Chambers v. State

• Decision Date: 28 June 1995
• Docket Number: No. 71532,71532
• Citation: 903 S.W.2d 21
• Parties: Ronald Curtis CHAMBERS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 21

903 S.W.2d 21

Ronald Curtis CHAMBERS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 71532.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

June 28, 1995.

Roger F. Joyner, Lawrence B. Mitchell--on appeal only--Dallas, for appellant.

John Vance, Dist. Atty. & Pamela Sullivan Berdanier, Dan Haygood, Jerri Sims, Greg Long & Toby Shook, Asst. Dist. Attys., Dallas, Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

OPINION

MALONEY, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of capital murder for a murder committed in the course of a robbery. Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.03(a)(2). The jury returned affirmative findings to the two special issues submitted to it and the trial court sentenced appellant to death. Appeal to this Court is automatic. ¹ Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 37.071(h).

In his first point of error appellant alleges the evidence is insufficient to support the jury's affirmative finding on the second special issue, whether there is "a probability that [appellant] would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society." A discussion of the evidence in a light most favorable to the verdict is necessary to fully address appellant's claim.

On the night of April 10, 1975, Mike McMahan and Deia Sutton, both college students, went to a night club in Dallas to meet some friends and dance. Upon leaving the club and approaching McMahan's car, they noticed four men sitting in the next car. McMahan let Sutton in on the passenger side and as he was getting in on the driver's side, two of the men, appellant and his cohort Clarence Ray Williams, forced their way into the car at gunpoint. Appellant ordered Sutton into the backseat with him. Sutton noticed a shotgun on the floorboard. Williams drove and was followed by the car with the two other men. As they were driving appellant instructed Sutton to give him her purse, coat and watch. McMahan was ordered to take off his trousers; appellant emptied the trousers pockets. Williams drove to the levee on the Trinity River, where Sutton and McMahan were forced from the car and ordered down the embankment. Sutton saw appellant with the shotgun and a pistol, she heard five gunshots, was struck in the back of the neck by a bullet and fell. McMahan was also struck and rolled down the hill. Appellant and Williams retreated up the hill. McMahan called out to Sutton to see if she was alright. Sutton heard Williams say "Hey, man, they're not dead" and appellant respond "They gotta to be dead. I shot 'em in the head." Williams and appellant came back down the hill. Appellant struck McMahan ten to twenty times in the head with the barrel of the shotgun, and ordered Williams to take Sutton into the water. Williams pulled Sutton to the water and attempted to choke and drown her. When appellant finished beating McMahan he came toward Sutton. She begged him not to kill her; he raised his shotgun over his head and struck her three times. She was left for dead, but survived. McMahan died as a result of multiple blows to the head; he had also suffered a punctured lung and two gunshot wounds.

Following the above, appellant and two of his cohorts went to the home of Nanny Jones. There, appellant washed blood and hair off the shotgun and the others attempted to burn Sutton's and McMahan's credit cards. Appellant wiped blood from the stolen money and divided it between them. Jones' thirteen-year-old daughter ² testified that appellant and one of his friends played dominoes and appellant seemed to be in a good mood. She also testified that she braided appellant's hair during the game. Thereafter appellant went upstairs and went to sleep.

During the punishment phase of trial the State presented evidence establishing that several days prior to the instant offense appellant was caught by a security guard while breaking into and damaging a washateria at an apartment complex. The officer who arrested appellant for that offense testified that at the station appellant was "laughing, joking, carefree" and stated that he would be out before the officer could finish writing up his report. There was also evidence that appellant was subject to approximately 25 disciplinary actions during his 17 years in the penitentiary following his first conviction for this offense, involving such matters as refusing to obey orders, use of vulgar language and creating disturbances. In one incident appellant was charged with threatening harm to a prison officer. There was evidence presented that prison mail room records showed books and magazines arriving for appellant on such subjects as bestiality, sadomasochism and incest. Timothy Keith, a supervisor at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice ("TDCJ"), testified that during his seven years working on death row he had observed appellant "cussing guards, threatening, making threatening gestures ... [displaying] aggressive behavior towards the staff." He also testified that it is TDCJ policy to try and resolve such problems informally and that a report is filed only if verbal discussions are ineffective. Keith testified that if 25 reports were filed, there would have been many more incidents that were not written up. Keith further testified that appellant was dangerous, manipulative, "represent[ed] himself to be aggressive, especially to someone who's a smaller person" and would constitute a continuing threat to society.

