Carsner v. State
| Decision Date | 15 June 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 08-11-00326-CR,08-11-00326-CR |
| Parties | LAURA CARSNER, Appellant, v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the 171st District Court of El Paso County, Texas
(TC#20090D05416)
Laura Carsner was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The trial court denied Appellant's motion for new trial based on newly-discovered evidence, finding that the first two prongs of the four-prong test had been met, i.e., that the evidence was newly discovered, as it was unknown or unavailable to Appellant prior to trial and she did not fail to use due diligence in obtaining it. But the trial court also found that the evidence did not meet the third prong of the test - it was merely cumulative or corroborative of the evidence presented at trial. In our original opinion, we concluded that the evidence was not merely cumulative or corroborative under the third prong, and we further found that it would have probably changed the outcome of the case under the fourth prong of the test. We therefore concluded that Appellant was entitled to a new trial. Carsner v. State, 415 S.W.3d 507, 514 (Tex. App.--El Paso 2013), vacated & remanded, 444 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). After granting the State's Petition for Discretionary Review, the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that we failed to analyze the first two prongs of the test, and remanded this case for further consideration. Carsner v. State, 444 S.W.3d 1, 1 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). Upon analyzing those two prongs, we conclude that the evidence cannot be considered newly discovered. We also reject Appellant's argument that the trial court erred by refusing her request for an instruction on the law of self-defense.
At trial, Appellant acknowledged that she shot and killed her mother and stepfather, but contended that she did so out of fear for her own safety and that of her then eight-year-old daughter. The evidence revealed that in the months preceding the shooting, Appellant's mother filed a complaint with Child Protective Services (CPS), alleging that Appellant had physically abused, neglected, or was unable to care for her daughter due to Appellant's alcoholism. At that time, Appellant's daughter was temporarily placed with a cousin, but when Appellant checked herself into a local residential treatment center, her daughter was permitted to reside there with her. According to Appellant, she forbade her daughter from going to a park where Appellant believed drug addicts congregated. Her daughter became angry, and "went yelling and screaming" to the management of the treatment center, which ultimately led to CPS's decision to place her in foster care in May 2009.
Thereafter, a series of court hearings were held to determine where Appellant's daughter should be placed. During this time, Appellant was living in Austin, but returned to El Paso for the court hearings. She was not allowed any contact with her daughter. Appellant testified that during the course of the CPS proceedings, she informed CPS on more than one occasion that her stepfather had molested her as a child and asked that her daughter not be placed with her mother and stepfather. At a court hearing held on August 28, 2009, Appellant discovered, allegedly for the first time, that her mother and stepfather were allowed to have unsupervised visits with her daughter at their home. Appellant also learned that her daughter had made an outcry of abuse against a cousin whom Appellant believed would have access to her daughter at her parents' home during these supervised visits. At the hearing, Appellant asked the judge not to allow any further unsupervised visits due to her fear that her stepfather would abuse her daughter, but the caseworker recommended allowing unsupervised visitation to continue, and that Appellant not be permitted to see her daughter for the time being.
Appellant recalled that she was extremely upset after the hearing and was barely able to sleep out of fear for her daughter's safety. The next day, Appellant drove to Las Cruces to complete the purchase of a gun she had started on August 26. Armed with the gun, Appellant drove to her mother and stepfather's home for the purpose of removing her daughter from the home in order to take the child to the police and to a doctor to be examined for signs of sexual abuse. Upon her arrival, she found her mother and stepfather in the backyard grilling hamburgers, along with her daughter and two of the victims' other grandchildren. Appellant claims that when she announced that she was there to take her daughter to the hospital, her stepfather "rushed" at her, causing her to fear her would take the gun away from her. She then reflexively began shooting the gun, firing eight shots that struck her mother, and four shots that struck her stepfather, resulting in their deaths.
Although Appellant admitted to the shooting, she contended that she did not intentionally kill them but fired her gun because she was afraid they would take her gun away, and because she feared for her own and her daughter's safety. Appellant further explained that her extreme reaction occurred because her stepfather had sexually molested her as a child, beginning when she was eleven years old, and that her mother had been aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it. According to Appellant, the abuse continued until she was seventeen years old, when her mother kicked her out of the house for violating the family's strict curfew rules.
The State argued at trial that the murder was premeditated and intentional, and that Appellant's claim that she had suffered childhood sexual molestation at the hands of her stepfather was recently fabricated as a means of excusing her conduct. During closing argument, the State maintained that Appellant had not directed any claims of sexual molestation against her stepfather until after her mother had made the CPS report. Consequently, Appellant's claim should be viewed with skepticism, but in any event, the claim, even if true, did not serve as a defense to the murder charge. The jury found Appellant guilty of capital murder, and she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Appellant filed a motion for new trial, asserting that she had "newly discovered evidence" that supported her defensive theory. At the hearing, she presented the testimony of Henry O'Hara, who had dated Appellant thirty years earlier when she was a senior in high school. O'Hara testified that after Appellant was sentenced, he read a newspaper article regarding her conviction indicating that the prosecutor had persuaded the jury that Appellant's assertion of childhood sexual abuse was recently fabricated.1 He voluntarily came forward to disclose this information to the district attorney's office, who then forwarded the information to the police, and ultimately to Appellant's counsel.
O'Hara explained that after he had dated Appellant for several months, she confided in him that she was frightened of physical intimacy because she had been sexually molested for several years during her childhood. Although O'Hara could not remember Appellant's exact words, he recalled that her assailant had either been her stepfather or her grandfather. He also recalled that she had described to him a particularly unusual form of abuse, with her assailant hanging her upside down, smearing hamburger meat over her, and licking it off.
Defense counsel testified that he had interviewed Appellant extensively about her claim of past sexual abuse prior to trial, and recognizing the importance of corroborating her claim, he asked her whether she could provide the names of any witnesses who could corroborate her outcry against her stepfather. Appellant did not identify O'Hara. In her testimony at the hearing, she acknowledged that she had dated O'Hara in high school, but she did not recall making an outcry to him or anyone else. Appellant claimed that O'Hara's testimony should therefore be considered "newly-discovered" evidence, and she sought a new trial on that ground.
Article 40.001 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides, "A new trial shall be granted an accused where material evidence favorable to the accused has been discovered since trial." TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 40.001 (West 2018). To be entitled to a new trial on the basis of newly discovered or newly available evidence, a defendant must satisfy a four-pronged test:
State v. Arizmendi, 519 S.W.3d 143, 148-49 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017); see also Keeter v. State, 74 S.W.3d 31, 36-37 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002). The trial court held that the first two prongs had been met, but that the third prong had not. Because of its finding on the third prong, the trial court explicitly refrained from addressing the fourth prong. Because it held that the third prong of the test had not been met, the trial court denied the motion for new trial.
In her appeal to this Court, Appellant argued that the trial court had abused its discretion in denying her a new trial. The State countered that none of the four prongs of the test had been satisfied. We noted in our original decision that the trial court had found in Appellant's favor on the first two prongs of the four-prong test, but had rejected her argument based on the third prong.2 Carsner, 415 S.W.3d at 512. We then addressed only the third and fourth prongs of the test, concluding that those prongs had been satisfied. Id. at 512-14. In particular, ...
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