Background
In the early hours of January 7, 2023, Damon Goodrich struck his girlfriend (Victim 1) in the face during an argument while driving her home from a club. She escaped on foot to a cousin’s house, where she told the cousin that Goodrich had hit her and that she feared he would kill her. The following night, Goodrich returned to Victim 1’s home. When Victim 2—a cousin of Victim 1 who was also an acquaintance of Goodrich—forced him outside and told him to leave, Goodrich refused. He then grabbed Victim 2’s arm, drew a handgun, and fired multiple shots in rapid succession, striking both Victim 2 and Victim 1, who had come outside. Victim 2 died at the scene; Victim 1 was transported to a hospital where she also died. No firearms were recovered from Victim 1’s property.
Goodrich was charged with two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of armed criminal action, and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm. At trial, he testified that Victim 1 had threatened him with a gun the prior night, and that on the night of the shooting Victim 1 and Victim 2 had lured him to the house and ambushed him with firearms, forcing him to shoot in self-defense. The jury rejected that account and convicted him on all four tried counts. The trial court sentenced him to thirty years on each murder count and three years on each armed criminal action count, all terms consecutive, for a total of sixty-six years.
Goodrich appealed pro se, raising eleven points. The court noted at the outset that his statement of facts violated Rule 84.04(c) by recounting only his own version of events—characterizing the State’s evidence as “perjured”—rather than presenting the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict. Although that violation alone would justify dismissal, the court exercised its discretion to review the appeal on the merits because the State’s brief supplied the requisite factual record.
The Court’s Holding
The court affirmed the conviction on all points. On Point I, it held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting Victim 1’s statements to her cousin as excited utterances. All four relevant factors supported the exception: the statements were made during an ongoing flight from a pursuer Victim 1 believed would kill her; Cousin’s questions were minimal prompts that did not diminish the spontaneous, stress-driven nature of the declaration; the self-serving factor was inapplicable because Victim 1 was not the defendant; and the physical and emotional foundation was ample—Victim 1 had leaped fences in the middle of the night, arrived with a swollen face and disheveled appearance, and could not fully calm down even after reaching safety.
On Point IX, the court held that sufficient evidence supported the jury’s rejection of Goodrich’s self-defense claim. Once Goodrich injected self-defense into the case, the burden shifted to the State to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but acquittal as a matter of law is available only when the evidence of self-defense is undisputed and uncontradicted. Here, Son 1’s testimony directly contradicted Goodrich’s account—establishing that both victims were unarmed and had done no more than demand Goodrich leave the premises. That conflict was for the jury to resolve, and the appellate court declined to reweigh the evidence or substitute its judgment for the jury’s credibility determinations.
On Point X, the court held that the trial court did not clearly err in denying Goodrich’s Batson challenge to the State’s peremptory strike of Juror Number 23, a Black woman. The State’s race-neutral justification—that Juror 23 displayed persistent difficulty understanding the presumption of innocence and appeared to change her answers only because she was agreeing with whoever last spoke to her—was specific, plausible, and supported by the record. The trial court’s comparison between Juror 23 and a purportedly similarly situated white juror who was not struck was grounded in observable differences in demeanor and the manner in which each juror responded to clarifying questions. On the eight unpreserved points, the court declined to grant relief because none facially established evident, obvious, and clear error rising to the level of manifest injustice.
Key Takeaways
- A victim’s spontaneous declaration made while actively hiding from a pursuer she believed intended to kill her qualifies as an excited utterance even when made partly in response to minimal prompting questions, so long as the statement reflects the stress of the ongoing event rather than reflective thought.
- Where eyewitness testimony directly contradicts a defendant’s self-defense account, the conflict is a jury question; an appellate court will not reweigh credibility or supply the “undisputed and uncontradicted” record required for acquittal as a matter of law on self-defense grounds.
- A Batson challenge fails at the pretext stage where the trial court’s comparison of the struck juror and a purportedly similarly situated juror rests on documented differences in demeanor, responsiveness, and understanding—factors that appellate courts cannot independently assess from a cold transcript and to which they must defer.
- A pro se appellant’s failure to present facts in the light most favorable to the verdict, as required by Missouri Rule 84.04(c), is independently sufficient grounds to dismiss the appeal, though appellate courts retain discretion to review on the merits when the State’s brief fills the gap.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces Missouri’s contextual approach to the excited utterance exception, confirming that a declarant who remains in active flight from a perceived threat is still “under the stress of excitement” sufficient to satisfy the exception even after reaching a place of relative safety—and that minimal questioning by a bystander does not automatically strip the statement of its spontaneous character. Practitioners on both sides should attend to the court’s emphasis on laying a detailed foundation as to the declarant’s physical and emotional state at the precise moment of the statement.
The case also offers a useful illustration of Batson practice at the pretext stage. The court’s analysis underscores that demeanor-based justifications—though difficult to verify on appeal—remain viable and receive substantial deference when the trial court personally observed the voir dire exchanges and created a record comparing the struck juror’s responses to those of non-struck jurors. Defense counsel seeking to defeat such justifications must build a contemporaneous record that captures not merely the content but the manner of each juror’s answers.