Hines v. State

• Decision Date: 08 November 2018
• Docket Number: NO. 01-16-01017-CR,01-16-01017-CR
• Citation: 570 S.W.3d 297
• Parties: Percy HINES, III, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

570 S.W.3d 297

Percy HINES, III, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas, Appellee

NO. 01-16-01017-CR

Court of Appeals of Texas, Houston (1st Dist.).

Opinion issued November 8, 2018

Nicholas Mensch, 1201 Franklin, 13^th Fl., Houston, TX 77002, for Appellant.

Clint Morgan, 1310 Prairie, Ste., Houston, TX 77002, for Appellee.

Panel consists of Justices Keyes, Bland, and Massengale.

Jane Bland, Justice

Percy Hines was indicted for murder. See TEX. PENAL CODE § 19.02(b). Hines waived a jury and pleaded not guilty. The trial court found Hines guilty and sentenced him to 45 years' confinement.

On appeal, Hines contends that (1) the evidence is insufficient to support the trial court’s implicit rejection of his defenses of legal insanity and self-defense; and (2) the bill of cost’s imposition of a statutory "Summoning Witness/Mileage" fee violates the Texas Constitution and should be deleted from the judgment. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

A. Interaction between Hines and the complainant

Hines and John Chime first became acquainted in the early 1990s when they dated two sisters. Years later, in 2004, Chime loaned Hines money. Hines described Chime as "sort of like a loan shark." Chime held car titles as collateral until loans were repaid and was known to shoot at some debtors' houses.

Two years later, Hines had not repaid Chime for the loan. Chime began calling Hines and making vague threats. Hines left Houston to live with his parents in Lubbock. In 2009, Hines returned to Houston. He began to make payments on the debt, but by November 2010, he had not fully repaid it.

A few days before Thanksgiving that November, Chime called Hines and demanded the money Hines owed him. When Hines told Chime that he didn't have any money, Chime became threatening. He told Hines that he was on his way to Hines’s apartment. A short time later, Chime arrived at Hines’s condo complex and parked his truck in the condo parking lot. Hines saw Chime sitting in the truck. Hines was holding a .38 caliber handgun with a potato placed over the barrel. Hines later explained that the potato was supposed to work like a silencer. He concealed the gun behind his back and approached Chime’s truck.

Chime was sitting with his hand by his side where Hines could not see it. Hines asked Chime what he had in his hand, and Chime responded by asking Hines what Hines was holding. According to Hines, Chime began to talk about a type of handgun that was used by the military during the first Gulf War. Hines saw Chime move, and at that point, Hines shot Chime three times, killing him.

Hines ran from the truck. He stopped and returned to the truck when he realized that Chime was not shooting back at him. On his return, he saw Chime’s lifeless body. He pushed the body to the passenger side of the truck and drove it to the unoccupied house of a relative who had died earlier that year. Hines went into the house and pondered what to do next. By the time he left the house, night had fallen. Hines drove the truck back to his apartment complex. Then, sometime later, Hines drove it to a strip center on West Orem Drive in Southwest Houston, close to Chime’s neighborhood. He left the unlocked truck in the parking lot, with Chime’s body inside.

B. Investigation of the murder

Approximately one week later, the police were called when fluid from Chime’s decomposing body could be seen leaking from the abandoned truck. Houston Police Department Officer A. Palatino, then assigned to the Crime Scene Unit, processed the truck for evidence. Two days after the initial processing, Officer Palatino was asked to process the truck again, this time to look for bits of potato. She found a substance that looked like it could have been shriveled-up pieces of potato scattered throughout the car. Testing confirmed them to be potato pieces with gunshot residue on them.

On November 29, investigators discovered that Chime’s bank account showed suspicious retail purchases made near the time of Chime’s death. Investigators obtained a surveillance tape from one of the stores, which showed a man who appeared to be Hines making a purchase. Later that afternoon, the investigators obtained and executed a warrant for Hines’s arrest.

Detective R. Chappell conducted a series of three custodial interviews with Hines, the first of which took place immediately after his arrest. Hines stated a few times that he was afraid of Chime. Hines mentioned potatoes during the first two interviews. Detective Chappell did not understand Hines’s reference until after the second interview, when another homicide investigator told him about the urban legend that a potato can be used as a silencer.

