Nobles v. State

• Decision Date: 10 June 1992
• Docket Number: No. 69991,69991
• Citation: 843 S.W.2d 503
• Parties: Jonathan NOBLES, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 503

843 S.W.2d 503

Jonathan NOBLES, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 69991.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas En Banc.

June 10, 1992.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 14, 1992.

Walter C. Prentice (court appointed on appeal only), Austin, for appellant.

Ronald Earle, Dist. Atty., and Philip A. Nelson, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., Austin, Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION

MILLER, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of capital murder. V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 19.03(a)(2). Following the jury's return of affirmative answers to the submitted special issues ¹, the trial judge then assessed the required punishment of death by lethal injection. Appellant presents eight points of error in his direct appeal. We will affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Appellant does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence either to support his conviction or to support the jury's affirmative answers to the special issues. Rather, appellant asserts various challenges to the trial court's rulings during voir dire and both phases of his trial. As a result, we will initially dispense with a recitation of the facts in this case.

I. Mitigation Issues

In his first point of error, appellant claims that the trial court erred in declining to allow him to submit jury charges on the mitigating quality of evidence he had proffered on his abused childhood and drug use. Appellant contends that the special issues then in effect ² were insufficient in that they precluded the jury from hearing or giving effect to the mitigating evidence he offered, and that therefore the Texas capital punishment scheme was unconstitutional as it applied to him. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 319-328, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 2947-2952, 106 L.Ed.2d 256, 278-284 (1989). In the oft cited case of Penry, Justice O'Connor wrote for the majority that the Texas scheme as applied to Penry, a man of low intellect, was incapable of allowing the jury to express its "reasoned moral response to the defendant's background, character, and crime." Id. at 319, 109 S.Ct. at 2947 (citing California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 545, 107 S.Ct. 837, 841, 93 L.Ed.2d 934, 942 (1987) (O'Connor, J., concurring)) (emphasis in original). The jury, in deciding the fate of an individual, must be allowed to give consideration to society's belief that some individuals are less culpable for their actions than others. California v. Brown, 479 U.S. at 545, 107 S.Ct. at 841 (O'Connor, J., concurring). The problem with our former Article 37.071 lay in its inability to fully allow, in some instances, the jurors to apply their "reasoned moral response" by answering no to a special issue. This was due to the conflict created in applying special issues one and two. ³

At the punishment phase of the trial, appellant called three witnesses familiar with his childhood. First, appellant's foster sister (who had lived in his natural mother's household) testified that appellant "was beaten" with a "big, thick belt[ ]", that he was "mistreated, neglected, [and] ignored[ ]" by his stepfather, and that he was "locked ... up in the closet one time." ⁴ Second, an uncle testified that appellant was a hyperactive child, that appellant's mother had given him "several beatings" for his misbehavior and that "he had bruises all over him most of the time", some of which were bloody. The uncle also testified that appellant's stepfather had "placed [him] in a closet several times as punishment" for "[a]nywhere from an hour to three or four hours at a time." Last, appellant put his foster mother on the witness stand who testified that he had come "from an abused home[ ]," but that of the seventeen children she had foster parented, he was the best "all around." Further, she stated that he adjusted well, was not hostile, and was very loving.

On several prior occasions, this Court has considered whether the special issues allow a jury to give mitigating effect to evidence of an abused background. ⁵ Most recently, this Court held that where the evidence presented by defendant's witnesses failed to show a connection between the events they described and the commission of the crime, then that "evidence is not relevant, beyond the scope of the special issues, to the jury's individualized assessment of Appellant's moral culpability for the crime." Goss v. State, 826 S.W.2d 162, 166 (Tex.Crim.App.1992) (emphasis in original). There, Goss introduced the testimony of his sister and a childhood friend which provided evidence of a troubled childhood, to-wit: they related that on several occasions he had been "beaten with a shoe, belt and wooden slat[,]" and he "did not know his mother until late in his development." Id. However, "[n]one of the evidence presented by appellant's witnesses sought to explain the connection between the apparently isolated problems of childhood and the commission of the crime." Id. Without such a connection, the evidence offered was not helpful to the jurors' determination of the appellant's moral blameworthiness.

