Jackson v. State

• Decision Date: 17 May 2000
• Citation: 17 S.W.3d 664
• Parties: (Tex.Crim.App. 2000) DERRICK JACKSON, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS NO. 73,081
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 664

17 S.W.3d 664 (Tex.Crim.App. 2000)

DERRICK JACKSON, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS

NO. 73,081

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS

May 17, 2000

ON DIRECT APPEAL FROM HARRIS COUNTY

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[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

O P I N I O N

Price, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which McCormick, P.J., and Meyers, Keller, Holland, Womack, Johnson, and Keasler, J.J., join.

Appellant was convicted of capital murder on March 12, 1998. TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. 19.03(a). Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 37.0711 3(b) and (e), the trial judge sentenced appellant to death. Art. 37.071 3(g).¹ Direct appeal to this Court is automatic. Art. 37.0711 3(j). Appellant raises eight points of error. We will affirm.

SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE

In his first two points of error, appellant challenges the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support his capital murder conviction for killing more than one person in the same criminal transaction. We review the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979).

The evidence at trial revealed that the victims, Forrest Henderson and Richard Wrotenbury, were singers in the Houston Grand Opera. Shortly before his death, Henderson toured with the opera in Scotland. Wrotenbury moved into Henderson's Houston apartment to housesit while Henderson was out of the country and continued to live in the apartment after Henderson returned.

David Trujillo and Roger Lindgroff ² lived next door to Henderson and Wrotenbury. At around 10:30 p.m. on September 10, 1988, Trujillo heard music and Henderson's voice through the common wall separating their apartments. Trujillo went to sleep around 2:00 a.m. and was awakened at 4:45 a.m. by the sound of Wrotenbury screaming several times, "Oh my God. No. No." Trujillo also heard what sounded like someone being hit numerous times with a pipe or a baseball bat. After 30 minutes of silence, he heard the water running for about 45 minutes. Lindgroff started to knock on their neighbor's door to see if there was a problem, but Trujillo called him back inside. Trujillo never heard Henderson's front door open or anyone leave. A person could enter or leave Henderson's apartment via a separate stairwell, however, without having to pass by Trujillo's door.

Trujillo explained that, before Wrotenbury moved in, he would see "street trash" going in and out of Henderson's apartment, that the apartment was a rowdy place, and that there was always some kind of screaming and fighting going on over there. Since Wrotenbury had moved in, however, the rowdiness had subsided.

Besides the opera, Wrotenbury also worked as a music teacher at Deer Park Elementary School; but on Monday, September 12, 1988, he failed to appear for work At 9:00 a.m., the school principal contacted Henderson's apartment manager to check on him. The manager unlocked Henderson's apartment door and found nothing disturbed in the living room and kitchen. He proceeded to one of the bedrooms, pushed open the door, and saw a body covered with blood. He promptly left and called 911.

Police officers arrived at the apartment soon thereafter and detected no signs of forced entry. They found Henderson's and Wrotenbury's bodies in their respective bedrooms at opposite ends of the apartment. Henderson's nude body was lying face-down in his bed, and Wrotenbury's body, clad only a pair of swimming trunks, was lying on the floor of his bedroom. Absence of significant blood in the hallway connecting the two bedrooms indicated that neither victim left his room during or after the attacks. Police found a bloody metal bar in the hallway and a bloody knife in the kitchen sink. Blood was all over the bedroom walls, doors, and curtains. Both victims' wallets were missing, and Henderson's car was gone.³

The forensic pathologist testified that Alan Wrotenbury suffered a severed carotid artery, cuts to the vertebrae, and at least three blows to the back of the head with a narrow blunt instrument consistent with a pipe. The force of one of the blows Wrotenbury received knocked out a tooth. Forrest Henderson had received a shallow, non-fatal cut to the neck, defensive wounds on both arms, a six-inch fracture of the skull from a blunt force, and multiple stab wounds to the torso. Fixed lividity in both bodies signified that both people had been dead for more than eight hours. Tests performed on both victims revealed no signs of drugs, alcohol, or semen.

