Muniz v. State

• Decision Date: 06 January 1993
• Docket Number: No. 69602,69602
• Citation: 851 S.W.2d 238
• Parties: Pedro Cruz MUNIZ, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 238

851 S.W.2d 238

Pedro Cruz MUNIZ, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 69602.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas,

En Banc.

Jan. 6, 1993.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 10, 1993.

Ian Inglis, Austin, for appellant.

Ken Anderson, Dist. Atty., Georgetown, Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION

CAMPBELL, Judge.

After a trial held in February 1986, a Williamson County jury found appellant, Pedro Cruz Muniz, guilty of the December 20, 1976, ¹ capital slaying of a female, J__ B__. The aggravating element of the murder was appellant's aggravated rape of J__ B__. ² At the trial's punishment phase, the jury answered affirmatively the punishment issues set forth in Article 37.071(b) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, ³ and appellant was sentenced to death. Direct appeal to this Court was then automatic under Article 37.071(h). ⁴ We will affirm.

In eighteen points of error, appellant challenges: the application of the capital punishment statute to his situation; the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury's verdict concerning both his guilt and the affirmative answer to the second punishment issue; the validity of his arrest; the admission in evidence of his confession; the trial court's refusal to submit to the jury a charge regarding the voluntariness of appellant's confession and a definition of the term "deliberately" contained in the first punishment issue; the trial court's admission, at the punishment phase, of evidence of appellant's two prior misdemeanor convictions; the trial court's refusal to instruct the jury at the punishment phase to consider all mitigating evidence; the constitutionality of Texas' capital punishment statute both facially and as it was applied to appellant's case; the second ⁵ prosecution of this case as a violation of the double jeopardy provisions of the Texas and United States constitutions; the exclusion of Mexican-Americans from the grand jury that indicted appellant; and the adequacy, under the Texas and United States constitutions, of his counsel's assistance throughout the course of the trial. After addressing appellant's points of error which challenge the application of the capital punishment statute to his situation and the sufficiency of the evidence pertaining to both his conviction and the affirmative answer to the second punishment issue, we will address the remainder of appellant's points of error in the order in which they occurred during the course of the trial.

In point of error one, appellant argues that the evidence at trial was insufficient to sustain his conviction because the evidence proved that his "act of causing serious bodily injury or attempting to cause death was one and the same with his act of causing the victim's death." According to appellant's argument, the State relied upon a single act to prove both J__ B__'s murder and the aggravating element of the rape. Appellant contends that this conduct by the State "constitutes an improper use of the felony murder statute." Therefore, before addressing appellant's sufficiency point, we must interpret the applicable statute.

At the time of the offense, the pertinent portions of Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(2) read "[a] person commits [a capital] offense if he commits murder [by intentionally or knowingly causing the death of an individual] in the course of committing or attempting to commit kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated rape, or arson; ..." ⁶ See 1973 Tex.Gen.Laws 1123. In order to commit aggravated rape, the pertinent portions of Texas Penal Code § 21.03 ⁷ required that a person commit rape and cause "serious bodily injury ... in the course of the same criminal episode." See 1973 Tex.Gen.Laws 883. The penal code defines "serious bodily injury" as bodily injury that causes death, creates a substantial risk of death, or causes serious permanent disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ. Texas Penal Code § 1.07(34).

Reading penal code §§ 1.07(34), 19.03(a)(2) and 21.03 ⁸ in conjunction, in order to obtain a capital murder conviction, the State must prove that the accused:

(1) raped the victim, and

(2) caused serious bodily injury ... in the course of the same criminal episode, and

(3) killed the victim in the course of committing or attempting to commit the rape.

Appellant interprets the statutes involved so as to require the State to prove that a murder was committed temporally separate from the aggravated rape. Appellant contends that the statute was improperly applied to him because the State could not prove an aggravated rape of J__ B__ separate from the murder of J__ B__.

