Johnson v. State
| Decision Date | 23 March 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-03-00440-CR.,03-03-00440-CR. |
| Citation | 208 S.W.3d 478 |
| Parties | Celeste Beard JOHNSON, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Dick DeGuerin, Matt Hennessy, Catherine L. Baen, Deguerin, Dickson & Hennessy, Houston, for appellant.
Holly E. Taylor, Sally Swanson, Allison Wetzel, Asst. Dist. Attys., Austin, for appellee.
Before Chief Justice LAW, Justices PURYEAR and ONION.*
A jury found appellant Celeste Beard Johnson guilty of capital murder and injury to an elderly individual. See Tex. Pen. Code Ann. §§ 19.03(a)(3), 22.04(a)(1) (West Supp.2005). The State did not seek the death penalty for the capital murder, and the district court sentenced appellant to life imprisonment. The jury assessed life imprisonment and a $10,000 fine for the injury to an elderly person.
Appellant contends that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to sustain the guilty verdicts, and that the two convictions constitute double jeopardy. She also asserts that the trial court erred by: (1) overruling her motions to quash the original indictment, permitting the State to amend the indictment, and refusing to quash the amended indictment; (2) admitting irrelevant evidence; (3) threatening a defense witness and refusing to admit a prior consistent statement by this witness; (4) limiting her right to confront the witnesses against her; (5) admitting in evidence a deposition given by appellant in a civil case; and (6) admitting summaries of telephone records prepared by the State.1 Finding no reversible error, we affirm the judgments of conviction.
In six points of error, appellant urges that the State failed to corroborate the testimony of Tracey Tarlton, the accomplice witness whose testimony is essential to support the convictions. In four additional points of error relating only to the capital murder conviction, appellant asserts that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to prove the alleged cause of death and that the murder was committed for remuneration.
Appellant met Steven Beard in 1993 while working as a waitress at the Austin Country Club, where Beard was a member. Beard's wife of forty-two years, who was seriously ill when he met appellant, died in October of that year. Appellant divorced her third husband, Jimmy Martinez, in April 1994, and Beard and appellant were married in February 1995. At the time of the marriage, appellant was thirty-two years old and Beard was seventy. Appellant had thirteen-year-old twin daughters, Kristina and Jennifer, from a previous marriage. Kristina was living with appellant in Austin, but Jennifer lived with her father in Washington. After appellant married Beard, Jennifer moved to Austin to join her mother and sister, and the girls were adopted by Beard following the death of their natural father. Beard was a man of considerable wealth, and the family lived in an expensive subdivision in a home Beard commissioned following his marriage to appellant.
In early 1999, appellant entered St. David's Pavilion, a psychiatric hospital, for treatment of depression. There, she met Tracey Tarlton, who was another female patient. The nature of the relationship between appellant and Tarlton was a matter of dispute at trial. Tarlton, a lesbian, testified that she loved appellant and believed appellant loved her. The defense, on the other hand, portrayed Tarlton as delusional and appellant as the object of Tarlton's obsessive behavior. It was undisputed however, that appellant and Tarlton continued to see each other during the summer and fall of 1999, after they left Timberlawn.
At about 3:00 a.m. on October 2, 1999, Tarlton entered Beard's bedroom and shot him in the abdomen with a shotgun while he slept. The sound and pain woke Beard, who summoned emergency help. The first responders found Beard lying in bed holding his side. Appellant and Kristina were in another bedroom of the house at the time of the shooting.
Beard was taken to a hospital where he remained in intensive care for several weeks. As his condition gradually improved, he was moved to a regular hospital room and then to a rehabilitation center. Beard was discharged and sent home with appellant on January 18, 2000. The following day, appellant called Beard's doctor and demanded that he be readmitted to the hospital. After examining Beard, the doctor ordered him readmitted. Beard's condition deteriorated at the hospital, and he died on January 22, 2000.
