Court Opinion

ID: 9773637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:52:20.313201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:21.772249
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
PER CURIAM.
Although we hereby overrule and deny defendant’s motion for rehearing or for transfer to the Supreme Court filed under Rules 83.02 and 84.17, one point raised in the motion merits specific response.
As we stated in our opinion, the trial court admitted all portions of Exhibit 8, Suspected Sexual Assault Medical Report, which defendant offered when those portions were read to the jury by witness Wright. Having done so, the trial court’s refusal to admit the document itself ordinarily would be of no major concern. The jury was, after all, exposed to exactly what defendant wanted them to know. Here, however, the jury later asked “to view all evidence submitted” and received all the documents. Because Exhibit 8 was not admitted, the jury, of course, did not see it. Defendant contends in his motion that this was “extremely prejudicial error” because Exhibit 8 contained statements by Rachelle inconsistent with her trial testimony (statements which were read to the jury).
First, we note that although a subsequent request by the jury for documents may increase the likelihood that detriment to the defendant resulted from the court’s refusal to admit the document, it does not, in and of itself, justify a holding that in retrospect the refusal was error. We must first find error in the ruling before any question of whether it prejudiced defendant can be considered.
Second, we stated in our opinion that we need not reach the question of whether the trial court properly refused to admit the entire document because all portions offered were admitted in oral testimony. We have not stated that the trial court actually admitted those portions as documentary evidence. Clearly it did not.
Nevertheless, the trial court did not err in refusing to admit the hospital record in this case. Defendant’s witness read certain parts of the record, which appeared on all three pages of the document, into evidence. Defendant then offered those same parts of the document as Exhibit 8. The state objected to the admission of the rest of the document, as confusing and prejudicial. The court sustained the objection. Whether or not the court was correct, the defendant cannot now complain of the ruling that the document as a whole was inadmissible, simply because in addition to the reasons stated in our opinion, he did not offer to *803separate those parts of the document which the court had already found admissible from those which were inadmissible.
The court is not obliged, when one document contains both admissible and inadmissible material, to excise or redact the good from the bad. When one document contains both, and no effort is made to offer only admissible portions, the court may refuse the entire document. Ensminger v. Stout, 287 S.W.2d 400, 407 (Mo.App.1956). Here, defendant did offer only those parts already held admissible, but when he became aware that the remainder was not ruled on in his favor, he did nothing. Under these circumstances, where the admissible and inadmissible segments are commingled in one document, and the party offering the document is well aware which parts are admissible and which are not, the responsibility lies squarely with the offeror, and not the court, to physically “cleanse” the document of the inadmissible sections, and re-offer it in that form. Defendant’s failure to do so precludes him from claiming error in the court’s refusal to accept the document.