When we interpret any statute, we try "to effectuate the 'collective' intent or purpose of the legislators who enacted the legislation." Boykin v. State, 818 S.W.2d 782, 785 (Tex.Cr.App.1991). Normally, we will accomplish this goal simply by focusing our attention on and discerning the objective meaning of the statute's literal text at the time of its enactment. Id. In the majority of situations, this exercise will yield an end result of effectuating the intent of the Legislature by giving effect to the statute's plain language. Id.

We will not, however, give effect to a statute's plain meaning when such an interpretation produces absurd results. Id.; Faulk v. State, 608 S.W.2d 625, 630 (Tex.Cr.App.1980). The rationale underlying this exception to the "plain meaning" rule is our refusal to attribute to the Legislature a desire to reach absurd results. Boykin, 818 S.W.2d at 785. If a statute may reasonably be interpreted in two different ways, a court may consider the consequences of differing interpretations in deciding which interpretation to adopt. 82 C.J.S. Statutes § 326 (1953). Moreover, if one reasonable interpretation of a statute yields absurd results and another interpretation yields no such absurdities, the latter interpretation should be preferred.

In this situation, we conclude that the statute is susceptible to two reasonable interpretations. We also conclude, however, that interpreting the statute in the manner advanced by appellant would lead to absurd results. Three hypothetical examples will precisely illustrate such absurd consequences. First, consider the example of a person charged with a combination of aggravated rape and murder. Appellant's interpretation would require that the conduct which makes the rape aggravated in nature be proven separate from the conduct that caused death.

While such an interpretation is facially attractive, a concrete example demonstrates the absurd consequences such an interpretation yields. Consider the situation where the police find a beaten and raped body and eventually discover the identity of the rapist-murderer. Even though the State could prove that a rape had been committed, that serious bodily injury had been inflicted, and that the victim had been murdered, under appellant's interpretation, the State would never be able to obtain a conviction for capital murder on such facts simply because the evidence could show only that a rape and murder had occurred within a short interval of time. We refuse to believe that the Legislature intended such an absurd result.

The combination of robbery and capital murder also presents problems under the interpretation appellant would have us adopt. The pertinent language of the penal code reads:

§ 29.02 Robbery

(a) A person commits an offense if, in the course of committing theft as defined in Chapter 31 of this code and with the intent to obtain of maintain control of the property, he:

(1) intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury to another; ...

Should the State's evidence show only that a convenience store clerk was killed by a single gun shot wound to the back, that property had been taken, and that the defendant had fired the fatal shot, the State still could not obtain a capital murder conviction under appellant's interpretation of the statute, absent some surviving witness or videotape of the incident. The State would be precluded from obtaining a capital murder conviction because it would be impossible to prove the elements of the robbery separate from the elements of the murder. The only bodily injury that the State could prove would be the same wound which killed the clerk. Under appellant's interpretation, this single act could not constitute an element of both the robbery and the murder, and the State would be precluded from prosecuting the defendant under the capital murder statute. We do not believe that the Legislature meant to restrict the State's ability to prosecute such a defendant for capital murder.

A similar absurd result is produced if appellant's position is taken to its logical end and arson and murder are combined. At the time of the offense, the pertinent language of the penal code's arson section read:

§ 28.02 Arson

(a) A person commits an offense if he starts a fire or causes an explosion:

(1) without the effective consent of the owner and with intent to destroy or damage the owner's building or habitation; or

(2) with intent to destroy or damage any building or habitation to collect insurance for the damage or destruction.

1973 Tex.Gen.Laws 924. Suppose the State's evidence showed that the defendant had intentionally killed the victim by burning the victim's home. Moreover, suppose that before igniting the fire, the defendant had bound the victim so securely that no possibility existed that the victim would escape the burning building. According to appellant's interpretation, the State could not pursue a capital murder prosecution because the State could never prove conduct to satisfy the requirements of murder, separate from the conduct which constituted the offense of arson. Under this interpretation of the statute, the State could pursue a capital murder prosecution only if it could prove the murder occurred totally independent from the...