Gribble v. State

• Decision Date: 14 November 1990
• Docket Number: No. 70773,70773
• Citation: 808 S.W.2d 65
• Parties: Timothy Lane GRIBBLE, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 65

808 S.W.2d 65

Timothy Lane GRIBBLE, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 70773.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas En Banc.

Nov. 14, 1990.

Rehearing Overruled Feb. 20, 1991.

Certiorari Denied June 24, 1991.

See 111 S.Ct. 2856.

Thomas W. McQuage, Galveston, for appellant.

Michael J. Guarino, Dist. Atty., and Roger Ezell, Asst. Dist. Atty., Galveston, Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION

TEAGUE, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of capital murder, it being alleged that he committed the murder of Elizabeth Jones ¹ during the course of kidnapping her. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code § 19.03(a)(2). After the jury answered the submitted special issues in the affirmative, the trial judge assessed appellant's punishment at death. Art. 37.071(e), V.A.C.C.P. Appeal to this Court is automatic. See Art. 37.071(h), V.A.C.C.P.; Rule 40(b)(1), Tex.R.App.Pro.

In the interest of justice, we will address and decide the issue whether the evidence is sufficient to establish the allegation that went to the underlying felony offense of kidnapping, i.e., it is alleged in the indictment in this cause that appellant committed the murder of Jones during the course of kidnapping her, which caused the offense of murder to be elevated to the offense of capital murder. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code Sec. 19.03(a)(2). We will hold that the evidence is sufficient to sustain that allegation of the indictment.

Because we interpret appellant's fifth, twelfth, and thirteenth points of error as challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his capital murder conviction, we will also address, but will overrule, these points of error. ² Furthermore, we will address and sustain appellant's points of error numbered fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. ³ We will not address appellant's other points of error. ⁴

I.

On September 8, 1987, Elizabeth Jones disappeared. When she missed work the next day, her friends began to search for her. They hired a private investigator, notified local law enforcement authorities, and called area hospitals, all to no avail. Several weeks later, appellant confessed to killing her and showed the police where he had concealed her body. ⁵

According to a composite of various statements appellant gave to the police and private investigators over a period of time, appellant admitted that he had been working as a roofer on a crew remodeling the deceased's home, and that on the date of her disappearance he was the last workman at the site and, before leaving, was permitted to use the bathroom in the residence. Later, after eating dinner with his wife and step-children, appellant left home to return several rented videotapes, but found the store to which he went closed. On the way back he drove past the house of Jones, the deceased, and stopped. He could see that Jones had retired for the night, but knocked on the front door anyway. When Jones answered the door, she was dressed only in a robe. Appellant told her that he had lost his wallet, which he hadn't, and wondered if he might have left it in her bathroom. She consented to him entering her house on this pretext. Appellant claimed that thereafter they drank wine, talked, and had consensual sex. Appellant also claimed that the deceased expressed a desire to visit Paris, France, and that he took her to the Houston Intercontinental Airport the next morning in exchange for the promise of substantial payment. The latter statements were proved by the police to be false. Appellant also admitted that once inside of Jones' residence he grabbed Jones' wrist after which she resisted but he claimed that she willingly participated in sexual relations with him for several hours. Afterwards, they talked for a while and watched televison. Eventually, appellant fell asleep on her bed.

Sometime later, still before dawn, appellant woke up. The deceased had made coffee, and urged appellant to leave so that she could dress for work. He asked her not to tell anyone about his being there but, in spite of his pleas, she told him that she was going to notify the police about how he had sexually abused her. Panicked by her refusal to relent, appellant ordered her into his truck. He made her lie down with her head in his lap so that she wouldn't know where they were going. After driving aimlessly for an hour, he finally stopped at a secluded place in the county, approximately ten miles from Jones' residence. Appellant's intention at that time was apparently to tie Jones up so that he would have time to see his family and leave town before she could report him to the police, but when his intentions became clear to her, she began to scream for help. In an effort to silence her, appellant looped the sash from her robe around her neck and pulled it tight. To his surprise, she was dead within a few minutes. He then dragged her body beneath a tree and covered it with brush. When appellant returned to his truck he discovered the deceased's purse and, after filling it with rocks, threw it into a nearby lake.

