State v. Burney, 143 S.W.2d 273 (Missouri 1940)

Colorful reprimand of plaintiff’s counsel: Her counsel asserts in his brief that the bullet submitted by the prosecutor’s office to Sergeant Koch of the State Highway Patrol for ballistic tests was not the one found in the Stacey house and exhibited at the preliminary but another which would pass such tests. The statement in the brief is: “Only the rankest unsophistication would suppose he (Koch) was furnished an object over which any doubt could arise.” Grave charges such as this should not be made lightly. Counsel may sometimes be excused for statements uttered in the hurry and heat of oral argument, when the same statements made cooly and deliberately in a formal brief to this court should be scrutinized with less indulgence. Either the prosecutor’s office committed a grevious wrong, or appellant’s counsel has transgressed the bounds of legitimate argument in charging that office framed the case by substituting a bullet which would pass ballistic tests. The jury found against that argument. We think the evidence made a case for the jury.