacted about the return of the first checks, he promised to come in and pay them off when all of the checks had been returned. When the supermarket bookkeeper (the manager’s wife) called appellant, he returned her calls and said he was waiting for the last of the checks to be returned before paying them off. The bookkeeper said that she called the prosecutor’s office and was told to file charges quickly and instructed to bring the checks in immediately. Even though store policy had been to give a person ten days to pay on a returned check and to assess a $2.00 charge on each returned check, the bookkeeper testified she may have, at the urging of the prosecutor’s office, brought the checks to the prosecutor before appellant had the full ten days after he was called to make the checks good.
In short, the state’s case had a strong suggestion that appellant and the store manager, his friend and neighbor, took the position that appellant was extended credit and would have to pay off the “no account” checks once all six checks had come back from the bank. The state’s case also suffered the embarrassment of the manager knowingly cashing “no account” checks for his friend and then the store’s bookkeeper, the manager’s wife, ignoring store policy and rushing to press charges against appellant on the urging of the prosecutor’s office even though appellant had talked to the store manager and bookkeeper to assure them that he would come in to pay off the checks.
Even if one were to assume, for the sake of argument, that appellant’s expert’s re*575port could have been considered cumulative of other previously admitted testimony, the devastating and prejudicial effect that such evidence, coming from an expert employed by the appellant, must have had on his cause in the minds of the jurors far outweighs the fact of possible redundancy. The record fails to demonstrate that appellant’s legal rights were unaffected by the introduction of this report into evidence or that the jury could not have been adversely influenced thereby. See State v. Crane, 559 S.W.2d 294, 297-98 (Mo.App.1977).
The damage done to the appellant’s cause by the introduction of this report into evidence and its exhibition to the jury, was then compounded by the state's repeated mention of the report throughout the course of the trial. It was stressed and emphasized to the jury five times in the prosecutor’s final argument. The prosecutor’s heavy reliance on this improper evidence is readily seen in just one example of these five statements in final argument:
“Mr. Repp did not like the results of that test so he hired his own expert and you’ve seen and you have read, because I watched you, the results of his own expert who I tried to subpoena but he didn’t get here. And of course Mr. Repp didn’t have him here. But we know what his conclusion was. That Bill Repp did write these checks that were passed at Town and Country Supermarket.”
When time came for their deliberation it is reasonable to assume that the jury retired with this incriminating report foremost on their minds.
I would reverse this case and remand for a new trial on the grounds that appellant has suffered a manifest injustice as a result of the improper admission into evidence of the expert’s report without proper foundation and without affording appellant his right to confront and cross-examine the expert witness against him.