On the day of the third interview, Detective Chappell went to the condo complex where Hines’s father, who was visiting, gave the officers consent to search his Lexus. He explained that he let Hines use the Lexus when Hines was living in Lubbock. After Hines’s last visit, he let Hines drive it to Houston to have it repaired and had come to take his car back to Lubbock. In the Lexus, the officers found a bag on the floorboard. It contained a pistol that was later confirmed to be the gun used to kill Chime. A computerized search for the pistol’s serial number led to the discovery of a 2006 police report stating that Hines was found in possession of the same gun in that incident.

In the third interview, Detective Chappell showed Hines pictures of his father’s Lexus, pictures of the pistol, and a document Chappell had printed from the internet explaining how to use a potato as a silencer. At that point, Hines refused to cooperate further.

C. Proceedings in the trial court

In October 2011, before the first trial setting, the court found Hines was incompetent to stand trial. He was committed to a state hospital and discharged in February 2012, when he was found competent to stand trial. Hines raised the defenses of legal insanity and self-defense. During trial, Hines adduced evidence of a 1998 Harris County District Court judgment finding him not guilty by reason of insanity on a retaliation charge.

Dr. Coates testified as the State’s expert psychologist. In his meeting with Hines, Hines appeared polite, cordial, and seemed willing and able to describe his recent experiences, his concerns, and events that occurred around the time he killed Chime, as well as his state of mind at the time. Dr. Coates observed that Hines was able to effectively communicate with him.

Hines denied experiencing severe psychiatric symptoms, such as a loss of reality, or the type of delusions or hallucinations that would come with psychosis

. He told Dr. Coates about the unsettled debt he had with Chime. Hines told Dr. Coates that, on the night he killed Chime, Chime had called and threatened Hines, although he did not explicitly threaten to kill him. Hines explained that he was focused on protecting himself when he met with Chime because he was afraid of Chime. He told Dr. Coates that he shot Chime in self-defense.

Hines was tearful and appeared regretful as he described his thought process after killing Chime. Dr. Coates recounted that

[Hines] considered hiding the truck in a park. He considered burning the truck and burning the DNA—or burning the DNA in the truck, but he said he changed his mind because he knew that was a crime, arson. And he said that if he did something else with [Chime’s body], it would be something else against Hines. And he said: I was—I was—I didn't feel like I was going to have much luck with the legal situation. Ultimately, he decided, as he put it, to leave the vehicle where he thought somebody would be able to find it quickly so that [Chime’s] body would be able to have some hope of being displayed in an open casket at a funeral. And so, he said, he chose a neighborhood that was close to a house that he built and that was close to the high school he graduated from.

Based on his review of Hines’s medical records, the videotaped police interrogations, and this interview, Dr. Coates opined that any mental illness symptoms that Hines experienced at the time he killed Chime did not render him unable to know that murder was wrong.

The State also introduced testimony from its expert psychiatrist, Dr. Andrea Stolar. She reviewed Hines’s medical records and then viewed the interrogations. She also conducted a five-hour interview of Hines. Dr. Stolar noted Hines’s bipolar diagnosis and observed that he had wide variations in demeanor throughout the interview. Dr. Stolar found Hines knowledgeable about his legal situation and noted that he had good insight into his mental illness.

Hines was evasive about whether he had killed Chime and did not provide any details about the events leading to Chime’s death. He told Dr. Stolar, however,

If I would have murdered John Chime, once you get a body to a second location half your work is done. You're most in danger of being caught at the scene, so you want to get the body to a second location and get rid of the body where it could not be found. The truck would have been burned to remove DNA evidence and whatever weapon was used would have been removed. If I murdered someone it would have been hard to find the body. If you murder someone and get caught you're going to be convicted.

When Dr. Stoler asked Hines why he would have taken those actions, Hines responded, "There is no time in my life that I wake up in the morning that I don't know that murdering someone is a crime. My level of mental illness doesn't get to the level where I don't know that...."

Dr. Stolar opined that, although Hines has a mental illness, he was aware of the wrongfulness of his conduct when he killed Chime. She based this opinion on four findings:

• Hines did not report experiencing symptoms of his bipolar disorder

that would have caused him not to know the wrongfulness of his actions at the time, and no records indicate otherwise. Hines claimed he was compliant with prescribed medications, successfully defended himself in a lawsuit, and provided information during a business...