Hampton v. State

• Decision Date: 25 September 2002
• Docket Number: No. 499-01.,499-01.
• Parties: Leon HAMPTON, Jr., Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

86 S.W.3d 603

Leon HAMPTON, Jr., Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. 499-01.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

September 25, 2002

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Rhett Hoestenbach, Odessa, for Appellant.

Jeffrey L. Van Horn, First Assist. St. Att., Austin, for the State.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J., delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court.

When police officers took appellant, a juvenile, into custody, they told his mother that they were doing so because he had absconded from juvenile probation. The next morning, without re-establishing contact with appellant's mother, an Odessa officer questioned appellant about a March 1999 murder. Appellant gave a videotaped statement in which he admitted to killing the victim. Because we find that the police officer properly notified appellant's mother "of the reason for taking the child into custody," as required by Family Code section 52.02(b), he was not also statutorily required to tell her that he suspected her son of committing a murder or to notify her again before questioning appellant. In a separate issue, we also find that the court of appeals erred in confusing the standard for reversal for Brady¹ error with the standard for reversal for constitutional error under TEX.R.APP. P. 44.2(a).² We therefore reverse the El Paso Court of Appeals' decision that the officer violated section 52.02(b) and therefore illegally obtained appellant's confession. Hampton v. State, 36 S.W.3d 921, 924 (Tex.App.-El Paso 2001). We remand the case to the court of appeals for it to determine whether appellant has demonstrated that the State's failure to timely produce a police officer's supplementary report was material and thus created "a probability sufficient to undermine ... confidence in the outcome of the proceeding."³

I.

On March 18, 1999, Jarvis Preston and his sister, Lashara Preston, were watching TV when they heard gunshots outside Lashara's apartment at La Promesa Apartments in Odessa, Texas. Two or three minutes later, they saw someone run past her back window in the alley. Jarvis recognized that person as the appellant, "Tweet.⁴ Appellant was standing on the back porch and said, "Open the door for me." Lashara did not want appellant to come inside, but Jarvis considered appellant "just like a home boy," and so he asked Lashara for the keys to her car and offered to drive appellant home. Appellant told Jarvis that he thought he had shot somebody in self-defense. Appellant and Jarvis then spent the rest of the night driving around.

Meanwhile, police officers responded to a 911 call, came to the apartment complex, and found the body of William Nance, who had been shot to death. During their investigation, the officers obtained information which focused suspicion on appellant as the shooter. Four days after the murder and upon discovering that appellant was a probation absconder, Detective McCann and other officers arrested appellant at his friend's apartment. When appellant heard police officers at the front door, he ran out the back, but the officers caught him.

Appellant's mother, Deborah Jackson, arrived at the friend's apartment while the Odessa police were taking her son into custody. She asked Det. McCann why they were taking appellant into custody and he told her that they were picking him up for a probation violation — he was an absconder from juvenile probation. She told Det. McCann that appellant was a juvenile.⁵

Det. McCann, mistakenly believing that appellant was seventeen because he had booking photos and information from the Sheriff's Department that appellant had previously been arrested as an adult, drove him to the Odessa police station instead of the Ector County Youth Center. Appellant subsequently admitted to the detective that he had lied about his age when he was previously arrested by the Sheriffs Department and that he was really just sixteen. Det. McCann called the Youth Center to verify that appellant was indeed still a juvenile. Meanwhile, Det. McCann asked appellant several times if he wanted to give a statement at some time, although he did not ask him any questions. At first appellant was very "vocal and profane," but he soon "settled down" and said he would give a statement. Once appellant's age was verified, Det. McCann drove appellant to the Youth Center at about 12:30 am. and left him in the center's custody.

Det. McCann returned the next morning, was permitted to check appellant out of the juvenile detention center, and took him back to the police station, where a magistrate advised appellant of his rights and asked him whether he wanted to waive those rights and talk to Det. McCann. Appellant did. Both appellant's interview with the magistrate and his two hour interview with Detective McCann were videotaped and transcribed. Appellant stated that he had killed Mr. Nance, but claimed that he shot in self-defense.

