Chambers v. State

• Decision Date: 27 October 1993
• Docket Number: No. 71345,71345
• Citation: 866 S.W.2d 9
• Parties: Tony CHAMBERS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 9

866 S.W.2d 9

Tony CHAMBERS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 71345.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas,

En Banc.

Oct. 27, 1993.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 8, 1993.

Donald F. Killingsworth, Tyler, for appellant.

Jack Skeen, Jr., Dist. Atty., and Amy R. Blalock, Asst. Dist. Atty., Tyler, Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION

MILLER, Judge.

Appellant was convicted in August 1991, of capital murder under Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(2) for an offense committed in November 1990. Upon the jury's returning affirmative answers to the special issues under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 37.071(b), appellant was sentenced to death as mandated by Art. 37.071(e). Under Art. 37.071(h), direct appeal to this Court is automatic. We will affirm.

Appellant raises twenty-seven points of error challenging: the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury's finding of guilt; the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury's affirmative answers to the punishment issues; the sufficiency of the evidence corroborating his various confessions; the trial court's failure to quash the indictment; the trial court's failure to suppress his written, oral, and videotaped confessions as the products of an illegal arrest; the trial court's failure to suppress his written and videotaped confessions on the grounds that they were involuntary; the admission of an illegally obtained confession; the trial court's improper excusal of three venirepersons and the failure of the court to sustain his challenge for cause to another venireperson; the State's improper exclusion of black venirepersons from the jury and the court's denial of appellant's motion for mistrial on Batson grounds; the trial court's limitation of appellant's cross-examination of a State's witness to show bias and self-interested motive; the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on the definition of "deliberately"; the court's denial of a special instruction and submission of a special issue regarding mitigating evidence.

Appellant was convicted of intentionally causing the death of an eleven-year-old girl "by strangling her" in the course of committing and attempting to commit aggravated sexual assault. The trial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, established the following:

On November 19, 1990, the victim, attended a basketball game at her school, Dogan Middle School in Tyler. At the game several people saw the victim in the company of appellant; several witnesses testified that they saw appellant and the deceased leave the game together. When she did not return home from the game, her grandfather, with whom she lived, informed her mother, and they filed a missing persons report. On November 21, 1990, the deceased victim's mutilated corpse was found in the woods near Dogan Middle School.

The deceased was found lying on her back, with her dress pulled over her stomach and her legs spread apart. She was not wearing underwear. She had strange cuts on her abdomen. Her shorts, with the crotch area ripped open, and her panties were near the body. Shoelaces were found lying next to the tree where the body was discovered. The area of pine straw surrounding the body was disturbed, indicating a struggle had occurred.

The medical examiner testified that there existed evidence of sexual intercourse within twenty-four hours before death, that several wounds indicated that a struggle had taken place, and that the deceased had been choked to death by a person using his hands. Based on the decomposition and hardening of the body, he estimated that the deceased had been dead for more than twenty-four hours before the body was found. He also explained that in strangulation once a person becomes brain dead, the heart continues to pump blood for approximately twenty minutes; to a person untrained in medicine, the dead person may appear to be alive because they may make groaning noises and gasp-like sounds. He opined that the choking had to continue for longer than fifteen minutes to kill the victim. He testified that the mutilation of the deceased's abdomen had been performed post mortem and had been inflicted with both a dull and a sharp instrument.

Through appellant's various confessions the following evidence was introduced: Appellant went to the Dogan Middle School basketball game. After a short while, he left the game with the deceased and went into the wooded area near the school. There he twice sexually assaulted the deceased. After the sexual assault, he "snapped," choking the deceased with his hands but not killing her. He tied her hands behind a tree with shoelaces and then started to leave, but he got scared; so he returned to where she was and tied her feet to another tree. She was sitting between the two trees. He attempted again to find his way out of the woods, but on hearing her begging him not to leave her in the woods, his "mind snapped again." He returned and choked her again, telling her to be quiet. After her "neck seemed to pop," he untied her and her body fell to the ground. She started groaning and gasping for air; so he choked her again because he feared that she would tell someone about his earlier attempts to kill her. He choked her until he was certain that she was dead, stating that he "thought she would never die."

Appellant explained that the abdominal cuts and punctures "just happened." Appellant used a scalpel and protractor to make the mutilations. He later led the police to the discarded instruments.

I. Sufficiency of Evidence

Appellant argues that the evidence was insufficient to support a capital murder conviction. A sufficiency review requires that, while viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we ask whether any rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt all of the elements of the offense. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); Nelson v. State, 848 S.W.2d 126, 131 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).

Upon review of the record, including appellant's lengthy and detailed confessions, we determine that a rational trier could have determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the charged offense was committed. Appellant's twentieth point of error is, therefore, overruled.

In his twenty-first point of error, appellant asserts that there was insufficient evidence to corroborate his extrajudicial confessions. Specifically, appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient to corroborate his confessions to the underlying offense of aggravated sexual assault.

In Gribble v. State, 808 S.W.2d 65, 70 (Tex.Crim.App.1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1232, 111 S.Ct. 2856, 115 L.Ed.2d 1023 (1991) ¹, we held that in capital murder cases, as in all other cases, the defendant's extrajudicial confession must be "corroborated by other evidence tending to show that a crime was committed," i.e., by independent evidence of the corpus delicti. Id. The perpetrator's identity is not a part of the corpus delicti and so need not be corroborated. Id. But, in capital murder cases, extrajudicial confessions must be corroborated as to the underlying felony offense since it is part of the corpus delicti. Id. at 71. In Gribble, we stated that "evidence independent of appellant's confession was required to show that his victim had been kidnapped," but we emphasized that "such evidence need not ... be sufficient by itself to prove" the underlying offense. Id. All that is required is that there be some evidence which renders the commission of the offense more probable than it would be without the evidence. Id. ²

In the present case, there is ample evidence corroborating appellant's confessions that he sexually assaulted the victim before killing her. The victim was an eleven-year-old girl. Her body was found in the woods near her school, lying on her back, with her dress pulled over her stomach and her legs spread apart. Her panties and shorts were found nearby. The crotch area of her shorts was ripped open. The area of pine straw surrounding the body was disturbed, indicating that a struggle had taken place. Evidence established the presence of spermatozoa in the victim's vagina, and the medical examiner testified that intercourse had occurred within twenty-four hours prior to the victim's death.

A rational trier of fact could find sufficient evidence of the corpus delicti of capital murder including the underlying offense of aggravated sexual assault to corroborate appellant's confessions. Appellant's twenty-first point of error is overruled.

In point of error twenty-two, appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient for an affirmative answer to the question:

whether the conduct of the defendant that caused the death of the deceased was committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased or another would result ...

TEX.CODE CRIM.PROC.ANN. art. 37.071(b)(1) (Vernon 1981).

The evidence established that appellant sexually assaulted his eleven-year-old victim twice after taking her into some secluded woods near her school. He confessed that he tied her up with her shoelaces intending to leave her in the woods but that he became afraid that she would report him. So he returned to where she was, with some effort since it was dusk and choked her with his bare hands around her neck. He again attempted to leave, but could hear her making noises; so he returned to insure her death, again choking her. He confessed thinking "that she would never die." After raping and killing the deceased, appellant mutilated the corpse with his scalpel. We believe the evidence supports the jury's finding that appellant acted "deliberately and with reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased ... would result." Appellant's twenty-second point of error is overruled.

In his twenty-fifth point of error, appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain an...