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569 S.W.2d 15

State v. Jones

Missouri Court of Appeals

Decided June 13, 1978

Missouri Court of Appeals · decided 1978-06-13

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“It is particularly important that where an inadequate foundation has been laid for admission of evidence that the objection made be specific as such foundation deficiencies can frequently be remedied. We will not review the contention of inadequate foundation raised for the first time on appeal.”

quoted by 4 later decisions, including Donald Earl Young v. State, State v. Hodges

Relies on State v. Stephens

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1978-06-13

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently July 2016

13 state decisions

5019781980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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SMITH, Judge.

¶1Defendant appeals from his conviction by a jury of stealing $50 or over and his sen*16tence of seven years by the trial court pursuant to the second offender act. We affirm.

¶2The evidence established that defendant stole four leisure suits from Famous-Barr Company and that those suits had a combined value considerably in excess of $50. On appeal defendant raises a single contention — that the trial court erroneously allowed the admission into evidence of a Xerox copy of an invoice to establish value of the stolen merchandise. It is contended that this was erroneous for two reasons: (1) the prosecution failed to qualify the document under the Uniform Business Records as Evidence Act, § 490.680, RSMo 1969 and (2) the copy was not the best evidence.

¶3The first contention was not raised by objection at trial or in the motion for new trial and so was not preserved for appellate review. It is particularly important that where an inadequate foundation has been laid for admission of evidence that the objection made be specific as such foundation deficiencies can frequently be remedied. We will not review the contention of inadequate foundation raised for the first time on appeal.

¶4The defendant’s second contention lacks support in fact. The trial court has wide discretion in the admission of secondary evidence. State v. Stephens, 556 S.W.2d 722[2, 3] (Mo.App.1977). There was testimony here that the original invoice could not be found and that the Xerox copy was an exact copy of the original. This was a sufficient basis for the admission of the copy. State v. Stephens, supra.

¶5Judgment affirmed.

CLEMENS, P. J., and McMILLIAN, J., concur.
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