Appellant explained that he had been at an apartment with several people that night, talking and watching TV while they smoked crack cocaine. At about 4:00 a.m., appellant went outside to visit another friend and saw Mr. Nance. Appellant stated that Mr. Nance wanted some dope and he mistakenly thought appellant sold drugs. When appellant told Mr. Nance that he was not a drug dealer, Mr. Nance became hostile and threatening. As Mr. Nance started toward appellant, Nance slipped and appellant pulled his gun out of his pants and cocked it. The victim hit appellant's hand and the gun "went off." According to appellant, he started to run away, but Mr. Nance kept coming after him and so he shot twice more. He then ran back to the apartment where he had been watching T.V., but his friends refused to let him come in. They threw his jacket out to him, and he then ran to the apartment where Jarvis Preston and his sister were.

While Det. McCann was questioning appellant at the police department, Ms. Jackson called the Youth Center to see how appellant was doing. She was told that a police officer had checked him out of the facility. She then called the Odessa police department and discovered that an officer was questioning her son about a murder.

Appellant filed a pretrial motion to suppress his videotaped confession. He claimed, inter alia, that Det. McCann did not notify appellant's mother that, although appellant was taken into custody as a juvenile probation absconder, the police also suspected him of killing Mr. Nance. After hearing testimony, the trial judge denied the motion to suppress and admitted appellant's videotaped statement at trial.

Other evidence offered by the State at trial included the eyewitness testimony of John Cooper,⁶ who testified that he was "smoking crack" at a friend's apartment. Looking out the upstairs window, he had seen appellant, whom he knew as "Tweet," and another man outside arguing. After he turned away from the window, he heard a gunshot. When he looked back out the window, he saw a man run across the street and fall down. He also saw appellant with his arm extended and heard several more shots. Mr. Cooper said that appellant was the only other person in the area.

Fourteen-year-old Anthony Tuda testified that he was asleep in his bed at La Promesa Apartments at about 4:20 a.m. on March 18^th when he heard a gunshot. He got up and looked out his window and saw "the one that got shot, he, like, struggled across the street and just fell down." He said he saw three people in all, the victim and two other people. Anthony Tuda explained that, at first, he saw only the shooter and his victim, but then after the shooter ran away, he thought he saw someone else drive off in a pick-up truck. He did not recognize any of the people. He called 911.

Andrea Travioli testified that she was at the apartment at La Promesa that night with appellant. He left, she heard shots, then, shortly thereafter, appellant banged on the door and said he needed his jacket because he "need[ed] to get the hell out of here." Jermaine Session testified that appellant came to his apartment the next morning and told him he had argued with Mr. Nance and shot him. Jason Yielding testified that appellant later came to his apartment and asked him for a ride into the country. Jason did so and saw appellant throw a sack out of the window at a location where officers later recovered parts of a gun of the same type used to kill Mr. Nance.

After all of the State's witnesses testified, appellant's attorney told the judge that he had just discovered that the prosecutor had a supplemental police report which he had not previously seen.⁷ He said that this report, prepared by Sgt. Roberts of the Odessa Police Department, contained potentially exculpatory information, namely the first names of two girls who had lived in the apartment complex when the shooting occurred (but who had since moved). Appellant's attorney said that the girls told police officers shortly after the murder that they had seen two black males running away from the shooting scene, one of who was Jarvis Preston, appellant's friend who drove him away from the murder scene.⁸ Appellant requested a continuance for his investigator to try to track down the two missing girls. The trial judge denied this request and then appellant asked for a mistrial which was also denied. Appellant did not file a motion for new trial or request a hearing to present further evidence relating to this issue.

A jury convicted appellant and sentenced him to 35 years imprisonment. The El Paso Court of Appeals, finding that: 1) appellant's videotaped statement was taken in violation of section 52.02(b); and 2) the State's failure to disclose potentially exculpatory material was harmful, reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. We granted the State Prosecuting Attorney's petition for review.

II.

Section 52.02(b) of the Texas Family Code requires a person who takes a juvenile into custody to promptly notify the child's parent and appropriate juvenile authorities of the detention and to state...