Tarlton was arrested on October 8, 1999, and charged with injury to an elderly individual. The charge was increased to capital murder after Beard died. Tarlton ultimately pleaded guilty to murder and agreed to cooperate with the State in exchange for a twenty-year sentence. She testified for the State at appellant's trial. The jury charge authorized appellant's convictions solely as a party to Tarlton's conduct. See Tex. Pen.Code Ann. § 7.02(a)(2) (West 2003).
Tarlton's testimony
Tarlton testified that she entered St. David's Pavilion in February 1999 for treatment of a bipolar disorder. She met appellant in the hospital and they became friends. Appellant told Tarlton that she had married Beard in order to secure the custody of her two daughters, but that she now felt trapped in a loveless relationship. Tarlton testified, "[H]er portrayal of what was going on was that she felt trapped by this man who was slowly killing her, slowly or quickly killing her, that she couldn't get out from under him psychologically or emotionally." Tarlton said she believed everything appellant told her about Beard. She said, "I just felt like he was this man who had a whole bunch of money and he pushed his way through all this staff of people and he pushed his wife around and he, you know, grabbed here and grabbed there and didn't have any concern at all for anybody else, including her."
Tarlton described appellant as flirtatious, and she said that they developed a romantic relationship while at St. David's. The two women arranged to be transferred to Timberlawn Hospital in Dallas, where they initially shared a room and where Tarlton said they first became sexually intimate. After a staff member saw Tarlton giving appellant a massage, Tarlton was moved to a separate room. Appellant told Tarlton that Beard was responsible for their separation. Later, while outpatients at Timberlawn, appellant and Tarlton met in motel rooms and their relationship became more intense. After appellant and Tarlton returned to Austin, they continued to see each other regularly during the summer and fall of 1999.
Tarlton testified that appellant spent the night at Tarlton's house several times a week. Appellant told Tarlton that she put sleeping pills in Beard's food and replaced his vodka with Everclear, a product that is almost pure grain alcohol. In this way, she caused Beard to pass out, leaving her free to spend nights away from the house. Appellant also expressed the hope that this regimen would hasten Beard's death. She told Tarlton, "[H]e's an old man, he's going to die soon but not soon enough, and I'm just going to help him along wherever I can." Tarlton recounted a night in the fall of 1999 when she received a telephone call from appellant asking her to come to appellant's house. When Tarlton got there, she saw Beard unconscious at the dining room table. Tarlton helped appellant move Beard to the floor, then appellant placed a plastic trash bag over his head in an unsuccessful attempt to asphyxiate him. Appellant also attempted without success to poison Beard with botulin that she and Tarlton grew with instructions they found in a book of poison recipes. Tarlton explained that she was willing to help appellant in these schemes because
Beard made plans to spend three weeks in Europe with appellant in October 1999. Appellant told Tarlton that she dreaded the trip and feared that Beard's emotional abuse would cause her to kill herself while on the trip. In late September, only a few days before the trip was to begin, appellant asked Tarlton to shoot Beard. Appellant knew that Tarlton had once hunted and continued to shoot skeet, and that she owned a shotgun. Tarlton said that she initially refused appellant's request, but she changed her mind when appellant threatened to commit suicide. Tarlton testified that she asked appellant to take care of three things if she were arrested: find homes for her pets, pay her legal fees, and support her in jail. Appellant promised to do so.
Tarlton testified that she met appellant at the Beard residence on the afternoon of Friday, October 1, to plan the shooting. Appellant told Tarlton that she had arranged for Jennifer to be away from the house that night, but that appellant and Kristina would be at home and in another bedroom. Appellant showed Tarlton where to park, how to enter the house, and where Beard would be sleeping. When Tarlton mentioned that her shotgun would automatically eject the spent shell, appellant promised that she would find the shell and dispose of it. Appellant suggested that Tarlton shoot Beard in the stomach, as that would be less messy. She said that if Beard did not die immediately, she would wait for him to bleed to death before calling the police. Later that night, appellant came to Tarlton's residence and told Tarlton to park in a different location in order to avoid being seen by neighbors. She told Tarlton that Beard was already in bed asleep, and assured her that the house would be unlocked and the security system would be off.
Tarlton drove to...
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