Estrada v. State

• Decision Date: 16 June 2010
• Docket Number: No. AP-75,634.,AP-75
• Citation: 313 S.W.3d 274
• Parties: Adrian ESTRADA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

313 S.W.3d 274

Adrian ESTRADA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. AP-75,634.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

June 16, 2010.

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Cynthia Orr, San Antonio, and Brian W. Stull, Durham, NC, for Appellant.

Crystal Chandler, Asst. Crim. Dist. Atty., San Antonio, Jeffrey L. Van Horn, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

OPINION

HERVEY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which KELLER, P.J., MEYERS, JOHNSON, KEASLER, HOLCOMB and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

Appellant was convicted of capital murder for murdering Stephanie Sanchez ("Sanchez") and their thirteen-week-old unborn child on December 12, 2005. See §§ 19.03(a)(7)(A), TEX. PEN.CODE (making it a capital offense to intentionally or knowingly murder more than one person during the same criminal transaction); 1.07(26), TEX. PEN.CODE (defining an individual to include an unborn child). Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special issues, the trial court sentenced appellant to death. Appellant raises forty-four points of error on direct appeal. We will sustain point of error two and reverse and remand this case for a new punishment hearing. We overrule all guilt-phase points of error and all other punishment-phase points of error that we find necessary to address.

Appellant claims in point of error one that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the jury's affirmative answer to the future-dangerousness special issue. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's finding on this issue, the evidence shows that appellant was a youth pastor at a church in San Antonio. Sanchez was in appellant's youth group, and she lived with her mother and father and her three younger siblings. Appellant and Sanchez began having sex when Sanchez was sixteen years old and appellant was twenty years old. Appellant impregnated Sanchez three times. The first time, Sanchez got an abortion. The second time, she miscarried. The third time, Sanchez decided to have the baby. Appellant told Sanchez that he wanted to share his life with her and their baby. Appellant did not tell Sanchez that he was having sex with another underage girl (Vargas) in his youth group.

Soon after this, the then 22-year-old appellant went to Sanchez's home at a time when he knew that she would be alone. Sanchez was seventeen years old and thirteen weeks pregnant. Appellant choked Sanchez and stabbed her eight times in the back and five times in the back of the head and neck. Appellant left Sanchez's body on the kitchen floor knowing that her father and siblings would be home soon and find her. The medical examiner testified that Sanchez's cause of death was "multiple stab wounds and manual strangulation." Several of the stab wounds in Sanchez's back fractured some ribs and penetrated a lung. The unborn child received no stab wounds during the attack. The medical examiner testified that a separate autopsy was performed on the unborn child and that there was nothing "wrong with that child that would cause death except the fact that the mother had—was dead."

Vargas testified that appellant told her about two weeks before the murders that he wished that he could kill Sanchez. Appellant told the police that he killed Sanchez when she attacked him with a knife and that he stabbed her because "she wasn't dying" when he was choking her. Appellant also told the police that Sanchez was ruining his life.

The evidence also shows that appellant committed indecency with a child with another girl (Reyes) in his youth group when Reyes was fifteen years old. Appellant threatened to "ruin" a former member (Natera) of the youth group after she threatened to reveal appellant's relationship with Vargas. The State presented evidence that, if sentenced to life in prison without parole, appellant would have opportunities to commit violent crimes in prison and he would have contact with a number of people in prison including female guards and female employees. The State also presented evidence that male prisoners having sex with female guards is "not an isolated phenomenon" and that this "compromises the system when that happens, it compromises security." The State presented other evidence that there have been hostage situations in prison "involving rape, very brutal assaults and murder against female guards" and "female employees." Evidence was also presented that there is less of an incentive for a sentenced-to-life-without-parole inmate to behave in prison.¹

Appellant presented the testimony of two witnesses (Casas and Labatt), who provided evidence of appellant's good character. Appellant presented evidence that he was not a disciplinary problem during his pretrial incarceration. Appellant also presented evidence from which a jury could conclude that not very many violent crimes are committed by prison inmates and that a sentenced-to-life-without-parole appellant would not be dangerous in prison.

