Crayton v. State

• Decision Date: 27 January 2016
• Docket Number: No. 06–14–00208–CR,06–14–00208–CR
• Citation: 485 S.W.3d 488
• Parties: Tony Dewayne Crayton, Appellant v. The State of Texas, Appellee
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

485 S.W.3d 488

Tony Dewayne Crayton, Appellant

v.The State of Texas, Appellee

No. 06–14–00208–CR

Court of Appeals of Texas, Texarkana.

Date Submitted: November 3, 2015

Date Decided: January 27, 2016

Martin E. Braddy, Attorney at Law, Sulphur Springs, TX, for appellant

William W. Ramsay, Delta, Franklin, Hopkins County District Attorney, Sulphur Springs, TX, for appellee

Before Morriss, C.J., Moseley and Burgess, JJ.

OPINION

Opinion by Justice Moseley

Tony Dewayne Crayton waived his right to a jury trial and entered a plea of not guilty at his bench trial. The trial court found Crayton guilty and sentenced him to fifty years' imprisonment. On appeal, Crayton maintains that the trial court erred (1) when it took judicial notice of its own file and reviewed a competency evaluation during its deliberations, and (2) when it denied his motions to suppress evidence. For the reasons below, we affirm the trial court's judgment.

I. Background

After a 9–1–1 emergency operator received a call October 22, 2013, from the telephone at Jessica Tyler Crayton's mother's home on Morris Drive in Sulphur Springs, Texas, wherein no one spoke, Sulphur Springs police officers were dispatched to the place of origin of the call to investigate. Upon entry into the residence, the officers discovered the bloody and lifeless body of Jessica (who resided in the house with her mother, Crayton, and others), who had suffered multiple stab wounds

. Approximately an hour after the officers arrived at the Morris Drive scene, officers were dispatched to the site of Sulphur Springs' League Street overpass of Interstate Highway 30. Upon their arrival there, officers found Crayton lying in the westbound lane of the interstate. It appeared to the investigating officers that Crayton had jumped or fallen from the overpass onto the interstate. Although Crayton appeared to be conscious, he was unable to speak. While some of the officers assumed the task of managing the traffic flow on the interstate and while medical personnel were assisting Crayton, other officers took possession of his shoes, his cap, and a pair of glasses which were located on the ground near him and which had what appeared to be blood on them. In addition to assuming control over these belongings, an officer took photographs of Crayton, including photographs of a cut on Crayton's hand and of his tennis shoes, both of which having what appeared to be blood on them.

Emergency personnel transported Crayton by ambulance to the hospital in Sulphur Springs. While Crayton was at that hospital, one of the officers took possession of his clothing. Meanwhile, other Sulphur Springs officers were attempting to obtain a search warrant for Crayton's "person," the purpose of which was to assist them in Jessica's murder investigation. During the time the officers were working to obtain the search warrant, Crayton was transported by helicopter to another hospital in nearby Tyler, Smith County. Undaunted by Crayton's removal outside the county, upon learning of Crayton's relocation, the Sulphur Springs officers carried the search warrant they had obtained to the hospital in Tyler to execute it "on the person of Tony Crayton." Using the search warrant as their authority, the detectives retrieved blood, oral swabs, and fingernail clippings from Crayton. Crayton was charged with Jessica's murder while still hospitalized.

Crayton filed multiple pretrial motions to suppress the evidence arguing, among other things, that several items of his personal property and his person were taken without a warrant; he further argued that even though a search warrant was eventually obtained, the officers who executed the warrant were without jurisdiction to do so. The trial court denied Crayton's motions. Following a trial to the bench, the trial court found Crayton guilty of murder and sentenced him to fifty years' confinement in prison.

II. Crayton's Points of Error

A. The Trial Court Did Not Err When it Took Judicial Notice of its File

On September 15, 2014, the trial court issued an order appointing Dr. Michael Pittman to examine Crayton in regard to his competency to stand trial. On September 25, 2014, Pittman provided the trial court with his competency evaluation of Crayton, finding that he was competent to stand trial. Crayton contends that the trial court's action of taking judicial notice of the competency report issued by Pittman¹ (1) violated his Sixth Amendment right² to confront and cross-examine a witness under Crawford,³

(2) violated Article 46B.007 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure,⁴ and (3) violated Rule 201 of the Texas Rules of Evidence

.⁵

1. Analysis

In order to effectively preserve a complaint for appellate review, a party must first present the trial court a timely request, objection, or motion stating the specific grounds for the desired ruling if those grounds are not apparent from the context. TEX.R.APP. P. 33.1(a)(1)

. Further, the trial court must have either ruled on the request, objection, or motion, either expressly or implicitly, or, in the absence of a ruling, the complaining party must have objected to the trial court's refusal to rule. TEX.R.APP. P . 33.1(a)(2). A "point of error on appeal must comport with the objection made at trial." Wilson v. State, 71 S.W.3d 346, 349 (Tex.Crim.App.2002) ; see Swain v. State, 181 S.W.3d 359, 367 (Tex.Crim.App.2005).

