Ledford v. State
| Citation | 649 S.W.3d 731 |
| Decision Date | 26 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 01-19-00967-CR |
| Parties | Brandon Rashard LEDFORD, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Texas |
Jack Roady, Rebecca Klaren, Alan Keith Curry, Houston, for Appellee.
Winifred Bandy Weber, for Appellant.
Brandon Rashard Ledford, Pro Se.
Panel consists of Chief Justice Radack and Justices Landau and Countiss.
A jury convicted appellant, Brandon Rashard Ledford, of murder and assessed his punishment at 80 years’ confinement and a $10,000 fine. In two issues on appeal, appellant contends that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his Batson1 challenges. In a third issue, appellant contends that the evidence is insufficient. We affirm.
On the night of April 9, 2017, Brandon Lozano was working as a bellman at the San Luis Resort in Galveston, Texas. While Lozano was taking luggage to a room on the sixth floor of the hotel, he looked out a window on the back side of the hotel and saw three men wearing black hoodies looking in various cars in the hotel's parking lot. As he watched, at least one of the men broke the glass on several vehicles and all three of the men began "going through the cars" in the parking lot. Lozano called his manager and told him to alert security. As Lozano continued to watch from the sixth floor, a security guard, Phillip Molis, pulled his vehicle around the building toward the parking lot.
Molis contacted another security officer, John Pike, to let him know what Lozano had seen and Pike, too, began to make his way toward the parking lot. Molis also called Lozano, who was still watching from the sixth floor, and Lozano directed Molis where to go in the parking lot. Lozano could see that Molis was using a flashlight and he also knew that Molis was unarmed.
Molis ran at one of the three men in an apparent attempt to scare him off. That man, who was wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt, backed away briefly before reaching toward his belt, pulling out a handgun, and firing multiple shots at Molis.
Lozano immediately left his vantage point and began running downstairs toward the parking lot. As he was running downstairs, he called his manager to let him know what had happened. Pike, the other security officer, and Thomas Bushek, a police officer who had been attending a conference next door, both reached Molis at approximately the same time. At 10:15 p.m., Pike reported the shooting to police and called an ambulance. As he lay on the ground after being shot, Molis indicated to Bushek and Lozano the direction in which the three men had fled. Molis, who had been shot ten times, died six days later.
While in the parking lot that night, police recovered 12 shell casings in the area where Molis was shot. The shell casings were several different brands but had all been fired from the same weapon, a Beretta .9 mm handgun. Two fired bullets were also found and had been fired from the same handgun. In total, nine cars had been burglarized that night. Near one burgled car, the police recovered a makeup bag with a shoe print on it.
Officers began searching the area in which Molis indicated the three hooded men had fled. In a field just to the west of the San Luis, officers found a window punch, which is often used to break car windows during a burglary. Further west, in a nearby neighborhood, police recovered a black sweatshirt and some gloves. The sweatshirt had several shards of glass in its pockets. Police also found a Beretta .9 mm handgun nearby on a fence. Near where the handgun was recovered, a portion of the fence had been broken in a westward direction. Next to the fence where the handgun was recovered, police found an aloe-vera-type plant that had been stepped on leaving a shoe print.
The night of the shooting, the police also used K-9 officers and their dogs to search for the suspects. After approximately 30 minutes of searching, Officer J. Picard and his dog were returning to the San Luis to rest when Picard noticed a fenced-in air conditioning unit near the parking lot. As he passed the space, Picard saw the top of someone's head, and he instructed the suspect to come out. The suspect found hiding, Tyrone Rufus Davis Haynes,2 was handcuffed and arrested. Davis claimed that he was homeless and had been sleeping there, but, when searched incident to arrest, he was found to be in possession of a stack of $100 bills. When arrested, Davis was wearing tan pants, a t-shirt with the word "cocaine" on it, and a black-hooded sweatshirt. Shards of glass were also recovered from this sweatshirt. Davis's cell phone was also taken from him and police also recovered a pair of latex gloves from his hiding place.
From information on Davis's cell phone, police developed appellant as a suspect. Specifically, on Davis's cell phone, police found videos created on April 6 and 8, 2017, shortly before the shooting, in which appellant was holding a weapon and wearing a sweatshirt, both of which were "strikingly similar" to those recovered from the neighborhood near the San Luis.