Blood samples and 20 identifiable fingerprints were collected from the crime scene, but the Houston Police Department ("HPD") was unable to develop a suspect. In 1995, HPD upgraded to a new fingerprint system with an expanded database. The new system matched appellant with prints lifted from a beer can and a glass tumbler in Henderson's bedroom. A bloody print found on Henderson's bedroom door also matched appellant. An expert in blood-spatter interpretation testified that the bloody fingerprint could have been formed only by touching a blood drop while the blood was still wet-as opposed to a blood drop landing on an old fingerprint.

An HPD serologist testified that type-B blood was found on a bedroom door. Appellant is blood-type B; both victims were blood-type A. Only these blood types were detected at the crime scene. The State's DNA expert testified that appellant's DNA profile matched DNA isolated from blood stains on a red towel and a beige towel located in Henderson's bathroom. The odds that another African-American would possess the same profile is one in 7.2 million. Further, DNA analysis could not exclude appellant as a contributor of the blood mixture covering the metal bar.

In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319. Although our evaluation considers all evidence presented at trial, Johnson v. State, 967 S.W.2d 410, 412 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998), we may not re-weigh the evidence and substitute our judgment for that of the jury. Wilson v. State, 863 S.W.2d 59, 65 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993).

In his first point of error, appellant alleges that the fingerprint and DNA evidence does not establish him as the perpetrator because he could have left prints on the beer can and tumbler before the killings. Appellant further contends that he could have reentered the apartment after the killings to leave the bloody fingerprint on the door and his own blood on the bathroom towels. Appellant's scenario does not establish that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support the jury's verdict.

Appellant's bloody fingerprint puts him in the apartment while the blood was still wet. Further, the discovery of blood consistent with appellant's DNA profile on the towels and on the bloody bar leads to the reasonable conclusion that appellant was injured during the struggle with one or both of the victims. Thus, the evidence is legally sufficient to find that appellant killed Wrotenbury and Henderson. Point of error one is overruled.

In his second point of error, appellant argues that the evidence is insufficient to establish that Henderson and Wrotenbury were killed during the course of the same criminal transaction. As support for this allegation, appellant relies on the testimony of (1) Trujillo that he did not hear Henderson's voice after 10:30 p.m. and heard only Wrotenbury struggling several hours later and (2) the medical examiner that he could not pinpoint the time of death of either victim. Appellant argues that someone could have entered the apartment through the private staircase, killed Henderson, left the apartment, reentered the apartment, and killed Wrotenbury.⁴

To convict appellant of capital murder, the jury in this case was required to find that appellant intentionally caused the death of two individuals, Forrest Henderson and Alan Wrotenbury, "during the same criminal transaction." TEX. PENAL CODE 19.03(a)(6)(A) (Vernon Supp. 1988). Because the legislature did not define the term "same criminal transaction," we have interpreted that phrase to mean "a continuous and uninterrupted chain of conduct occurring over a very short period of time . . . in a rapid sequence of unbroken events." Rios v. State, 846 S.W.2d 310, 311-312 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 1051(1993); Vuong v. State, 830 S.W.2d 929, 941 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 997 (1992).

Here, both victims were killed in the same manner with the same weapons and were found dead in the same apartment. Although the medical examiner testified that only Henderson's body showed signs of decomposition, he maintained that he could not determine who was killed first. He explained that Henderson's struggle with the assailant could have caused increased secretion of acid in his system, thus accelerating decomposition. Based on our review of the record, we find that "the jury could rationally conclude appellant engaged in a continuous and uninterrupted process, over a short period of time, of carrying on or carrying out murder of more than one person." Rios, 846 S.W.2d at 314. Appellant's second point of error is overruled.

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

In his third point of error, appellant complains that the trial court denied him a hearing under Kelly v. State, 824 S.W.2d 568 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) and Daubert v. Merrill-Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993), after he challenged the reliability of the State's DNA evidence. Specifically, appellant requested the court to determine whether "the DNA was collected and tested properly pursuant to accepted protocols, subjected to peer reviews, and properly calculated." Appellant further points out that at trial he "also expressed concern over the match...