Nightingale v. State
| Decision Date | 04 May 2023 |
| Docket Number | 13-22-00334-CR |
| Parties | MICHAEL PETER NIGHTINGALE, Appellant, v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Do not publish. Tex.R.App.P. 47.2 (b).
On appeal from the 249th District Court of Johnson County Texas.
Before Chief Justice Contreras and Justices Silva and Peña
On June 6, 2019, a grand jury indicted appellant Michael Peter Nightingale on one count of continuous sexual abuse of a young child (Count One) and six counts of "sexual assault of a child prohibited from marrying" (Counts Two-Seven), all first-degree felonies. See Tex Penal Code Ann. §§ 21.02(b), 22.011(a)(2) (f)(1)(A). Before trial, the State abandoned Counts Three and Seven and deleted the "prohibited from marrying" language from the indictment in Counts Two, Four, Five, and Six (the Assault Counts), reducing those counts to second-degree felonies. See id. § 22.011(f). Appellant waived his right to a jury trial, pleaded guilty to the Assault Counts, and pleaded not guilty to Count One. Following a bench trial, the trial court found appellant guilty on all counts and sentenced him to forty years' confinement on Count One and twenty years' confinement on each of the Assault Counts. The trial court ordered the five sentences to run concurrently.
By seven issues, which we address as three, appellant argues on appeal that: (1) there is legally insufficient evidence to support his conviction on each count; (2) his guilty pleas to the Assault Counts were involuntary; and (3) his sentence was cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We affirm.
The bench trial commenced on June 14, 2022. Mother testified that she is appellant's wife, and the couple share four children, including Nancy, born in December 1999, and Nora, born in 2002.[2] In 2012, Mother and appellant moved with their children from Washington state to Keene, Texas, where they lived for four years. In 2016, the family moved to Glen Rose, Texas.
Mother testified that on March 11, 2019, Nancy told her that appellant had been sexually abusing her since she was twelve years old. Nancy informed her the abuse continued until about three months before that night, when she was nineteen years old. Mother contacted law enforcement the same day.
Mother and all four children were subsequently interviewed at the Paluxy River Children's Advocacy Center. After the interviews, Somervell County Sheriff's Office Investigator Terry Early determined there was probable cause that appellant had committed criminal offenses, obtained an arrest warrant for appellant, and scheduled Nancy for an examination with a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE).
Kelly Bunch conducted Nancy's SANE exam and recited the details from her report at trial. According to Bunch, Nancy informed Bunch that she was sexually assaulted by appellant from 2012 through 2019. Bunch also testified that Nancy said appellant had instructed her not to say anything about the abuse and implicitly threatened her by reminding her that "he was bigger than [her]." Nancy checked the "yes" options on the SANE forms that specified that the abuse included: hand and penile contact with her genitals; "oral copulation of [her] genitals"; "masturbation and contact, of patient by assailant" and "of assailant by patient"; condom use; fondling of her breasts; and exposure to pornography.
Nancy testified that she moved with her family to Texas in 2012 when she was twelve years old and that appellant's abuse "started very slowly" that same year.[3] At first, appellant would tuck Nancy into bed and cuddle with her. As time progressed, however, "it all became more frequent." When asked what she meant by "it," Nancy answered, Nancy detailed that appellant would "try to stimulate the clitoris as well as stick his finger in [her] vagina." Appellant also "grabbed [her] hand and told [her] to put it on his genitals, and . . . then put his hand over [her] hand and was trying to show [her] what [she] needed to do." According to Nancy, appellant directed her to "grip [his genitals] firmer and was trying to . . . force [her] but show [her] how to stroke [his genitals]." Nancy testified that this occurred when she was twelve years old. In total, Nancy estimated that appellant had touched her genitals over one hundred times while her family lived in Keene.
