Easley v. State, 50288

• Citation: 529 S.W.2d 522
• Decision Date: 12 November 1975
• Docket Number: No. 50288,50288
• Parties: Charles Dennis EASLEY, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas

Page 522

529 S.W.2d 522

Charles Dennis EASLEY, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 50288.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Nov. 12, 1975.

Milton E. Douglass, Jr., Wichita Falls, for appellant.

Joe Max Shelton, City Atty. and Dan McMulty, Asst. City Atty., Sherman, Jim D. Vollers, State's Atty. and David S. McAngus, Asst. State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

OPINION

ROBERTS, Judge.

This is an appeal from a conviction for murder with malice. Trial was before a jury and the jury assessed punishment at one hundred (100) years' imprisonment. The offense occurred on April 1, 1970 and appellant's first conviction for this offense was reversed by this Court on March 14, 1973. Easley v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 493 S.W.2d 199. This appeal is from the conviction which resulted from appellant's second trial, which commenced on March 18, 1974, following a change of venue.

Appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support this conviction. Since we have determined that relief must be accorded on this ground, a detailed discussion of the evidence follows.

At the time of her death, Laurie Stevens was in the fifth grade at Lamar Elementary School in Denison. At 3:30 p.m. on April 1, 1970, she left school on foot, never to be seen alive again. After an extensive search, her body was found three days later lying face down in a ditch fifteen (15) feet from Randell Road in a rural part of Grayson County. Except for her shoes and socks, she was nude and she had been shot six times. Five .22 calibre slugs were recovered from the victim's body and a sixth was found in the dirt underneath the body. No spent cartridge casings were found at the site, and it could not be determined whether the murder weapon was a rifle or pistol, revolver or automatic.

Suspicion focused on the appellant and he was arrested on an unrelated charge of theft of gasoline on April 8, 1970. At the time of his arrest, appellant was driving a brown Pontiac. A .22 calibre six-shooter pistol was found on appellant's person, along with two boxes of .22 calibre shells.

Much of the testimony at trial concerned appellant's presence in the victim's neighborhood in the weeks prior to her death. Bennie Akers testified that he saw appellant driving a red 1968 Chevrolet with a dented right front fender in deceased's neighborhood about two to three weeks before her disappearance. About a week prior to that, he and Charles Kelly saw the same car involved in a collision in the neighborhood. On the morning of deceased's disappearance, appellant was seen in the red car asking directions to Travis Street of two boys in the neighborhood, Roy Lee Akers and Donnel Kelly. Kelly also testified that he would see appellant at least once a day three to four weeks prior to April 1, driving in deceased's neighborhood, but never on a Saturday or Sunday. Annie Mae Akers stated that she saw appellant pushing a motorcycle down the alley behind her house on three occasions 'something like' 'fairly close' to two weeks prior to April 1. On two occasions prior to April 1, Douglas Childs saw appellant in his red car near Lamar Elementary School. Deputy Sheriff Gene Lambert testified that appellant's house was 1.3 and 1.5 miles from the school and the victim's house, respectively.

After appellant's arrest, a search of his house was conducted by Grayson County authorities. Appellant had lived with his parents at 2407 Travis Street but the family had moved in late March, 1970. Investigation revealed numerous bullet holes, bullets, and shell casings around a shed at the back of the property, indicating someone had been doing a lot of target practice while the Easleys lived there. Officer Lambert found about six boxes (approximately 300 shells) of .22 calibre hulls in the area. It was not possible to determine if the shooting had been done with a rifle or a revolver.

Ballistics experts Roger Sedbury of the Texas Department of Public Safety and Charles M. Hoffman of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms testified at length at the trial. Sedbury said that the slugs recovered from the victim's body could not be matched to the pistol recovered from appellant at the time of his arrest. He testified that the tests were inconclusive. Hoffman echoed Sedbury's conclusions. When finally asked, 'But was there enough similarity to produce a conclusion that it could have been the weapon?' he stated, 'I don't feel any determination could have been made, sir, as to whether it was or not.'

Hoffman went on, however, to relate the results of some chemical comparison tests he performed on the slugs found in the body, those recovered from appellant at the time of his arrest, and those found at the house on Travis Street. These tests reveal differences in the chemical composition and trace metals of bullets from different manufacturers, and even between different 'batches' of bullets made by the same manufacturer. On the basis of these tests, he was able to form no opinion about the bullets found on appellant's person, but he was able to conclude that there was a 'high probability' that two of the bullets recovered at the Travis Street house came from the same batch as those found in the victim's body.

Hoffman also testified that he had attempted to compare samples of soil from the fender of the...