Kinnamon v. State
| Decision Date | 18 April 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. 69531,69531 |
| Citation | 791 S.W.2d 84 |
| Parties | Raymond Carl KINNAMON, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
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The appellant, Raymond Carl Kinnamon, was tried and convicted of capital murder and his punishment assessed at death. He raises seventeen points of error. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
On Monday evening, December 11, 1984, the appellant was one of several patrons seated at the bar in N.J.'s Lounge in Houston. He had entered the bar several hours earlier, and, according to witnesses, sat alone, occasionally playing a video game mounted atop the bar. At one point he had a brief conversation with the bartender, Jeannie Marriott. After "last call" had been announced the appellant acted as if he was leaving with the other customers. Before exiting, he told Marriott that he had to use the restroom, turned and walked back across the lounge. When the appellant came out of the restroom a short time later, waitress Sharon Bryson, and a patron, Kenny Simmons, were seated at the bar and Marriott was cleaning up behind the counter. At that point, the appellant, possessing a firearm, ordered the employees and remaining patrons, including Ronald Longmire, the decedent, to put their hands on the bar and refrain from looking at him. He ordered Marriott to take the money out of the cash register and place it in a bag. Since no bag was available, she used Bryson's purse. After the appellant took the money, he ordered everyone to proceed single file to the men's restroom. Ronald Longmire, the decedent, was apparently at the end of the line, with the appellant following. As the people were proceding to the restroom, the appellant asked them for their jewelry. As they were trying to remove their rings and watches, the appellant asked Longmire "what is that in your pocket?" to which the decedent responded "nothing, just my driver's license." A shot was fired, then a second almost immediately thereafter. The record indicates that the second shot entered the decedent's back from the left side at an angle. Longmire apparently fell to his knees. At this point, Sharon Bryson, the waitress, escaped through a rear exit, and in so doing activated a burglar alarm. The bartender, Jeannie Marriott, was pulled into the walk-in cooler by Kenny Simmons. About that time, a third shot was fired. Simmons later testified that while he and Marriott were in the cooler, someone attempted to enter from the outside by pulling on the door handle to the cooler. Meanwhile, Bryson fled to a nearby convenience store and telephoned the police.
Approximately ten minutes after the shooting, Marriott and Simmons came out of the cooler and saw Longmire wandering aimlessly through the bar, muttering incoherently and bleeding profusely from the gunshot wound. When the police arrived Marriott directed them to Longmire, who by that time was dazed and seated on the floor in a corner. Longmire was rushed to the hospital and died a short time later.
The appellant was identified in a photo array by the eyewitnesses to the offense. Some two weeks later he was apprehended at his Houston residence and placed under arrest.
In his first point of error, the appellant contends that the trial court erred in overruling appellant's objection to the definition of "intentional" in the court's charge during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial.
The definitional portion of the trial court's charge tracked verbatim the definition of "intentional" in V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 6.03(a):
A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.
The appellant objected to the above charge, requesting instead that the definition read:
A person acts intentionally or with intent with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to cause the result.
The appellant's requested charge differed from the charge of the trial court in a single respect: the appellant would have omitted the phrase "... to engage in the conduct ..."
Accordingly, the appellant complains only of the definitional portion of the court's charge. The definition complained of, however, must be examined in the context in which the defined term appears, and not limited to portions of a charge standing alone. Selvage v. State, 680 S.W.2d 17 (Tex.Cr.App.1984); Inman v. State, 650 S.W.2d 417 (Tex.Cr.App.1983). The term "intentional," was explicated in the application portion of the court's charge as follows:
Before you are warranted in convicting the defendant, Raymond Carl Kinnamon, of capital murder, you must find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt not only that on the occasion in question the defendant, Raymond Carl Kinnamon, was engaged in the commission or attempted commission of the felony offense of robbery, if any, of Ronald Charles Longmire, as defined in this charge, but also that during the commission of the robbery or attempted commission thereof, if any, the defendant, Raymond Carl Kinnamon, shot Ronald Charles Longmire with a gun with the intention of thereby causing his death. Unless you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Rayond Carl Kinnamon, on said occasion, specifically intended to cause the death of Ronald Charles Longmire when he shot him with a gun, if he did shoot him with a gun, you cannot convict him, of the offense of capital murder.
Now if you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that on or about the 11th day of December, 1984, in Harris County, Texas, the defendant, Raymond Carl Kinnamon, did then and there unlawfully while in the course of committing or attempting to commit the robbery of Ronald Charles Longmire intentionally cause the death of Ronald Charles Longmire by shooting Ronald Charles Longmire with a gun, then you will find the defendant guilty of capital murder.[ 1
Because the trial court refused to give to the jury his requested definition, the appellant contends that the jury was permitted to find that the appellant committed capital murder under § 19.03(a)(2), supra, if, quoting from appellant's brief, "[the jury] found either (1) a conscious objective to engage in a course of conduct such as pulling a trigger of a weapon, or (2) the desire to cause the result, the death of the complainant."
The appellant further complains that the charge as presented denied the appellant due process because it was not sufficiently clear what the jury must find to support a conviction for capital murder; i.e., the charge
In support of his contention, the appellant relies upon Alvarado v. State, 704 S.W.2d 36 (Tex.Cr.App.1985). That case dealt in part with the V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 6.03(a), definition of "intentional," supra, as applied to the injury to a child statute (V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 22.04). In his final argument, the prosecutor in Alvarado stressed that a finding that the defendant had engaged in the conduct of putting the child in "hot water" knowingly or intentionally was sufficient to support a conviction, without mentioning the requirement that serious bodily injury must be the intended or "reasonably certain" result. On the defendant's motion for rehearing, this Court reversed his conviction because the charge allowed a conviction if the appellant had the requisite culpability as to either the result (injury to a child) or nature of the conduct alone (placing the child in "hot water"). Id., at 37.
The Alvarado majority noted that the injury to a child statute, "like homicide and other assaultive [penal] prospections," hinges on the result of certain specified conduct. Despite the State's rather spurious claims to the contrary, it is clear that capital murder under § 19.03(a)(2), supra, like injury to a child under § 22.04, supra, is a "result of conduct" offense, e.g., the crime is defined in terms of one's objective to produce a specified result. In other words, not only must an accused be found to have intended to engage in the act that caused the death, he also must have specifically intended that death result from that conduct. Morrow v. State, 753 S.W.2d 372 (Tex.Cr.App.1988). The mere intent to pull the trigger of a firearm will not satisfy the statute. Id.
Limiting the definitional portion of the charge, the application paragraphs of the charge restricted the definition of "intentional" to its factual context: that the appellant "intentionally caused the death of Ronald Charles Longmire by shooting Ronald Charles Longmire with a gun." Therefore, the appellant was convicted not because he "engage[d] in [the] conduct" of pulling the trigger of a gun, but because the jury found that his objective was to cause the death of the deceased in the course of robbery.
When read in conjunction with the application paragraph, the phrase "engage in conduct" in the abstract definition of "intentional" did not provide for any additional degree of culpability. Accordingly, in the context of this case, we hold that the disputed "engage in conduct" language which the trial court refused to exclude from the definitional portion of the jury charge was irrelevant with respect to the appellant's culpable mental state. Appellant's first...
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