Matthews v. State

• Decision Date: 06 November 2016
• Docket Number: NO. 14-15-00577-CV,NO. 14-15-00452-CR, NO. 14-15-00616-CV,14-15-00452-CR
• Citation: 513 S.W.3d 45
• Parties: Ryan Antonio MATTHEWS, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee In the Matter of R.A.M. In the Matter of R.A.M.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

513 S.W.3d 45

Ryan Antonio MATTHEWS, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas, Appellee

In the Matter of R.A.M.

In the Matter of R.A.M.

NO. 14-15-00452-CR

NO. 14-15-00577-CV

NO. 14-15-00616-CV

Court of Appeals of Texas, Houston (14th Dist.).

Opinion Filed November 6, 2016.

Rehearing Overruled December 20, 2016

Discretionary Review Refused May 17, 2017

Kyle Verret, Pearland, TX, for Appellant.

Trey David Picard, Jerri Yenne, Angleton, TX, for The State of Texas.

Panel consists of Chief Justice Frost and Justices McCally and Brown.

OPINION

Sharon McCally, Justice

Appellant Ryan Antonio Matthews was convicted of two counts of capital murder. In five issues, he challenges his conviction and the order of the juvenile court waiving jurisdiction and transferring his case to criminal district court.¹ First, he asserts that the transfer order lacks the requisite factual specificity, and therefore, when the evidence admitted at the transfer hearing is measured against those findings it is insufficient to support the trial court's stated reasons for transfer. In his second and third issues, he contends that the Texas punishment and parole scheme for juvenile capital offenders is both facially unconstitutional and unconstitutional as applied to him because it deprives a juvenile of any meaningful opportunity for release and the sentence is imposed without regard to mitigating factors. In issue four, appellant urges that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress his statements because no sixteen-year-old juvenile would have believed he was free to leave when he was separated from his parents and questioned by officers about the murders of his two unborn children and their mother. Fifth and finally, appellant complains that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the jury's finding of guilt. We affirm.

I. Background

Sixteen-year-old Amy² was pregnant with twin boys when she was strangled and stabbed to death at her home in Pearland, Texas. Appellant, about three weeks shy of his seventeenth birthday at the time of Amy's murder,³ was the father of Amy's unborn children. Both attended the same Pearland high school and had met in class. They were not dating but were involved in a sexual relationship. When Amy discovered she was pregnant, appellant was very upset. He encouraged her to take actions to induce a miscarriage, such as punching herself in the stomach several times a day. He also encouraged Amy to have an abortion. Appellant was very concerned about the impact having a child would have on his life; he even told Amy that he had considered killing himself because of the pregnancy. When Amy confessed to her parents she was pregnant, they quickly took her to a doctor. An ultrasound revealed that Amy was pregnant with twins; Amy thought this was good news. Appellant, on the other hand, was extremely upset to discover that Amy was having twins. When Amy told appellant that abortion was no longer an option, appellant was angry.

On the day of Amy's murder, appellant, Amy, and a friend of theirs skipped an afternoon class, and the friend drove them to Amy's home so that appellant and Amy could have sex. The friend had done this on several occasions in the past. The friend dropped them off, and appellant and Amy entered through the back door of Amy's home, as was their normal practice. The two went upstairs and had sex, although appellant claimed in an interview with detectives he did not "finish" because he was concerned he could hurt the babies. Appellant also claimed in that interview that he and Amy talked about their future and both became emotional. He stated he left the house alone through the back door, while Amy was upstairs crying.

Appellant's friend picked him up in front of the house about an hour later. His friend noted that appellant appeared "normal," but did not come out of the front door of the home accompanied by Amy as had happened in the past. Appellant was also wearing different clothing than he had been wearing earlier in the day. About forty-five minutes after appellant left Amy's home, Amy's younger brother arrived. Amy's brother called her name and didn't hear a response. He went upstairs and saw several items broken and lying on the floor in his parents' room. Thinking the house had been burglarized, he ran to a neighbor's house and called his mother.