We have recently clarified our role as a reviewing court in considering sufficiency of the evidence in a capital case:

[A]s an appellate court, our task is to consider all of the record evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict and to determine whether, based on that evidence and those inferences, a rational jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt [the elements of the offense or the special issue under consideration]. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1973). Thus, our review is a very limited one. We do not act as a thirteenth juror re-evaluating the weight and credibility of the evidence. Rather, we act only "as a final, due process safeguard ensuring ... the rationality of the factfinder." Moreno v. State, 755 S.W.2d 866, 867 (Tex.Crim.App.1988).

Wilkerson v. State, 881 S.W.2d 321, 324 (Tex.Crim.App.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 671, 130 L.Ed.2d 604 (1994); see also Burns v. State, 761 S.W.2d 353, 356 n. 4 (Tex.Crim.App.1988) ("we have abandoned any pretense of this Court balancing mitigating and aggravating evidence"). Compare Wilkerson, 881 S.W.2d at 328-44 (Baird, J., dissenting) (urging Court to balance aggravating and mitigating evidence in reviewing sufficiency claims in capital cases).

The facts of the instant offense were particularly brutal. Appellant and his cohorts waited in the parking lot of a nightclub for the opportunity to apprehend and rob unsuspecting victims. Upon apprehending and robbing the victims, they drove directly to the levee for the purpose of eliminating the victims as witnesses. The testimony of the medical examiner, Dr. Vincent DiMaio, revealed the brutal nature of McMahan's murder, which was witnessed by Sutton. DiMaio described 10 "wound complexes" ³ to McMahan's head. The most severe wound he described as follows:

Then, in the lower part of the back of the head, running from approximately midline in a horizontal path toward the front of the head, was the largest wound, a large, gaping tear in the scalp that measured four inches long by one and a half inches wide. You could see through this gaping tear in the scalp into the cranial cavity, you could see the brain. And what had happened was there had been a blunt-force blow here and the bone underneath had been fragmented, part of it had fallen out, and part of the bone had been driven into the brain, creating this hole.

DiMaio explained that this type of laceration could only be caused by a "[t]remendous amount of force":

This is one of the thickest areas of the skull, back here. The whole head was caved in and the bone was broken into little fragments, in splinters. And, in fact, the hole was bigger than the hole in the scalp. The hole in the bone actually measured four by two and a half inches.

The evidence also showed that the barrel of the shotgun used to beat McMahan was bent. DiMaio agreed that there could have been more than 10 blows to the head, as some could have struck the same area repeatedly resulting in a single wound complex. DiMaio further testified that he had determined that McMahan "was alive at the time he received every one of the blows" and stated that the blows would have been tremendously painful.

The evidence showed that appellant was the person in charge. Sutton testified appellant gave all of the orders and was the party in possession of the guns. After the offense, appellant divided up the money. He was jovial and stated that McMahan had a hard head and that he had started to rape Sutton. ⁴ Appellant's lack of remorse was demonstrated in his casual manner and ability to play dominoes and have his hair braided immediately following the offense.

Finally, although there was no evidence of adjudicated offenses, there was evidence of appellant's belligerent and aggressive character, as demonstrated by the numerous disciplinary reports in prison.

The facts of the instant case are remarkably similar to the facts in King v. State, 631 S.W.2d 486, 504 (Tex.Crim.App.1982). There, two young persons, the deceased and his female companion, were accosted outside a nightclub in Houston by the defendant and a cohort. They were forced into the defendant's vehicle. The defendant and his friend took their money and began driving around discussing whether to kill both of them or just the deceased. Upon deciding to kill only the deceased, the defendant stopped the truck and beat the deceased in the head with a shotgun, causing his death. The deceased's companion was forced to watch the beating; she was...