Court Opinion

ID: 9677391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:51:01.28898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:55.657169
License: Public Domain

*429MICHAEL A. WOLFF, Judge.
This Court transferred this case from the court of appeals, which conducted an extensive review of the trial record to determine whether the evidence was sufficient for the jury to conclude that Samuel Freeman was guilty of first degree murder. This Court’s review is premised on the conclusion that the court of appeals decision conflicts with other appellate decisions, making transfer to this Court appropriate under art. V, sec. 10 of the Missouri Constitution.
My concern, and the reason for writing separately, is that the court of appeals— acting as an error-correcting court — be given the deference it deserves in its role of reviewing a record for sufficiency of the evidence. The tests or doctrines discussed in the principal opinion, which are the source of the conflict the principal opinion discerns, can serve to put the court of appeals “in short pants” by making its error-correcting review subject to the second-guessing of a higher court whose business should not be to duplicate the efforts of the intermediate court of appeals.
The present judicial article — article Y of the Missouri Constitution approved by the voters in 1976 — gave the court of appeals its “long pants.” Prior to the present article Y, the court of appeals had very limited jurisdiction. In criminal cases, for example, that court surprisingly was limited to hearing appeals only in misdemeanor cases; all felony cases were heard in this Court. The purpose of the current article V is to allocate the judicial resources of the state among the various courts, including upgrading the court of appeals. To allocate judicial resources better, article V upgraded the jurisdiction of the court of appeals to become the error-correcting court in various classes of cases. That is why the present article V authorizes transfer to this court when the issue is of general interest and importance or to resolve conflicts in governing principles.
Under the constitution, a dissenting judge in the court of appeals may transfer a case to this Court when the judge believes that an opinion of the court of appeals is contrary to previous decisions of this Court or to other decisions of the court of appeals. Mo. Const, art. V, sec. 10. The court of appeals may transfer cases to this Court after opinion, and this Court may transfer cases either before or after opinion in the intermediate court “because of the general interest or importance of a question involved in the case, or for the purpose of reexamining the existing law, or pursuant to supreme court rule.” Id.; see, Rule 8S.1
Accordingly, appeals that lie initially with the court of appeals are lodged there with the understanding that the court of appeals is an error-correcting court. Such cases can be transferred to this Court because this Court is a law-declaring court.
As to those cases that already have been reviewed in the court of appeals, this Court should not see itself simply as another error-correcting court. When it does so, the Court foregoes its proper role in making the law of Missouri a coherent and understandable whole and diverts its *430energies to correcting errors that are of little or no general interest or importance in the clarification or development of the law.
When I speak of declaring the law, I address a highly traditional role of courts in our Anglo-American system, a role that can be misunderstood. Carved in stone at the corner of Missouri’s Supreme Court building is the centuries-old principle, which, translated from Latin, says: “To declare the law, not to make it.” (Jus dicere, non dare). Another common translation uses “speak” rather than “declare,” but either way, it expresses the principle that courts are bound by the law as made by others — the legislative and executive branches of government, and the constitution. Missouri’s courts also follow common law principles, whose origins are in English common law, which are expressed in precedent cases.2 But laws enacted by the general assembly, and regulations of the executive branch that are authorized by those laws, trump the courts’ declarations of the common law. And the commands of the state and federal constitutions trump the laws enacted by the general assembly and the regulations of the executive branch. The courts’ duty is to find, declare, apply and enforce the law.3
The division of responsibility among the appellate courts of Missouri exists in other state constitutions, serving a similar purpose. “The ‘law declaring’ court is the highest state court and its jurisdiction is limited to important questions of law,” as one commentator explains the division of authority between appellate courts. Thomas C. Marks, Jr., Perspectives: State Traditions, and Peculiarities: Jurisdiction Creep and the Florida Supreme Court, 69 Alb. L.Rev. 543 (2006). “In deciding cases within this limited jurisdiction, the ‘law declaring’ court may correct errors, but its ‘error correcting’ function is only incidental to its ‘law declaring’ function. The ‘error correcting’ court hears appeals from trial courts and its decisions are final unless the issue before it was within the limited jurisdiction of the ‘law declaring’ court above it in the judicial hierarchy.” Id. See, e.g., In the Interest of A.S.W., 226 S.W.3d 151, 155 (Mo. banc 2007) (general interest and importance); Baugh v. Life & Cas. Ins. Co. of Tenn., 299 S.W.2d 554 (Mo.App.1957) (conflicts between appellate decisions); and Longhibler v. State, 832 S.W.2d 908, 909 (Mo. banc 1992) (re-examination of existing law). See also, Matthew E. Gabrys, A Shift in the Bottleneck: The Appellate Caseload Problem Twenty Years After the Creation of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 1998 Wis. L.Rev. 1547 (1998).
*431These questions are not matters of appellate “jurisdiction” because this Court’s appellate jurisdiction under article V is plenary. These questions are, rather, questions about how the resources of the judiciary ought to be rationally allocated between this Court and the court of appeals under this state’s constitution.
In this case, the court of appeals carefully reviewed the evidence presented in the trial court and concluded that the state had not presented sufficient evidence to support the conviction. The principal opinion of this Court should not be construed as a revision or second-guessing of the sufficiency analysis conducted by the court of appeals. Such an opinion would commit the fallacy of collapsing the roles of a law-declaring and an error-correcting court. As the majority of this Court makes clear in footnote 4 of its opinion, “[tjhis Court granted transfer to address the court of appeals’ failure to follow the correct standard of review, which requires that reasonable inferences be viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict.” State v. Belton, 153 S.W.3d 307, 309 (Mo. banc 2005). This Court did not grant transfer to conduct a second sufficiency analysis but rather to clarify the standards of law governing such analyses.
The traditional standard is not made clearer by the application of “tests” and “rules.” For instance, this Court in State v. Chaney, 967 S.W.2d 47, 52 (Mo. banc 1998), disapproved a rule or test that says that evidence that points to two equally valid inferences is not evidence that can sustain a verdict. The real issue remains whether there is evidence that supports the verdict.
The applicable law is simply stated and so well known as to require no citations: There must be some evidence that supports the verdict. The evidence can be either direct or circumstantial. Inferences that the jury makes from the evidence must be reasonable. The verdict must not be based on speculation or conjecture.
There are no tests or doctrines that can help with this simple and important judicial function, unless one wants to make the inquiry more complicated than it needs to be. The traditional appellate role of reviewing the record is to make sure that there was evidence sufficient, as a matter of law, for the jury to render a guilty verdict. The role for the court of appeals, as it is when this Court conducts such a review, is not to be a super-jury that overrules a jury when it disagrees with its decision. The appellate courts’ role properly is circumscribed to view the evidence to determine whether, as a matter of law, there was enough evidence for the jury to reach its verdict — regardless of whether agrees with it. The point of the process is to ensure that a jury’s decision is based upon evidence, not speculation. Judges, thus, should not defer slavishly to a jury where it appears that the verdict is based upon speculation.
This is a close case, a case grown cold over 14 years from the time of the victim’s death to the time the small bits of material were identified as containing Freeman’s DNA. Yet this was evidence, and the inference of guilt drawn by the jury was reasonable.
What is important in this case, and in the large number of cases reviewed in the court of appeals for sufficiency of the evidence as a matter of law, is that this Court defers to that court’s judgment regardless of whether this Court agrees with its result — if its review appears to have been conducted appropriately by the law’s traditional standard. That is how a well-organized judiciary allocates its resources, and this Court should be mindful of it.
*432It seems to me that it would be entirely possible for the court of appeals to review a record such as the record in this case and conclude that the evidence was insufficient — without misstating the law. Where this is the situation, I would leave the court’s conclusion intact — not because I agree with it, but because the court would have performed its function under the correct legal standard.
Subject to the foregoing concerns, I take seriously the principal opinion’s premise that the legal errors of the court of appeals make this a case of general interest and importance, and I agree with the result of its review.

