Court Opinion

ID: 9774038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:07:19.27641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:01.067192
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
concurring in result.
While I doubt that the death penalty does more good than it does harm, my personal views are not important and under compulsion of the previous cases wherein this court has upheld the death penalty, I concur in the outcome of the present case.
Something should be said about the appalling lack of supervision in the St. Charles County jail which this case brings to light. One cannot read what happened to the victim without wondering how the abuse could have gone unnoticed or undiscovered by the sheriff, who is by law in charge of the jail, § 221.020, RSMo 1978, or his deputies or jailers. The abuse went on for over a week prior to the actual killing. Evidently there is no supervision whatever exercised in St. Charles County over the jail and the prisoners are free to run wild and do as they please with one another. Those who are supposed to be in charge of the jail look the other way or designate an inmate trusty as jailer, a system which leads to deplorable abuses.
What was permitted to take place in the St. Charles County jail is a public disgrace. The principal opinion speaks about the state having the responsibility for the safe care of those in confinement. That responsibility obviously means nothing in the St. Charles County jail. “All hope abandon, ye who enter here” would be a fitting inscription for its portals, just as over the gates of Dante’s Hell.