Garcia v. State

• Decision Date: 28 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. PD-1633-04.,PD-1633-04.
• Parties: Daniel D. GARCIA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

201 S.W.3d 695

Daniel D. GARCIA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. PD-1633-04.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

June 28, 2006.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

David L. Botsford, Austin, for appellant.

Scott Roberts, Asst. Crim. Dist. Atty., San Antonio, Matthew Paul, State's Attorney, Austin, for state

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

Appellant Daniel D. Garcia was convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. On appeal, Garcia argued that evidence of a prior act was improperly admitted by the trial court. The court of appeals held that the trial court committed harmful error in admitting the evidence and reversed the judgment of the trial court. Garcia v. State, 150 S.W.3d 598 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 2004). We will reverse.

FACTS

The victim, Lesa Garcia, was Appellant's estranged wife. The marriage had been troubled for several years, and the couple had separated twice before the victim filed for divorce. The cause of the first separation was the "car dumping" incident, which is the prior bad act at issue in this case. The evening of the "car dumping" incident, Appellant and Lesa and their two sons had driven to Appellant's parent's home in Leon Springs. After dinner with Appellant's family, Appellant, Lesa, and their two sons were driving home when Appellant and Lesa began to argue about Appellant's desire for them to build a house on his parent's land and move from their home in San Antonio onto the "family compound." During the argument, Appellant pulled over on Loop 1604, unhooked Lesa's seatbelt, pushed her out of the car, and drove away, leaving her on the side of the road without her purse or cellular phone. She walked almost two miles to a grocery store and called her sister to come pick her up. Lesa reported the incident to the San Antonio Police Department the following week.

Appellant and Lesa were separated for the next two and a half months but then reconciled and began to see a marriage counselor. The counselor testified at trial that the "car dumping" incident was a frequent topic of discussion in the counseling sessions. He also testified that at one session, more than a year after the incident, Appellant admitted that he could get physical with Lesa if she nagged him. The next day, the counselor called Lesa and suggested that she file for divorce and obtain a protective order. The following week, Lesa hired an attorney and served Appellant with divorce papers, including a court order that he vacate their home. Appellant moved out of the home he and Lesa shared and stayed with his parents until he moved into a mobile home on his family's compound. The next day, Lesa changed the locks on her home.

For the next six months, Appellant and Lesa shared custody of their sons while they were working on a divorce settlement. Several days before Lesa's murder, Appellant, his attorney, Lesa, and her attorney met to discuss the property distribution, and for the first time, Appellant indicated that he wanted custody of the boys. The next day, Lesa asked Appellant if she could have the boys for the weekend, but he refused because it was his weekend.¹ He also refused her request that he take the boys to a birthday party the next day, claiming that he planned to take them to a family wedding. Instead of attending the wedding, Appellant and his sons spent that Saturday at the family compound. The next day, Appellant's family met for their traditional Sunday dinner at his parent's house. After dinner, Appellant took his sons back to the mobile home to get them ready for bed. He stated that while walking from his parent's house to his mobile home, he slipped and fell backward, bruising his right hand. When they arrived at the mobile home, Appellant bathed his sons. He stated that when he was getting his oldest son out of the tub, the boy slipped and scratched Appellant's chest.

Appellant's sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, as well as one of his nephew's friends left the family dinner and returned to their home, also on the family compound. Appellant's nephew and two of his teenaged friends were preparing to camp on the property that night. Appellant's other sister and brother-in-law and their children watched a movie after dinner and did not leave the family compound until around 1 a.m. to return to their home, which was not on the family compound. The front gate of the compound has a "dinger" which sounds inside Appellant's parent's house to alert them when someone enters or exits the property. Appellant's parents testified that the last time they heard the dinger was at around 1 a.m. when Appellant's sister and her husband and children left to go home. They also stated that the dinger rings very loudly inside their home, so they would have known if anyone had exited or entered the property that night. One of Appellant's nephew's friends, who was camping on the property, testified that he saw the headlights of a car enter the property and park at Appellant's mobile home. He believed that it was around 3 a.m. but he was not wearing a watch. When he asked the other boys who it was, Appellant's nephew replied, "Oh, it's just my uncle."

