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Kinsman v. Director of Revenue7/24/2001
any connection to, or knowledge of, the overturned van. When it was apparent that this was the cab assigned to him, he denied he had been driving, then said his cab "must have been stolen," yet refused to file a stolen property report. There is a distance of several miles between Maxine's at Highway 40 and 7 Highway, to the crash spot on Highway 40, which was near the west edge of the city limits. There was no explanation for how Kinsman got to the convenience store other than that he drove the vehicle there, and then walked the short distance after the crash after climbing out of the vehicle.
There was no information available to the officer that another person had been in the cab with Kinsman or that Kinsman had been a mere passenger at the time of the crash. The Director is correct that the fact that the officer did not see Kinsman driving his cab does not resolve the matter. "Circumstantial evidence may be relied on when the officer does not actually see who operated the motor vehicle." See Mayberry, 983 S.W.2d at 631. "Circumstantial evidence means evidence that does not directly prove a fact in issue but gives rise to a logical inference that the fact exists." State v. Harris, 807 S.W.2d 528, 529 (Mo. App. 1991).
The Director cites Cox v. Dir. of Revenue, 37 S.W.3d 304 (Mo. App. 2000). In that case, which was submitted on a set of stipulated facts, a seriously injured person was found lying next to his crashed vehicle, in an intoxicated state, with the driver side door of the car standing open. There were no witnesses able to testify as to who had been driving the vehicle. The court ruled that while the "circumstantial evidence does not directly prove Cox was driving . . . plainly gives rise to a logical inference that Cox was the driver." Id. at 308. Since no evidence contradicted the inference, the court reversed the trial court decision and ordered the revocation reinstated. Cox shows a willingness of the court, where there is evidence of probable cause, to reverse the contrary conclusion of the trial court when there is no evidence showing that the person in question was not driving. In this case, as in Cox, there is simply no evidence that Kinsman was not driving the vehicle.
Kinsman did not put on evidence in the trial court, and did not impeach the credibility of the officers. Kinsman also has not filed a brief on this appeal. Therefore, although we seek to consider the evidence in the light favorable to Kinsman, the only evidence contradicting the officer's reasonable grounds was the bare denial by Kinsman that he had been driving earlier that night. We are to view the facts confronting the officer "from the vantage point of a prudent, cautious, and trained police officer at the scene at the time of the arrest." Wilcox v. Dir. of Revenue, 842 S.W. 240, 255 (Mo. App. 1992). Officers are usually not highly impressed with bare denials in the midst of factual circumstances strongly indicating a proposition is true. Kinsman denied that he was driving; but his denial, and his remark that the cab "must have been stolen," did little, in these circumstances, to undermine the officer's probable cause. There was no explanation why, if the cab had been stolen, Kinsman did not want to file a stolen property report. It also would have appeared to the officer to make little sense to believe that Kinsman "just happened" to be hanging out at the convenience store around midnight when the cab assigned to him "just happened," by some agency other than Kinsman's own hand, to crash nearby outside the same convenience store. It also would have seemed odd to the officer that even though everyone else in the convenience store seemed to be aware of the crash, Kinsman, to whom the cab was assign
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