Applying the principle espoused in Goss, the evidence presented in the cause sub judice is likewise not relevant beyond the scope of the special issues. Evidence of the appellant's unfortunate childhood was not, without some testimony indicating a nexus between his childhood circumstances and the commission of the crime, helpful to the jury's consideration of the special issues or indicative of a lessened moral blameworthiness. In fact, the evidence appellant chose to present tends to show that the abuse appellant received was sporadic and isolated, not of a continuing nature. Indeed, testimony revealed that attempts were made to place appellant in a safe and nurturing environment once evidence of his less than model home-life became apparent. As such, the evidence he offered was sufficiently encompassed within the scope of the special issues and no special jury charge was required.

Additionally in point of error one, appellant claims that he was entitled to a special jury instruction regarding the potential mitigating quality of being intoxicated at the time of the offense. During questioning at the guilt phase of the trial, appellant's girlfriend told of his use of drugs both prior to and on the night of the crime. That testimony revealed that the appellant had used drugs in her presence on many occasions, including the night of the murders. Although she stated that "[h]e didn't tell [her] when he would use them[,]" she did testify that she "occasionally" saw methamphetamine in his attache case, and that it appeared that he was "shooting" these drugs because she saw needles in his case and "track marks on his arm." ⁶ When asked about the types and quantities of drugs appellant had used on the night of the murders, she spoke of a combination of a brown colored liquid (she assumed was methamphetamine ⁷), cocaine, marijuana and alcohol. However, further questioning revealed that she had no actual knowledge that he had used any of the above-mentioned drugs. ⁸

The jury, at the punishment phase of appellant's trial, again heard testimony of his alleged drug use. At that proceeding, the defense offered the testimony of three witnesses who claimed to know of his drug abuse, viz: two ministers, and a police officer. Appellant's minister related that he first came to know the appellant during a telephone conversation regarding his recent release from prison and his desire "to reorient into society." ⁹ The two subsequently met and appellant attended a religious service; their next contact was some three to three and a half months later. At that time, appellant "realized that he was deviating spiritually[,] ... [t]hat he was becoming involved on [sic] drugs[ ]", and that "he wanted to probably ... get right with the lord[,] ... so [they] had intense prayer in [the minister's] office." A later appointment was made by the two to meet to discuss the appellant's possible entry into a drug rehabilitation program, but the minister was late and no meeting occurred. That was "on the Friday before the indicent [sic] of the murder." Later that day, the minister went to the appellant's residence, observed that there was nothing unusual about his appearance and appellant told him he felt "alright" and did not need the program. The next day, the appellant called the minister to confess his guilt. He also indicated that he was "making a tape ... for the police department ... [to] present[ ] before high school students and all to show them the harms of drugs." ¹⁰

Although enlightening as to the appellant's propensity to use drugs, the foregoing testimony was not useful to the jury's consideration of appellant's deathworthiness. This Court has considered the impact of drugs as they relate to the special issues, and, unless a direct correlation can be drawn between the use of the drugs and a defendant's aberrational behavior, we have determined that such usage is fully encompassed within the scope of Article 37.071. ¹¹ The evidence appellant's witnesses provided amply suggests that he had a drug problem. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that drugs produced in the appellant such uncontrollable impulses as to render him less able to distinguish right from wrong or to learn from his mistakes and, therefore, less deathworthy; indeed, there is no proof that appellant was actually under the influence of drugs during the crime's commission. Without more, we cannot say that appellant was entitled to a special instruction on mitigation. Appellant's point of error number one is overruled.

II.

In point of error number two, appellant submits that the interaction of subsections d, e, and g of Article 37.071 is unconstitutional in that they force the trial court "to impart inaccurate and misleading information that minimizes the importance of the jurors' deliberation and undermines the reliability of the death penalty." Appellant's Br. at 36. As we understand appellant's...