Ex Parte Watkins

• Decision Date: 03 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. 1460-01.,No. 1461-01.,1460-01.,1461-01.
• Parties: Ex parte Jimmy Dean WATKINS.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

73 S.W.3d 264

Ex parte Jimmy Dean WATKINS.

No. 1460-01.

No. 1461-01.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

April 3, 2002.

[73 S.W.3d 265]

Lisa Mullen, Fort Worth, for Appellant.

Steven W. Conder, Asst. DA, Fort Worth, Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which MEYERS, PRICE, JOHNSON, and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.

In this case, we are asked to decide whether the doctrine of collateral estoppel applies in a subsequent prosecution of appellant for attempted capital murder or attempted murder of his wife's lover, when a prior jury found that appellant killed his wife "in sudden passion" during the same transaction. We find that the doctrine of collateral estoppel does apply, though it does not preclude the State from prosecuting the charged offenses. Therefore, we affirm the decision of the Second Court of Appeals, which held that the State is precluded from re-litigating the issue of sudden passion in the second trial. Ex parte Watkins, 52 S.W.3d 858 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2001).

I.

The evidence at the first trial showed that Nancy Watkins, appellant's estranged wife, made her husband move out of their home on December 21, 1998. She remained in the house with their two children. Her lover, Keith Fontenot, moved in that same evening. Through various telephone calls, appellant discovered that Keith and Nancy had made love that night on the living room floor with the children upstairs. The next afternoon, December 22 nd, appellant called his wife on his cellular telephone, telling her that he would kill her, kill Fontenot, and then kill himself. A few minutes later, he stormed into the house, still holding his telephone to his ear and carrying a gun. He went past Fontenot, who was in the living room, and found Nancy in the kitchen. He shot her twice, but neither wound was fatal. When Fontenot ran into the kitchen and saw Nancy on the floor, appellant began shooting at him. Fontenot was hit in the back and leg, but not seriously injured. As appellant continued to shoot at him, Fontenot ran out the front door and around the side of the house; he leapt over a chain link fence, ran through the back-yard, jumped over another fence into a neighbor's yard, where he collapsed and called for help. He then saw appellant come out of the house, get in his truck and drive off. Appellant had stopped shooting because he thought the gun was out of bullets. Within five minutes, he returned, having discovered that the gun was not out of bullets. Appellant re-entered the house, shot Nancy several more times—this time fatally— and then he drove off again.

At the guilt stage of appellant's trial for his wife's murder, defense counsel argued that appellant did not form any intent during this incident, arguing instead that appellant was temporarily insane and was mentally "gone."¹ The jury rejected this argument and convicted Jimmy Dean Watkins of murder. However, during the punishment phase, it was asked to decide whether appellant had murdered his wife "in sudden passion" under Tex. Penal Code § 19.02(d).² After lengthy deliberation the jury concluded that Jimmy Dean Watkins had acted under the immediate influence of sudden passion in causing his wife's death and it sentenced him to ten years community supervision. The State then indicted appellant for the attempted capital murder³ and attempted murder of Keith Fontenot, as well as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Appellant filed a pretrial writ of habeas corpus, alleging that the doctrine of collateral estoppel bars relitigating the issue of his mental state and that the double jeopardy clause bars the State from prosecuting him for the attempted capital murder of Mr. Fontenot. The trial judge denied habeas relief. The Second Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's denial of relief on appellant's double jeopardy claim, but reversed the trial court's denial of relief on the collateral estoppel issue. Ex parte Watkins, 52 S.W.3d 858, 861 (Tex. App.-Fort Worth 2001). The State then filed a petition for discretionary review with this Court, arguing that the court of appeals erred in granting appellant collateral estoppel relief.⁴

II.

The doctrine of collateral estoppel is embodied within the constitutional bar against double jeopardy.⁵ But the two are not identical.⁶ Double jeopardy bars any retrial of a criminal offense, while collateral estoppel bars any retrial of specific and discrete facts that have been fully and fairly adjudicated. Double jeopardy applies only to criminal cases,⁷ while collateral estoppel applies in both criminal and civil proceedings.⁸ Thus, cases hinging on the doctrine of double jeopardy do not necessarily apply to a collateral estoppel claim and those hinging on the doctrine of collateral estoppel do not necessarily apply to a claim of double jeopardy. The two doctrines are treated similarly, however, when a collateral estoppel claim is based on the constitutional rule set out in Ashe v. Swenson.

