Court Opinion

ID: 9779426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:50:26.456383+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:26.350363
License: Public Domain

BLACKMAR, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
This is the most aggravated capital murder case that has come before our Court for review. I can add nothing to Judge Robertson’s eloquent description of the atrocity of the offense. One might wonder, then, why there should not be a quick affirmance of the conviction and sentence. Because of what I consider a manifest error at the penalty phase, however, I cannot vote to sustain the death sentence.
I.
The prosecution properly introduced into evidence the defendant’s conviction under the federal RICO act.1 State v. Schlup, 724 S.W.2d 236 (Mo. banc 1987), makes it clear that the defendant’s criminal history may be brought out in the penalty phase of a case in which the death sentence is sought. The jury is entitled to full information about the defendant’s past, comparable to what is available to a sentencing judge in a presentence report, in order to assist it in determining the sentence. The defendant has no objection simply because the details may be shocking or gruesome.
Here, however, the prosecutor was not content simply to introduce evidence of the prior conviction. He offered, at the penalty phase, two photographs, one of the bombing death of one George Fahecn, and one of the scene of the bombing. The jury was not obliged to make any finding with regard to this bombing, and so the pictures did not aid it in any way in reaching its decision. The only purpose of the offer was to prejudice and inflame. By estab*384lished precedent, this is not a proper purpose.
There is constitutional error in receiving evidence in a death case which serves solely to inflame or arouse the passions. Booth v. Maryland, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 2529, 96 L.Ed.2d 440 (1987). There Maryland law provided for the admission in a death trial of a “victim impact statement,” designed to inform the jury about the trauma suffered by the survivors of the victim of a homicide. The court held that this statement served no purpose of assisting the jury in resolving the issues before it, and simply operated to arouse the passions.
But I do not suggest that we operate only under federal coercion. Our law on the admission of photographic evidence of crimes of violence is well developed. We consistently hold that a trial judge, in the exercise of discretion, may admit photographs, however gruesome, if they serve a proper purpose in assisting the jury to decide issues pending before it. Where the jury is obliged to make findings as to such matters as willfulness or deliberation the graphic portrayal may be quite helpful. In the present case, the picture of the victim’s severed torso could be helpful, at least in determining whether the method of killing posed a risk of death to more than one person. § 565.032.2(3). The defendant may not object to proper evidence simply because it is gruesome.
But established law also holds that photographs of the aftereffects of violent crimes are not properly received in evidence when they do not assist the jury in deciding matters submitted to it. In State v. Floyd, 360 S.W.2d 630 (Mo.1962), the prosecutor offered pictures of the victim’s decomposed body, even though he made no claim that these were relevant to the issues of the case. This Court reversed holding that the defendant’s objection should have been sustained because the pictures served simply to arouse the jury. We should reflect upon the words of the astute and respected Judge Paul W. Barrett, as follows:
The photograph objected to here, exhibit one, was neither needed nor offered for any of the conventional reasons or purposes, — to identify the victim, to show the nature and location of the injury, to illustrate or prove the character of the weapon, the surrounding circumstances, to determine the degree of the crime, or to show the cause of death. As a matter of fact, by the state’s admissions, the body was in such a state of decomposition that most of these matters could not be found or illustrated, particularly by this photograph. In short, as the court said of another photograph, in reversing a manslaughter conviction, this exhibit is “extremely obscene, offensive, vulgar, horrid, and repulsive” (State v. Robinson, (Mo.) 328 S.W.2d 667, 671), and any relevant probative value it may have is far outweighed by the fact that it is needlessly and manifestly inflammatory and therefore prejudicially erroneous. ...
He then quoted with approval the following extract from 73 A.L.R.2d l.c. 802:
“such photographs should not be admitted where their sole purpose is to arouse the emotions of the jury and to prejudice the defendant, * * * the sound governing principle is that photographs which are calculated to arouse the sympathies or prejudices of the jury are properly excluded if they are entirely irrelevant or not substantially necessary to show material facts or conditions * *
The principal opinion labors to justify the admission, or to find a ground for affirmance, but the effort is not convincing. It is first suggested that the gruesome pictures properly introduced at the guilt phase somehow mitigate the effect of the introduction of pictures of another killing which is not on trial. It is suggested that a little more gore would make no difference. I cannot accept this argument when a man is on trial for his life.
Nor is the effect of the pictures minified because the trial judge told the jury, correctly, that the defendant had not been convicted of the murder of Faheen. The submission of the pictures, then, serves to say to the jury, “these illustrate the after*385math of a bomb killing which the defendant may have participated in.” How could it more clearly appear that the prosecution had no purpose in mind other than shock value in introducing the pictures into evidence? RICO is directed at habitual criminals who try to infiltrate legitimate businesses such as Labor unions. It does not require precise delineation of the particular offenses the defendants are found guilty of. The conviction is properly received in evidence but the inflammatory pictures, under the circumstances, permit inappropriate innuendo.
Weakest of all is the attempt to minimize the importance of the pictures because the jury found sufficient aggravating circumstances to authorize the death sentence. The vice of the pictures is in their tendency to inflame and to arouse the passions. This vice cannot be erased, however many statutory aggravating circumstances the jury finds.
There was simply no justification for the trial judge’s admitting these pictures, over timely objection. The prosecutor should not have offered them and the trial judge should not have supinely accepted the offer. They should have been excluded under the holding of State v. Floyd, supra. There was no room for the exercise of discretion.
I am concerned because the principal opinion seems to give the trial judge an absolute quittance on his ruling. At the very least something should be said so that similar inappropriate rulings will not be made in the future. Now, on pictures, we are at the same place that State v. Newlon, 627 S.W.2d 606 (Mo. banc 1982), placed us with regard to oral argument. The word is out that “anything goes" at the penalty phase. Missouri justice should adhere to a higher standard. The penalty phase should not become a legalized lynching.
I am also concerned about the suggestion that the receipt of the pictures was not prejudicial. Reports on file with our statutory officer (§ 565.035.6) show that other juries, in their wisdom, did not authorize death sentences for the defendant’s cousins Anthony and Paul Leisure, whose guilt was identical to this defendant’s. There is no way to determine just what caused the jury to opt for the ultimate sanction. Can it really be said, in a death case, that any substantial error, properly preserved, is not prejudicial?
II.
I am also troubled in an apparent lack of evenhandedness in the trial judge’s rulings on challenges. He sustained the prosecution’s challenge to a juror who indicated that all participants in a crime should receive the same sentence, while overruling the defendant’s challenge to a juror who said that she was disturbed at the prospect of providing a murderer free room and board. Both rulings are probably within the court’s discretion as defined in our cases, but I am concerned about appearances.
The judge also overruled a challenge to a juror who stated that she had formed an opinion and whose last words indicated doubt as to whether she could get that opinion completely out of her mind. Neither side probed as to the nature of her opinion, but reluctance to question in detail in the presence of the other jurors is understandable. If the trial judge is not willing to excuse the juror on the basis of her statement that she had formed an opinion expedients such as examination in chambers to determine whether her opinion is disqualifying should be considered. See State v. Jones, 749 S.W.2d 356 (Mo. banc 1988).
The finding of guilt is without error. Even the most depraved of criminals is entitled to a trial which is scrupulously fair when his life is at stake. Because of the admission of the pictures of the Faheen slaying, I would set aside the death sentence and remand the case for retrial of the penalty phase.

. 18 U.S.C. § 1962. The act punishes, among other things, the conduct of an "enterprise" through a "pattern of racketeering activity.” A pattern is established by showing two criminal offenses within the period of a ten-year statute of limitations.