Ortiz v. State, 01-83-0570-CR

• Decision Date: 20 September 1984
• Docket Number: No. 01-83-0570-CR,01-83-0570-CR
• Citation: 680 S.W.2d 659
• Parties: Juan Ramon ORTIZ, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee. (1st Dist.)
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 659

680 S.W.2d 659

Juan Ramon ORTIZ, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 01-83-0570-CR.

Court of Appeals of Texas,

Houston (1st Dist.).

Sept. 20, 1984.

Ken J. McLean, Houston, Charles C. Cate, Katy, for appellant.

William A. Meitzen, Fort Bend County Dist. Atty., Donald W. Bankston, Fort Bend County Asst. Dist. Atty., Richmond, for appellee.

Before EVANS, C.J., and WARREN and BULLOCK, JJ.

OPINION

BULLOCK, Justice.

Appellant was originally indicted and tried in Fort Bend County for murder. However, the trial court declared a mistrial when the jury could not reach a verdict on guilt or innocence. The cause was then transferred by change of venue to Comal County, where a jury found appellant guilty of murder and assessed punishment at fifteen years confinement.

We affirm.

On July 16, 1982, game wardens discovered four badly decomposed bodies along the Brazos River in Fort Bend County. Further investigation disclosed that the victims had been Salvadoran nationals, illegal aliens who had been murdered between July 2-4, 1982. Other Salvadorans, who had entered the United States with the victims, identified the corpses through the clothing, the decomposition having made recognition of the victims' features impossible. The victims had been bound with rope. The coroner testified that the four had died from gunshots, at close range, to the head. Authorities also recovered seven spent nine millimeter (9mm) cartridges and one spent 9mm bullet at the murder site.

Investigation by law enforcement authorities ultimately led to a gang of Hispanics known as "Los Tejas" or "Mafia de los Tejas," and to several units of an apartment complex in southeast Houston that the gang rented and occupied. The police obtained the property owner's permission to search those units and discovered human hair and human blood in one of the units.

A grand jury indicted thirteen members of this gang, including appellant, known as Juan or Juanio Ortiz.

Police officers testified that their investigation revealed that the gang rented several units of the apartment complex; that they frequently occupied these units; that a major occupation of the gang was to be "coyotes," individuals who agree to import illegal aliens into the United States for money; that neighbors had seen the gang on many occasions bringing illegals into or moving illegals out of the apartments; that appellant was a member of the gang; and that appellant was usually armed with a 9mm handgun.

Four individuals who had come to the United States from Central America through the gang's activities as "coyotes" testified at appellant's trial. All of these individuals testified through a translator.

Cruz Ventura testified that in June, 1982, he left El Salvador for the United States in the company of seven countrymen, including the four victims. In Monterrey, Mexico, Ventura testified, the group met one Pedro Hernandez, who offered to turn the group over to "coyotes" who would transport them to Houston for $500 per person. The group crossed the Rio Grande at Nuevo Laredo by raft (for which, Ventura testified, the "coyotes" made them pay extra), whereupon most of them were herded into the trunk of an automobile, the remainder riding inside the vehicle, and taken to Houston. During this eight-hour journey the "coyotes" provided neither food nor water to their helpless charges. Upon arriving in Houston, the "coyotes"--now armed with automatic handguns--herded the refugees into an apartment that Ventura identified at trial through photographs as one of the apartments occupied by the gang, ridiculed and harrassed them, and informed them that the "selling price" was now $800 per person. Appellant and another gang member took Ventura and another Salvadoran, Roman Turcios, to a restaurant to inform the illegals' families of the higher price for delivery. The negotiations were unsuccessful, and the foursome returned to the apartments. There, Ventura testified, the gang members were outraged over a gun battle that had occurred while Ventura's group was at the restaurant, in which another Salvadoran had escaped after his relatives had shot and killed a gang member. At this point appellant and other gang members beat and kicked the remaining Salvadoran illegals, bound them with rope, cut their hair, stuffed it in their mouths, and poured a noxious liquid down their noses in an attempt to drown them. The gang members then put the bound and helpless Salvadoran victims in a room and told them they would cut their heads off in the morning. During the night, Ventura and another Salvadoran, Victor Turcios, freed themselves and their companions from their bondage and attempted to escape. Ventura and Victor Turcios were successful; Ventura testified that the other four failed in their escape attempt, and that he never saw them alive again.

Mario Ventura, another member of the illegal group, testified at trial, corroborating Cruz Ventura's testimony as to the group's arrival in Houston in early July, and their treatment when they arrived at the apartment. He testified that a gang member took him to a grocery store to inform his relatives of the "price increase," and that a gun battle ensued, in which a gang member died, and he made his escape.

Victor Turcios also testified at appellant's trial, corroborating Cruz Ventura's story in every respect.

Gerardo Perez, a Mexican national imported illegally by the gang approximately twenty-four hours after the Salvadoran group, also testified at appellant's trial. Perez described the barbarous treatment meted out to him by the gang members, including appellant, this treatment being only slightly less appalling than that testified to by the survivors of the first group. The gang then locked him and his wife in the same apartment that the Salvadoran witnesses had identified with four badly beaten Salvadorans, whom Perez described as securely tied with rope. Some time later, Perez testified, appellant and another gang member entered this apartment and took the four Salvadorans out, laughingly claiming that their families had paid for them. Perez, a highly educated man familiar with hunting and firearms, testified that appellant carried a 9mm automatic, while his companion carried a .38 caliber handgun. The two gang members returned later, Perez testified, without their Salvadoran prisoners.

Jose Mejia, the maintenance worker at the apartment complex, testified that "Los Tejas" or "Mafia de los Tejas" was an Hispanic group that rented the apartment units in question and that he had observed them in their trade as "coyotes," while illegals were present. He specifically identified appellant as a gang member and as a "coyote," described from personal observation the 9mm weapon appellant carried, and testified that appellant had once told him that if he ever wanted someone killed, the gang would take care of it for him.

Appellant's counsel cross-examined each of these witnesses vigorously, including law enforcement personnel, counsel later contending that the law officers' informants had implicated another individual instead of appellant. Nothing in the record, however, demonstrates that, apart from semantic difficulties encountered when cross-examination requires an interpreter, counsel elicited any contradiction of this evidence. Appellant's case rested on alibi; his wife testified at trial that on one of the days the killings may have occurred, she saw him "leave for work."

The trial court properly charged the jury as to the law of parties, infra, and the jury convicted appellant of the murder of Roman Turcios.

Appellant presents five grounds of error, comprising two related arguments:

1) That insufficient evidence exists in the record to support appellant's conviction for murder (Ground of Error 1) and

2) That the trial court improperly applied the law of parties to the case, because insufficient evidence exists to establish that appellant acted either alone or in concert with his fellow "coyotes" (Grounds of Error 2-5).

Appellant argues that the evidence in this case is totally insufficient to support his conviction on the charge of murder. There is, in appellant's view, no evidence that ties appe...