Under this constitutionally based doctrine of collateral estoppel, "when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit."⁹ That is, once a jury determines a discrete fact in favor of a criminal defendant, the State cannot contest the jury's finding in a subsequent proceeding.¹⁰ In applying the doctrine of collateral estoppel, courts must first determine whether the jury determined a specific fact, and if so, how broad—in terms of time, space and content—was the scope of its finding. Before collateral estoppel will apply to bar relitigation of a discrete fact, that fact must necessarily have been decided in favor of the defendant in the first trial.¹¹ The mere possibility that a fact may have been determined in a former trial is insufficient to bar relitigation of that same fact in a second trial.¹² In each case, courts must review the entire trial record, as well as the pleadings, the charge, and the arguments of the attorneys, to determine "with realism and rationality" precisely which facts the jury necessarily decided and whether the scope of its findings regarding specific historical facts bars relitigation of those same facts in a second criminal trial.¹³

A general verdict returned in the guilt phase of a criminal trial frequently makes it difficult to determine precisely which historical facts a jury found to support an acquittal. This task is considerably less difficult when a jury is given special fact issues to determine.¹⁴ Some of these discrete factual issues are submitted to the jury at the guilt stage, while others are submitted at the punishment stage.¹⁵ On some of these factual issues, the State has the burden to prove the fact beyond a reasonable doubt, while on others the defendant has the burden to prove the fact by a preponderance of the evidence.¹⁶ The essential common characteristic is that the jury has found a specific, discrete historical fact. If the jury decides that fact in the defendant's favor, the doctrine of collateral estoppel bars the State from relitigating it in a second criminal trial.

III.

In this case, the jury was given a special issue at the punishment phase which specifically asked whether Jimmy Dean Watkins acted in the heat of sudden passion when he murdered his wife.¹⁷ The jury answered yes. Thus, the jury necessarily found that appellant acted in the heat of sudden passion when he murdered his wife. That fact cannot be relitigated. It is barred by collateral estoppel. A finding that appellant was acting under the immediate influence of sudden passion when he fatally shot his wife does not, of course, necessarily mean that the jury determined appellant was acting under that same influence approximately five minutes earlier when he shot Keith Fontenot.

In its petition for discretionary review, however, the State did not claim that, even if the doctrine of collateral estoppel does apply to the issue of "sudden passion," these particular facts in this particular case nonetheless do not give rise to a collateral estoppel bar. Thus, we are not called upon to decide whether a rational trier of fact could have found that appellant's "sudden passion" state of mind at the time he murdered his wife was or could be different at the time he shot Keith Fontenot.¹⁸

Instead, the State, relying primarily upon the Supreme Court's decision in Monge v. California,¹⁹ argues that the doctrine of collateral estoppel simply does not apply to any punishment fact or issue, period. Monge, however, concerns the doctrine of double jeopardy, not collateral estoppel,²⁰ and moreover, the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey²¹ has sharply limited Monge's application.

In Monge, a sharply divided Supreme Court held that the double jeopardy clause does not bar retrial on a prior conviction allegation in the noncapital sentencing context.²² There the trial judge had found that the defendant had two prior convictions for "serious" felonies and sentenced Monge under California's "three strikes" law.²³ An intermediate appellate court, however, found that the sentencing proceeding did not contain proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had personally inflicted great bodily injury or used a deadly weapon during one of these prior offenses and that double jeopardy principles forbade the state from a retrial on the enhancement.²⁴ The Supreme Court disagreed, noting that "[h]istorically we have found double jeopardy protections inapplicable to sentencing proceedings ... because the determinations at issue do not place a defendant in jeopardy for an `offense.'"²⁵ Sentencing decisions favorable to a defendant, therefore, cannot generally be analogized to an acquittal of a criminal offense which would invoke the double jeopardy bar.²⁶ But neither the reasoning nor result in Monge applies to a jury finding of a specific and discrete...