. For the reader unaccustomed to Missouri’s transfer system, when this Court receives or takes a case on transfer from the court of appeals, either prior to or after an opinion in that court, this Court hears the case as though it were on appeal from the trial court, not the court of appeals. The opinion in the court of appeals, if there is one, does not become part of the published record of the case. This discretionary review serves the same purpose as the writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court but has the advantage of not cluttering the official reports of the Missouri courts, as published in the South Western Reporter, with decisions that have been overruled or superseded by this Court.

. See Section 1.010, RSMo 2000 ("The common law of England and all statutes and acts of parliament made prior to the fourth year of the reign of James the First, of a general nature, which are not local to that kingdom and not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of this state, or the statute laws in force for the time being, are the rule of action and decision in this state, any custom or usage to the contrary notwithstanding, but no act of the general assembly or law of this state shall be held to be invalid, or limited in its scope or effect by the courts of this state, for the reason that it is in derogation of, or in conflict with, the common law, or with such statutes or acts of parliament; but all acts of the general assembly, or laws, shall be liberally construed, so as to effectuate the true intent and meaning thereof.”); see also Joseph Benson, Reception of the Common Law in Missouri: Section 1.010 as Interpreted by the Supreme Court of Missouri, 67 Mo. L.Rev. 595 (2002).

. The concepts of this paragraph are taken from a general-interest newspaper column I wrote in March 2006. See The Courts’ Ideals Are Carved in Stone, March 28, 2006, available at http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp? id=1079.