The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Joplin Metro

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August 20, 2008

Judge skeptical of woman’s testimony in assault case

By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

The Jasper County prosecutor’s office managed to get a felony domestic-assault case bound over for trial Wednesday despite the alleged victim’s unwillingness to testify against her husband.

Angela Brown was subpoenaed to be a witness at the preliminary hearing on the charge against her husband, Richard E. Brown, 47, of Joplin. Richard Brown is charged with second-degree domestic assault. He is accused of punching his wife in the face and breaking her nose on May 8.

But Angela Brown testified at the hearing that her husband only accidentally hit her in the nose with his elbow in the course of an argument at their home with a male friend from Tulsa, Okla.

Under questioning by Assistant Prosecutor Leah Clubb, she acknowledged being a reluctant witness and having filled out a form to get the charge dropped. She told the court that she still lives with her husband and loves him, and that he has apologized for hurting her on the night in question and is taking anger-management classes.

Clubb had called Joplin police Officer Sam Scott as a witness before Angela Brown. Scott told the court that he responded to a domestic-disturbance call at the couple’s apartment at 1505 S. Michigan Ave. Scott said that when he arrived, he found a table overturned in their kitchen and other reasons to believe there had been an argument.

“They both calmed down, agreed to go to bed, and I left the apartment,” Scott told the court.

He said that as he returned to his patrol car parked on Michigan Avenue, he could hear the sounds of an argument resuming inside the apartment. He returned to the apartment door and found it locked, Scott said. He said he stood outside the apartment and waited to see if he heard anything that would give him cause to force entry to the home.

Scott said two juveniles soon came running out of an adjacent apartment building, and one of them exclaimed: “He’s hitting her. He broke her nose.” Scott said that at about the same time, he heard a woman inside the apartment say, “I’m bleeding.” The officer testified that he then forced entry and found Angela Brown inside with an injury to her face.

Clubb introduced photographs that Scott took of suspected injuries to Angela Brown and of the state of the apartment that he discovered upon re-entry.

On cross-examination by public defender Brett Meeker, Scott said he was able to hear the argument resume because some windows were open. He said one of the juveniles who emerged from the adjacent building proved to be Angela Brown’s son, who told him that he had received a telephone call from her telling him that her husband had broken her nose.

But Angela Brown insisted on the witness stand after the officer’s testimony that it had been an accidental blow and not a punch.

“All I can recall telling the officer is that he broke my nose,” she said.

Meeker asked Associate Judge Richard Copeland to dismiss the case at the conclusion of testimony. She argued that Angela Brown obviously did not wish to press the charge, that the state’s case lacked evidence of an intentional blow, and that the defendant already has sought help in anger management.

But Copeland found sufficient probable cause in the officer’s testimony and the photographs of the woman to allow the state to proceed with the case. He ordered the defendant to make his initial appearance in a trial division of the court on Sept. 5.





Spousal privilege



Brett Meeker, public defender for Richard Brown, asked Associate Judge Richard Copeland, shortly after the prosecutor called Brown’s wife as a witness in a domestic-assault case Wednesday, to inform her of spousal privilege not to testify against her husband. The judge declined to do that and said that even if she is a reluctant witness, the state has the right to proceed with prosecuting the defendant.

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