Based on the above, police investigators discovered the remains of Elizabeth Jones' body and her purse in exactly the locations appellant described. Jones' body and her purse were found almost a month after she had been reported missing.

II.

In his fifth point of error, appellant maintains that the confession offered against him at trial was illegally obtained and that, absent its introduction, the evidence was insufficient to connect him with the offenses alleged in this case. In making this argument, appellant overlooks the principle of law that the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain appellant's conviction is determined by evaluating the probative weight of all the evidence that the trial judge permitted the jury to consider, including erroneously admitted evidence. Beltran v. State, 728 S.W.2d 382, 389 (Tex.Cr.App.1987); Porier v. State, 662 S.W.2d 602, 606 (Tex.Cr.App.1984). Because appellant does not contend that all the evidence admitted at his trial was insufficient to sustain his conviction for capital murder, his fifth point of error is overruled. Faulder v. State, 745 S.W.2d 327, 330 (Tex.Cr.App.1987); Collins v. State, 602 S.W.2d 537 (Tex.Cr.App.1980).

III.

Appellant claims in his thirteenth point of error that his confession contained exculpatory material which the State failed to disprove, rendering the evidence insufficient to support his conviction.

Prior to adoption of the Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence, effective September 1, 1986, our case law provided that "[w]here the state puts in evidence the statements of the accused party which exculpates the accused, and does not directly or indirectly disprove them, the accused is entitled to an acquittal." Palafox v. State, 608 S.W.2d 177 (Tex.Cr.App.1980), quoting from Banks v. State, 56 Tex.Cr.R. 262, 265, 119 S.W. 847, 848 (1909). Although application of this rule was subject to considerable disagreement, we have since held "that for cases tried after the effective date of Tex.R.Crim.Evid. Rule 607, the State will not be bound by exculpatory statements which previously fell under the voucher rule pursuant to Palafox, 608 S.W.2d 177." Russeau v. State, 785 S.W.2d 387, 390 (Tex.Cr.App.1990).

In this cause, the State had the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant killed his victim intentionally during the course of kidnapping her or attempting to kidnap her in order to establish the offense of capital murder. Because appellant's confession reports only an accidental or negligent killing of the deceased, it is alone insufficient for this purpose. But it does not follow that the State's burden is somehow made greater by introduction of appellant's confession into evidence. Requiring the State to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant killed the deceased unintentionally is neither qualitatively nor quantitatively different than requiring it to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed her intentionally. Accordingly, the fact that the State offered appellant's confession, which admitted to an unintentional killing of the victim, does not in the least affect the State's burden of proof as regards appellant's culpable mental state when the offense was committed. ⁶

Because appellant does not claim that the evidence, taken as a whole, was insufficient to prove that he killed the deceased intentionally, we overrule his thirteenth point of error.

IV.

In point of error number twelve, appellant asserts that "The District Court erred in denying the Defendant's Motion for Instructed Verdict, and in entering its judgment of conviction of capital murder, because the evidence was legally insufficient to prove the elements of the offense of kidnapping by corroborating the statements of the Defendant admitted into evidence." (Our emphasis.) ⁷

We pause to point out that the record reflects that appellant did not present any evidence after the State rested its case and after appellant's motion for an instructed verdict of not guilty was overruled by the trial judge. Cf. Kuykendall v. State, 609 S.W.2d 791 (Tex.Cr.App.1981).

This Court has long subscribed to a variant of the common law rule that an extrajudicial confession of the accused is insufficient to support conviction unless corroborated. ⁸ In Texas, as in most other American jurisdictions, the rule has been construed to require independent evidence of the corpus delicti, not merely support for credibility of the confession. ⁹ Although often inconsistent in our understanding of the term, ¹⁰ we have usually held corpus delicti to mean harm brought about by the criminal conduct of some person. Bridges v. State, 172 Tex.Cr.R. 655, 362 S.W.2d 336, 337 (1962). Thus, the extrajudicial confession of a criminal defendant must be corroborated by other evidence tending to show that a crime was committed. Brown v. State, 576 S.W.2d 36, 42-43 (Tex.Cr.App.1979) (opinion on...