Amy's mother tried to contact Amy, but Amy didn't respond. Amy's mother drove home from work immediately and entered the house through the garage. She saw the master bedroom in disarray, left the house and returned to the garage, and called 911. She told the 911 operator that her home had been burglarized, and she couldn't find her daughter. Amy's mother also called her husband at work. Amy's father drove home from work and arrived while Amy's mother was still there. He went inside the house to look around; during his search, he found Amy's body in her bedroom lying in a pool of blood.

Amy's father ran back downstairs to his wife, took her outside, and told her that their daughter was dead. The two began to cry and remained outside the house until police arrived. When Pearland Police Department officers arrived on the scene, Amy's father told them that their daughter had been murdered. Pearland police officers entered the home and found Amy's body. Amy's father told responding officers that appellant had gotten her pregnant and that he believed appellant had killed her. Officers determined that the home had been staged to appear as if it had been burglarized; Amy's parents found nothing missing.

Pearland Police Detectives Jennifer Page and Cecil Arnold interviewed appellant later that evening around 10:00 p.m., after obtaining his address from the high school. At the time of this interview, the detectives had not had a chance to thoroughly review any of the evidence obtained from the crime scene, nor had any security videos from Amy's and appellant's high school or the guard house at the entry to Amy's neighborhood been obtained. The initial interview occurred at the home of Mavani Thornhill, who was allowing appellant to use her address so that appellant could enroll in a particular Pearland high school. Appellant's parents maintained a home in another part of Pearland zoned for a different high school. When Thornhill discovered the detectives were looking for appellant, she contacted appellant's parents and asked them to come to her home with appellant.

Detectives Page and Arnold initially spoke with appellant alone in Thornhill's home, with the permission of appellant's parents and appellant. This interview lasted for about an hour until Detective Arnold determined that appellant was not being honest with the detectives. For example, appellant first said he last saw Amy the previous day before admitting that he had been with her earlier that day. He also said that he had some type of feature on his cell phone that automatically deleted texts before admitting that he deleted the texts himself when his phone's storage got full. Appellant accurately described the clothes Amy was wearing when her body was found. He also admitted having sex with Amy on the day of her murder, but claimed he stopped because he was afraid he would hurt the babies. Appellant told the detectives he left Amy alone, upstairs, crying, and that he left the home through the back door. He told the detectives that he was supportive of Amy and never angry with her about the pregnancy. Detective Arnold told appellant that the detectives were hearing rumors from other students that appellant and Amy had gotten into an argument, but appellant denied that had happened. Appellant insisted that when he left, Amy was unharmed. When pressed, appellant had no idea who would have harmed Amy.

Detective Arnold stopped the interview and asked appellant's parents and Thornhill to come into the room to encourage appellant to be honest and forthcoming. Appellant's parents and Thornhill did exactly that, encouraging him to tell the detectives what had happened and warning him that the truth would come out through the evidence at the scene. Appellant continued to insist that he had not harmed Amy. During the second exchange, the detectives collected some of appellant's clothing, including appellant's athletic shorts, shirt, underwear, and athletic shoes, as well as a DNA swab for subsequent testing. Appellant told Detective Arnold that none of Amy's blood would be on any of the clothing he wore to Amy's house. During the interviews, he also agreed to turn over his cell phone to the detectives and provided them with the pass code to access it. He told the detectives that he texted Amy around 4:00 p.m., but that she didn't respond, so he texted her again about an hour later. Subsequent analysis showed, however, that appellant sent Amy three quick text messages at around 3:25 p.m., with no responses from her.

Appellant and his parents agreed to allow the detectives to accompany them to appellant's home, where appellant turned over additional items, including another shirt, socks, blue jeans (that had been washed and bleached), and the backpack appellant said he had taken to school on the day of the murder. However, some of the clothing and the back pack appellant provided were different from what Detective Page later saw appellant wearing in a school security video recorded on the day of the murder. A multicolored backpack, tan shoes, and a shirt similar to what is seen on the video were later recovered during execution of a search warrant.

According to Amy's autopsy, she died from a combination of manual strangulation and stabbing. The unborn twins suffocated and died in the womb when Amy died. Fingernail clippings were taken from Amy during the autopsy; appellant's DNA was recovered from these clippings. The blue jeans, athletic shoes, tan shoes, and the multicolored backpack all tested positive for Amy's DNA. DNA testing also confirmed that appellant had sex with Amy on the day of her murder and that he was the...