Later that morning, Appellant took his sons to daycare and went to work. That same morning, Lesa failed to show up for work. Her friend and co-worker became concerned and went to her home to check on her. Lesa's car was in the driveway, but Lesa did not answer the doorbell. Her friend went around to the back of the house and looked in a window. She saw Lesa's purse, but did not see Lesa. She also noticed that the exterior house lights and the soaker hose were still on.² She then called their employer and suggested that someone call Lesa's stepfather. Lesa's stepfather arrived at Lesa's house and used his key to enter the front door,³ setting off the alarm, which he could not disable. At that point, he found Lesa's body at the foot of the stairs, near the front door, and called 911.

The officers who arrived at the scene determined that there had been no forced entry to the home and it did not appear that anything had been stolen. The evidence technicians videotaped and photographed the scene and checked for fingerprints, hair, and DNA evidence, and bagged Lesa's hands to preserve the evidence under her fingernails. Blood was found in the upstairs master bedroom, on the stairs, and around Lesa's body at the bottom of the stairs. The medical examiner determined that she died from blunt-force head trauma and strangulation.

When detectives went to Appellant's office to inform him of his wife's death, they noticed scratch marks on his neck. They took him to the police station to gather more information about Lesa, but stopped the interview when Appellant asked for an attorney. Detectives obtained a warrant to photograph the scratches on his neck and to gather hair and blood samples for comparison to the evidence found at the crime scene. When the detectives took Appellant to the hospital to gather the evidence, they noticed that his hand was also bruised. After the photos, hair, and blood samples were taken, the detectives took Appellant back to his parent's house.

The material found underneath Lesa's fingernails was tested and determined to be consistent with Appellant's DNA.⁴ A month after Lesa's death, Appellant was arrested and charged with her murder.

Prior to the trial, Appellant filed a motion in limine, stating that the car dumping incident was inadmissible under Rules of Evidence⁵ 401, 403, and 404(b); that it violates the confrontation clause; and the testimony of the family members regarding the incident necessarily involves hearsay. The State responded that because Lesa called her sister crying, upset, and frightened as soon as she walked to the nearest telephone after being left on Loop 1604, the testimony of Lesa's sister regarding what Lesa told her about the incident fell under the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule, which rebuts the confrontation-clause objection. In response to the Rule 401, 403, and 404(b) claims, the State argued that the car dumping incident was relevant to motive and intent. The trial court denied the motion in limine and allowed Lesa's sister to testify regarding the car dumping incident. A counselor with whom Lesa had met several times after the incident also mentioned it in her testimony,⁶ as did the psychologist to whom Lesa and Appellant went for marriage counseling. After the marriage counselor testified, the trial judge gave the jury a limiting instruction, stating that the testimony should be used only in determining the intent or motive of the defendant, if any, in connection with the offense, if any, alleged against him in the indictment in this case, and for no other purpose. The State also elicited testimony regarding the car dumping incident on cross-examination of Appellant and his mother.

The jury found Appellant guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to ninety-nine years' imprisonment.

COURT OF APPEALS

Appellant appealed, arguing that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his conviction. The court examined the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and held that a rational jury could have found the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. 150 S.W.3d 598 at 606. Appellant also argued that the trial court improperly admitted evidence of the car dumping incident in violation of Texas Rules of Evidence 401, 403, and 404(b). The court first considered whether the evidence was relevant to a material issue or was being used to prove the character of Appellant in order to show that his actions at the time of the murder conformed to this character. The court determined that the car dumping incident had no purpose other than to show that Appellant acted violently in the past and acted in conformity with this violent character on the night in...