An objection is timely if a party lodges a complaint as soon as the basis for it has become apparent. Hollins v. State, 805 S.W.2d 475, 476 (Tex.Crim.App.1991)

. The purpose of requiring a specific objection in the trial court is twofold: (1) to inform the trial court of the basis of the objection and give it the opportunity to rule on it and (2) to give opposing counsel the opportunity to respond to the complaint. Zillender v. State, 557 S.W.2d 515, 517 (Tex.Crim.App.1977). As explained in Resendez,

Although there are no technical considerations or forms of words required to preserve an error for appeal, a party must be specific enough so as to "let the trial judge know what he wants, why he thinks himself entitled to it, and do so clearly enough for the judge to understand him at a time when the trial court is in a proper position to do something about it."

Resendez v. State, 306 S.W.3d 308, 312–13 (Tex.Crim.App.2009)

(quoting Lankston v. State, 827 S.W.2d 907, 909 (Tex.Crim.App.1992) ). "The parties, not the judge, are responsible for the correct application of evidentiary rules," and "to preserve a complaint for appeal, the complaining party must have done everything necessary to bring the relevant evidentiary rule and its precise and proper application to the trial court's attention." See id. at 313.

Crayton agrees that in order to have preserved an issue for appeal, he was required to make an objection. In essence, Crayton tacitly concedes that he made no objection during the trial to the issue of the trial court having taken judicial notice of Pittman's report. He maintains that this was not necessary because (1) he was unable to lodge an objection prior to the trial court's announcement that it was taking judicial notice of the file (which contained Pittman's report); and (2) he timely raised the issue in his motion for new trial. Crayton contends that "[t]he requirement that an objection be raised in the trial court assumes that the appellant had the opportunity to raise it there." Burt v. State, 396 S.W.3d 574, 577 (Tex.Crim.App.2013)

(citing Hardeman v. State, 1 S.W.3d 689, 690 (Tex.Crim.App.1999) ; Issa v. State, 826 S.W.2d 159, 161 (Tex.Crim.App.1992) (per curiam)). Crayton argues that "if an appellant never had the opportunity to object, then he has not forfeited error." Id. at 577–78

(citing Rickels v. State, 108 S.W.3d 900, 902 (Tex.Crim.App.2003) ).

In this case, Crayton takes the position that the trial court took judicial notice of the file and, therefore, reviewed Pittman's report outside of the parties' presence and during private deliberations. In other words, the trial court had already taken judicial notice of the file and the report before Crayton had an opportunity to object. Thus, he contends that he properly raised his objection for the first time in his motion for new trial. The State responds that Crayton's reliance on Issa

is misplaced. The State maintains that unlike the circumstances of this case, the objectionable action in Issa was the last thing the trial court did before immediately leaving the bench, this being the reason that the defendant had no opportunity to object. Issa v. State, 826 S.W.2d 159, 160 (Tex.Crim.App.1992) (per curiam).

Here, the trial court gave a well-reasoned recounting of the method by which it arrived at its decision in this case. The trial court stated,

Less than an hour and a half after the stabbing death, while we can't put an exact time of the stabbing death, we can really get within a few minutes of when that occurred. And we—we know generally when the 911 calls began to pour in reporting that a person had jumped from the League Street overpass onto Interstate 30. And that happened less than an hour and a half after the stabbing. Couple that with the last text sent from Tyler's ^[6] phone, thank you, at 12:46.

We know that Sergeant Weatherford was dispatched or arrived on the scene, I should say, at 1:08 p.m. She would have been dispatched two to three minutes before that. And so you get a very small window of time of when it is that Jessica Tyler Crayton was stabbed to death.

Sergeant Weatherford, importantly, was dispatched there because 911 received a phone call from that residence with no sound on the other end, nobody speaking on the other end. Couple that with when Mr. Crayton is discovered laying [sic] on Interstate 30, having, from the credible evidence, hurled himself onto the highway from the bridge above. There were on the shoes, his shoes laying [sic] next to his body, having come off from the violent fall—there was blood on his shoes, and forensics show that that blood

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