Griffin v. State
| Decision Date | 23 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | NO. 03-19-00429-CR,03-19-00429-CR |
| Parties | Richard Dale Griffin, Appellant v. The State of Texas, Appellee |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
FROM THE 274TH DISTRICT COURT OF HAYS COUNTY
NO. CR-16-0125-C, THE HONORABLE GARY L. STEEL, JUDGE PRESIDING
Richard Dale Griffin was charged with and convicted of one count of continuous trafficking of a person and sixty-three counts of possession of child pornography. See Tex. Penal Code §§ 20A.02, .03, 43.26. After a trial, Griffin was sentenced to life imprisonment for the trafficking offense and ten years' imprisonment for each possession offense. See id. §§ 12.34, 20A.03(e). In four issues on appeal, Griffin contends that the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction for continuous trafficking and that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a directed verdict, his motion asserting that the trafficking statute is unconstitutionally vague as applied in this case, and his motion to suppress. We will affirm the trial court's judgments of conviction.
BACKGROUND
When S.S. was in middle school, she and her brother enrolled in karate classes at Griffin's studio. After becoming S.S.'s instructor, Griffin began texting her with the frequency of those exchanges increasing over time, culminating with Griffin buying S.S. a new cellphone under his service plan. After a few years, Griffin began picking S.S. up from her high school or her home in order to have sex with her in one of his cars, his home, his karate studio, or his travel trailer. S.S. testified that Griffin would pick her up and drive her to those locations, that he had vaginal and oral intercourse with her several times each month over a period of two and a half years, and that there were between twenty and sixty total sexual encounters. During some of these assaults, Griffin took photographs of S.S. while she was naked, and he repeatedly asked S.S. to send him photos of herself naked.
After S.S. told her parents about Griffin's behavior, they contacted the police. During their investigation, the police seized several electronic devices found in Griffin's home, including computers and an iPhone. A search of those devices revealed pornographic images of S.S. and text threads between Griffin and S.S. that were sexual in nature. Before trial, Griffin filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his home, but the trial court denied the motion. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury found Griffin guilty of all the charges.
DISCUSSION
In his first issue on appeal, Griffin contends that the trial court erred by failing to grant his motion for a directed verdict. In his second issue, Griffin argues that the evidence is legally insufficient to support his conviction for trafficking. In his third issue, Griffin asserts that the trial court erred by denying his motion arguing that portions of the trafficking statute are unconstitutionally vague as applied to him in this case. In his final issue, Griffin insists that the trial court should have granted his suppression motion because the search-warrant affidavit pertaining to the search of his house contained misrepresentations and failed to establish probable cause that evidence of criminal activity would be found at his house. Consistent withGriffin's briefing, we will address his first two issues together because "[a] motion for a directed verdict is a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence" and is reviewed under the same legal-sufficiency standard. See Salazar v. State, No. 04-10-00086-CR, 2010 WL 4523785, at *1 (Tex. App.—San Antonio Nov. 10, 2010, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication).
Motion for Directed Verdict and Sufficiency of the Evidence
As set out above, Griffin was charged with the continuous trafficking of S.S. Under the relevant provisions of the Penal Code, a person commits continuous trafficking "if, during a period that is 30 or more days in duration, the person engages two or more times in conduct that constitutes an offense under Section 20A.02 [trafficking of persons] against one or more victims." Tex. Penal Code § 20A.03. A person commits a trafficking offense under section 20A.02 "if the person knowingly . . . traffics a child and by any means causes the trafficked child to engage in, or become the victim of" the offenses of indecency with a child, sexual assault, sexual performance by a child, or the promotion of child pornography. Id. § 20A.02(a)(7)(B), (C), (I), (K). Under the Penal Code, "[t]raffic" is defined as meaning, among other things, "to transport . . . another person by any means." Id. § 20A.01(4).
When briefing his first two issues, Griffin concedes that the evidence established that he "had sexual relations with S.S., a teenager, over the course of two years." However, Griffin contends that the evidence was insufficient and that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a directed verdict because "the evidence did not prove that [he] trafficked S.S." Instead, Griffin asserts that the evidence only showed that he made arrangements "to be alone with S.S. so that he could have sexual relations with her," that S.S. "was not traded or forced into slavery or prostitution," and that she was "abused in ways familiar to the review of ordinary prosecutions for sexual abuse of children." Although Griffin acknowledges that there wasevidence establishing that he drove S.S. to different locations to have sex, he asserts that this type of action does not qualify as "transport[ing]" someone under the trafficking statute.
On the contrary, Griffin contends that the structure of the trafficking statutes divides actors into two categories: "[o]ne is the trafficker and the other is the beneficiary." Compare id. § 20A.02(a)(1), (3), (5) (), with id. § 20A.02(a)(2), (4), (6) (). Building on this premise, Griffin asserts that subsection 20A.02(a)(7) applies to an actor who "traffics a child and . . . causes the trafficked child to engage in" sexual conduct but that subsection 20A.02(a)(8) applies to an individual who "receives a benefit from participating in a venture that involves" the sexual conduct listed in subsection 20A.02(a)(7) "or engaged in sexual conduct with a child trafficked in the manner described" in subsection 20A.02(a)(7). See id. § 20A.02(a)(7), (8). Based on his reading of the statute, Griffin insists that he could only have been guilty of trafficking in this case if he "delivered S.S. to a beneficiary who was not himself" and that allowing the trafficking statute to apply to the conduct at issue in this case would "supplant the various statutes criminalizing sex offenses" and effectively render useless the punishment provisions for other sex offenses because the conduct prohibited in those other statutes would fall under the trafficking statute. As further support for this construction, Griffin points to the legislative history for the current version of the trafficking statute and to a version of the statute that did not become law and contends that the legislative history for those statutes demonstrates that the trafficking statute was intended "to criminalize the commercial trade of people, both adults and children, to be used for forced labor or prostitution." Alternatively, Griffin contends that the statute is ambiguous because it is susceptible to more than oneunderstanding and that, therefore, this Court should look to the legislative history to determine which meaning the legislature intended.
For these reasons, Griffin urges that the evidence was insufficient to establish that his conduct constituted continuous trafficking of S.S. and that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a directed verdict.
Although sufficiency challenges generally require appellate courts to "view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found each essential element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt," see Schneider v. State, 440 S.W.3d 839, 841 (Tex. App.—Austin 2013, pet. ref'd), "[i]n some cases, . . . a sufficiency-of-the-evidence issue turns on the meaning of the statute under which the defendant has been prosecuted," Liverman v. State, 470 S.W.3d 831, 836 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015). In other words, for some evidentiary challenges, appellate courts must consider whether "certain conduct actually constitute[s] an offense under the statute with which the defendant has been charged." Id. "That question, like all statutory construction questions, is a question of law, which we review de novo." Id.
"In construing a statute, we give effect to the plain meaning of its language, unless the statute is ambiguous or the plain meaning would lead to absurd results that the legislature could not have possibly intended." Id.; see Ex parte Vela, 460 S.W.3d 610, 612 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015). Stated differently, we may consult extra-textual sources "[o]nly if the statutory language is ambiguous, or leads to absurd results that the Legislature could not have possibly intended." Harris v. State, 359 S.W.3d 625, 629 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011); see also Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782, 785 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991) (). "Extratextual factors include . . . legislative history." Liverman, 470 S.W.3d at 836. "In ascertaining the plain meaning of a word, we read words and phrases in context and construe them according to the rules of grammar and usage." Lopez v. State, 253 S.W.3d 680, 685 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008); see Tex. Gov't Code § 311.011 (). "In determining plain meaning, we employ the rules of grammar and usage, and we...
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