Point of error one asserts that "remorseful, peaceful, non-violent, and a model prisoner subject to lifetime incarceration if not executed, Adrian Estrada poses absolutely no threat of future danger and the State's showing of future dangerousness was legally insufficient." The future-dangerousness special issue asks a jury to decide "whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society." See Article 37.071, § 2(b)(1), TEX.CODE CRIM. PROC.

Appellant claims that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the jury's affirmative answer to the future-dangerousness special issue under this Court's decision in Berry v. State.² We understand appellant to argue that Berry should be read to require the future-dangerousness special issue to first ask a jury whether a life-sentenced capital defendant would be dangerous to prison society while incarcerated in prison and then whether the defendant would be dangerous to free society if the defendant is ever released on parole.³ Appellant further argues that the evidence in this case shows that he is dangerous only to teenage girls and that, "if allowed to live, he will spend the rest of his life in prison" where he would not "have access to teenage women, much less that he would be placed in an authority position over them."

We do not read Berry as adopting appellant's interpretation of the future-dangerousness special issue. This Court's case law has construed the future-dangerousness special issue to ask whether a defendant would constitute a continuing threat "whether in or out of prison" without regard to how long the defendant would actually spend in prison if sentenced to life. See, e.g., Druery v. State, 225 S.W.3d 491, 506-07 (Tex.Crim.App.2007) ("State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence in the future, so as to constitute a continuing threat, whether in or out of prison"); Smith v. State, 898 S.W.2d 838, 846 (Tex.Crim.App.1995) (plurality op.)⁴ (how long a life-sentenced capital defendant will spend in prison "is not proper even in the context of the future-dangerousness special issue because when a jury is considering whether a defendant represents a continuing threat to society, the term `society' includes both the prison and non-prison populations") (emphasis in original); Muniz v. State, 851 S.W.2d 238, 250 (Tex.Crim.App.1993) (State required to prove that the defendant "would, more likely than not, commit violent criminal acts in the future so as to constitute a continuing threat to society whether in or out of prison"). This "commonsense" or "core" interpretation of the future-dangerousness special issue is also consistent with the Legislature's use of the word "would" instead of "will" in this special issue.⁵ It is also consistent with this Court's prior cases deciding that the phrase "continuing threat to society" in the future-dangerousness special issue need not be defined in the jury charge because jurors are "supposed to know" its "common meaning." See King v. State, 553 S.W.2d 105, 107 (Tex.Crim.App.1977).

We also note that this Court has characterized appellant's interpretation of the future-dangerousness special issue as "a complex, backward analysis." See Matchett v. State, 941 S.W.2d 922, 939 (Tex.Crim. App.1996) (permissible for jury to consider the threat that defendant posed to "society" without "distinguishing between `free' or `prison' society and without developing a `parole' scenario by which defendant might become a threat to `free society'"). And in Chamberlain v. State, 998 S.W.2d 230, 235 n. 2 (Tex.Crim.App.1999), this Court decided that the trial court did not err to refuse the defendant's requested jury charge that stated:

When you decide whether the Defendant will continually commit violent crimes, you must consider the fact that if given a life sentence he will be sentenced to life in prison and will therefore not live among society in the free world. Thus, if you believe that the Defendant will not continually commit violent crimes in prison, you must answer the future-dangerousness special issue "no", even if you believe there is a likelihood he would do so if he was a free man.

We further note that, before 1999, when the Legislature enacted legislation that permitted a trial court to submit a minimum-parole-eligibility jury instruction at the defendant's request, this Court would reject a capital defendant's claim that he was entitled to a minimum-parole-eligibility jury instruction because the term "society" in the future-dangerousness special issue included both free and prison society. See Smith, 898 S.W.2d at 846.⁶ This is further support for the view that this Court believed that the future-dangerousness special issue asks a jury to decide whether a defendant would be dangerous "whether in or out of prison" without regard to how long the defendant would...