Around Christmas 2012, when Nancy was thirteen years old, the abuse progressed to penile to vaginal penetration. Nancy testified that appellant engaged in sexual intercourse with her at least once a week and about fifty times when she was thirteen. At one point when Nancy was thirteen, appellant "took [Nancy] into the bathroom and . . . set [her] up on the counter and said he wanted to try something new." Appellant then "got on his knees and had placed his mouth to [Nancy's] vagina." Appellant also would place his hands under Nancy's shirt and "would try to stimulate [her] nipples." Appellant would buy Nancy whatever she wanted. Nancy posited, "Basically, [appellant] would bribe me to keep my mouth shut."
Nancy testified that she and her family moved from Keene to Glen Rose in 2016. In Glen Rose, appellant would show his daughter pornography and would sexually assault her on almost a daily basis, even while Nora, with whom Nancy shared a room and bunk bed, slept nearby. Nancy testified that at points she worried she was pregnant, so she would roughhouse with her brothers and have them punch her stomach and would also harm herself. Appellant would occasionally give Nancy a morning-after pill or use contraceptive gel while sexually assaulting her.
Nancy testified that the final time she was sexually assaulted was in February 2019. Nancy refused appellant's instructions to cuddle with him, so he jumped off the couch, pulled her into the nearby bathroom, and "very aggressively pinned [her] down and stuck his penis in [her]."
Nora testified that she shared a bunk bed with Nancy and would sometimes hear appellant with Nancy:
I would be sleeping at night, and I, like, I acted like I was asleep because I didn't want them to know I was awake. [Appellant] would step on my bed to get up into the top bunk, and I would feel shaking[,] and I would hear heavy breathing, and then I would hear crying and a whisper of
Nora testified it was Nancy saying "no." Nora stated that she too was sexually assaulted by her father before she turned seventeen on "probably more than ten" occasions during which appellant touched her breasts and "pubic region."
Appellant took the stand in his own defense. He acknowledged that he "did some terrible things to [Nancy]" which were "unforgivable." Appellant stated that he pleaded guilty to the Assault Counts in part to bring about family healing and reconciliation. Appellant admitted to performing acts of digital and penile to vaginal penetration on Nancy in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018, and performing oral sex on Nancy in 2018-when Nancy was between the ages of fifteen and nineteen years old. Appellant denied digitally penetrating Nancy prior to then, stating only that he accidentally touched her vagina when she was fourteen. Appellant also disagreed with the timeline of the assaults Nancy described. Appellant stated that although he had sexual intercourse with Nancy about twenty-five times, the first incident occurred when she was eighteen years old. When asked if Nancy's testimony was thus a lie when she stated she was under fourteen when he first had sex with her, appellant answered, Finally, appellant corroborated Nora's testimony that he would climb into bed to have sex with Nancy while Nora slept on the bottom bunk, and that he also sexually assaulted Nora, but only once.
The parties rested, and the trial court found appellant guilty as charged and sentenced appellant as described above. On July 12, 2022, appellant filed a motion for new trial. In his motion, appellant argued, in part, that (1) his sentence was disproportionate to the crime committed and thus violated his Eighth Amendment rights, and (2) his pleas of guilty had been "involuntary in that [he] was confused and did not understand at the time of the plea that he was pleading guilty to the criminal acts alleged in" the Assault Counts. The trial court held a hearing on appellant's motion on August 25, 2022. At the hearing, appellant sought to withdraw his guilty pleas on the grounds that he was confused as to what he was pleading guilty to because he "was emotionally distraught." At the end of the hearing, the trial court denied appellant's motion for new trial. This appeal followed.
Appellant contends that there was legally insufficient evidence to convict him on each count alleged in the indictment.
"In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we consider the evidence 'in the light most favorable to the verdict' to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Delagarza v. State, 635 S.W.3d 716, 723 (Tex App.-Corpus Christi-Edinburg 2021, pet. ref'd) (quoting Stahmann v. State, 602 S.W.3d 573, 577 (Tex. Crim. App. 2020)); see Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979). We consider both direct and circumstantial evidence as well as all reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the evidence and are not mere speculation. Villa v. State, 514 S.W.3d 227,...
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