Caseflicks

Missouri Court of Appeals • 1984

State v. Nations

676 S.W.2d 282 | 1984 Mo. App. LEXIS 4784

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, this case holds that when Missouri makes knowledge of a child's age an element of an offense, proof of suspicion, willful blindness, or recklessness cannot substitute for proof of actual knowledge.

Background

Sandra Nations owned and operated the Main Street Disco. Police officers saw a scantily clad sixteen-year-old girl onstage dancing for tips with another female. Thinking one dancer looked young, the officers asked Nations about the girls' ages. Nations said both were of legal age and that she had checked their identification. The girl first told police she was eighteen, but then admitted she was sixteen and had no identification with her.

The State charged Nations under § 568.050 with knowingly encouraging, aiding, or causing a child under seventeen to engage in conduct tending to injure the child's welfare. Nations was convicted and fined $1,000. Although she had moved for acquittal at the close of the State's evidence, she then presented her own evidence and did not renew the motion or file a new-trial motion. The issue of evidentiary sufficiency was therefore not preserved in the ordinary course, but the appellate court reversed under plain-error review.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the court could review Nations's unpreserved claim that the evidence was insufficient to support submission of the case to the fact finder.

Holding

Yes. Submitting a criminal charge on legally insufficient evidence constitutes manifest injustice and may be reviewed as plain error.

Reasoning

Nations did not preserve her sufficiency claim. By offering evidence after the denial of her motion for acquittal at the close of the State's case, she waived objection to that ruling; she also did not renew her request for acquittal at the close of all evidence or seek a new trial.

Even so, the court held that a conviction based on a charge the evidence did not make submissible is a manifest injustice. It therefore reviewed the entire record for plain error, asking whether evidence and reasonable inferences favorable to the State could permit a fact finder to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Issue #2

Whether § 568.050 required the State to prove that Nations actually knew the dancer was under seventeen years old.

Holding

Yes. The child's age was an attendant circumstance of the offense, and the statute required proof that Nations actually knew the child was under seventeen.

Reasoning

Section 568.050 made it a crime to knowingly encourage, aid, or cause a child under seventeen to engage in conduct tending to harm the child's welfare. Because the statute expressly connects the culpable mental state of knowingly to conduct involving a child under seventeen, knowledge of the child's age is a material element under Missouri's general culpability statute.

Missouri's Criminal Code defined acting knowingly with respect to attendant circumstances as being aware that those circumstances exist. The court read that language to require actual awareness, rather than merely proof that the defendant should have known or suspected the relevant fact.

The court contrasted Missouri's statute with the Model Penal Code, which treats awareness of a high probability of an existing fact as knowledge unless the actor honestly believes otherwise. Missouri adopted the Model Penal Code's principal definitions of knowingly and recklessly but omitted that willful-blindness expansion. The court inferred that the legislature deliberately limited knowledge to actual knowledge.

Issue #3

Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove that Nations knew the dancer was less than seventeen years old.

Holding

No. The evidence showed, at most, that Nations consciously disregarded a substantial risk concerning the girl's age—recklessness—not actual knowledge.

Reasoning

The State's proof established that the girl was sixteen, appeared young to the officers, was scantily clad, and was dancing for tips. Nations falsely told officers that she had checked the dancers' identification, even though the girl had no identification with her on the day she was hired.

Those facts could show that Nations refused to learn the age of a young-looking dancer or was aware of a high probability that the dancer was under seventeen. Under Missouri's statutory definitions, however, conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk is recklessness, not knowledge.

Neither the girl's testimony nor Nations's testimony supplied proof of actual awareness. Both testified that Nations asked for identification shortly before the police intervened, although the girl's testimony was inconsistent in other respects. A false claim that identification had been checked did not establish that Nations knew the girl was under seventeen. Because the State failed to prove that essential mental-state element, it failed to make a submissible case.