Police recovered video from Gaido's Seaside Inn, which was recorded on the day of the murder at 7:30 p.m. On the video, two men, one of which is appellant, approached the desk and asked about pricing for a room. Appellant was wearing a Spitfire t-shirt. Appellant and the other man left without renting a room. The hotel manager noticed that the two men went outside and left in a gold Lexus; she also noticed a third man in the driver's seat of the car.
Police later determined that Davis's cell phone had connected to the Quality Inn in Galveston on the day of the shooting. Records and video from the Quality Inn show that at 8 p.m. on the night of the murder, Davis and a third man, Marcus Moffett, rented adjoining rooms at the Quality Inn for one night. They were accompanied by appellant and a woman, Khevan Thorne. Appellant was still wearing the Spitfire shirt he had been wearing earlier in the evening at Gaido's.
Video showed that Thorne left the room by herself at 9:21 p.m. and the three men left together at 9:23 p.m. Appellant was wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt, the same Spitfire t-shirt, frayed jeans, and black and white Jordan tennis shoes. Davis was wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt, khaki pants, and black tennis shoes; he was wearing the same clothes when arrested later that night. Moffett was wearing a black, long-sleeved Michael Jordan shirt, a black baseball cap, blue jeans, and black shoes. Three minutes later, the men were captured on video in the hotel's parking garage. Moffett was no longer wearing the baseball cap, but he had put on a black-hooded sweatshirt. The men did not leave in the gold Lexus but departed the hotel on foot.
Video later showed appellant returning to the Quality In at 10:21 p.m.; he was alone, on foot, and traveling from the direction of the San Luis. Appellant was wearing the same Spitfire shirt, frayed jeans, and white and black Jordan shoes, but he was no longer wearing the black-hooded sweatshirt. Thorne arrived at the hotel later; she was seen pacing back and forth and appeared to be nervous. Moffett returned to the Quality Inn sometime after appellant and Thorne; he was wearing the same long-sleeved Michael Jordan shirt, blue jeans, and black shoes; his black-hooded sweatshirt was tied around his waist.
Thorne, appellant, and Moffett left the hotel in the gold Lexus at 11:02 a.m. the morning after the shooting. Later that day, Thorne drove the gold Lexus to the Galveston Police Station and attempted to bond Davis out of jail.
The day after the shooting, Steven Jones heard about the shooting at the San Luis and went to police to tell them about an encounter he had with three men in black-hooded sweatshirts that occurred before the shooting. Jones was attending a public safety conference at the Galveston Island Convention Center, which is near both the Hilton Galveston Island Resort and the San Luis Resort. He was walking in a group of 10 conference attendees from the San Luis to the Hilton, where they were staying. As they walked behind the IHOP restaurant, which is between the San Luis and the Hilton, three men in their mid-20s jumped out at them from behind some bushes. Jones suspected the men had ill intentions, but they nevertheless moved on, possibly because of the size of Jones's group. Jones believed that, had he been alone, the men would have mugged him. Police later showed Jones a photo array that included appellant, Davis, and Moffett. Jones was able to identify Davis.
Surgeons removed several bullets from Molis's body. An analysis of the bullets showed that they were fired from the same Beretta .9 mm handgun that the officers recovered from the neighborhood between the San Luis and the Quality Inn.
All the shell casings and bullets recovered from the San Luis parking lot were fired from the same Beretta .9 mm handgun that the officers recovered from the neighborhood between the San Luis and the Quality Inn.
The shoeprint on the makeup container that was recovered from the San Luis parking lot was compared to the shoes appellant was wearing when arrested and they were found to be similar in size and tread design.
The Beretta .9-mm handgun that police recovered from the neighborhood between the San Luis and the Quality Inn was used to fire the bullets that struck Molis. A DNA analysis of the of the handgun revealed that there was a mixture of DNA from at least four contributors, at least two of which were male, but the DNA mixture was not suitable for comparison because of the excessive number of contributors. The handgun was "strikingly similar" to the gun that appellant was seen with in the videos recovered from Davis's cell phone, both of which were recorded a few days before the shooting.
The disposable latex gloves that were recovered from the...
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Alcala v. State
... ... Further, ... the forensic evidence tying Jiovanni and appellant to the ... murder supports the conviction. Appellant's hand and both ... Jiovanni's and appellant's clothing had gunshot ... residue present. See Ledford v. State , 649 S.W.3d ... 731 (Tex. App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2022, no pet.) ... (considering the presence of gunshot residue on gloves worn ... by appellant when affirming conviction for murder); see ... also Firo v. State , No. 13-03-122-CR, 2004 WL 305977 ... (Tex ... ...