380
Opinion of the Court
circumstances, however, unyielding application of the general rule would disserve any perceivable interest.
The asserted procedural oversights in Lee's case, his alleged failures fully to comply with Rules 24.09 and 24.10, were first raised more than two and a half years after Lee's trial. The two Rules, Missouri maintains, "work together to enhance the reliability of a trial court's determination of whether to delay a scheduled criminal trial due to the absence of a witness." Brief for Respondent 29 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). Nevertheless, neither the prosecutor nor the trial judge so much as mentioned the Rules as a reason for denying Lee's continuance motion.10 If either
prosecutor or judge considered supplementation of Lee's motion necessary, they likely would have alerted the defense at the appropriate time, and Lee would have had an opportunity to perfect his plea to hold the case over until the next day. Rule 24.10, we note, after listing the components of a continuance motion, contemplates subsequent perfection: "If the court shall be of the opinion that the affidavit is insufficient it shall permit it to be amended."
The State, once content that the continuance motion was ripe for trial court disposition on the merits, had a second thought on appeal. It raised Rule 24.10 as a new argument in its brief to the Missouri Court of Appeals; even then, the State did not object to the motion's oral form. App. 107-108, 110-115. The Missouri Court of Appeals, it seems, raised Rule 24.09's writing requirements ("a written motion accompanied by [an] affidavit") on its own motion.11
10 By contrast, the judge specifically directed Lee's counsel to supplement counsel's oral motion for judgment of acquittal with a written motion. See supra, at 370.
11 The belated assertion of these Rules also explains why Lee did not contend in his state postconviction motion that counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing meticulously to comply with Rules 24.09 and 24.10. That postconviction motion had been made and denied in the trial court before the Rules' entry into the case when Lee proceeded on appeal. See supra, at 371, n. 3.
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