Love v. State

I fully concur in the principal opinion and write in an effort to demonstrate State v. Stapleton, 518 S.W.2d 292 (Mo. banc 1975), was ill-conceived and it and its progeny should be squarely overruled.

Stapleton announced the automatic submission rule in homicide cases 1 and substantially altered the law of manslaughter in the process. It has been stated by another distinguished jurist2 that it is more important for a court to be correct in its decisions than it is to be consistent. Accordingly, I believe the automatic submission rule should be cast aside and pre-Stapleton standards applied in…