Pacheco v. State
| Decision Date | 28 July 2020 |
| Docket Number | NO. 01-18-00605-CR,01-18-00605-CR |
| Parties | JESUS PACHECO, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
On Appeal from the 431st District Court Denton County, Texas1
A jury found appellant, Jesus Pacheco, guilty of the felony offense of aggravated assault of a family member2 and assessed his punishment at confinement for forty years. It further found that he used a deadly weapon: appellant's hand, foot, or knee, or a shoe, in the commission of the offense. In three issues, appellant contends that the evidence is legally insufficient to support his conviction and the trial court erred in admitting certain testimony during the punishment phase of trial and cumulating his sentence.
We affirm.
Nadia Watson, the complainant, testified that appellant, with whom she was in an "on and off" dating relationship for around four or five years, was the father of her child. At some point after their child was born, and while the complainant and appellant were "on a[] break" from their relationship, the complainant became pregnant with another child. Although appellant was not the father of the complainant's second child, the complainant told appellant that he was the child's father. Ultimately, the complainant "gave her [second child] up for adoption."
In 2015 and 2016, the complainant and appellant continued to date, and in December 2016, the complainant lived at the home of appellant's father in DentonCounty, Texas. The complainant testified that appellant lived in the home as well.3 On December 10, 2016, while she took a shower, appellant began "[g]oing through" the complainant's cellular telephone. And after reading a conversation between the complainant and the adoptive mother of the complainant's second child, appellant learned that he was not the father of that child. This caused appellant to become angry.
After the complainant got out of the shower, appellant threw the complainant's cellular telephone and started yelling and calling her names, like "whore" and "bitch." Appellant pulled the complainant's hair, and while she lay on the bed against the wall in the fetal position, appellant kicked her in her abdomen. Appellant also "bash[ed]" the complainant's head with a shoe, kicked her, hit her, and spit on her. The complainant explained that appellant used "[a] lot" of force when he hit and kicked her and she felt excruciating pain. Although the complainant asked appellant to stop, he did not. Appellant was mad, and the complainant felt scared.
The complainant further testified that appellant hit her with a black dress shoe, his fist, and his foot, and he struck her with his knee. And he hit her on the back of her head, her abdomen, and her back. She also noted that her child was in the roomat the time of the assault and was crying. The child also asked appellant to stop hitting the complainant.
The assault lasted "an hour or two," and it ended when the complainant told appellant that she "needed to seek medical attention because [she] was in a lot of pain" and she "knew something was broken." Although appellant said "okay," he said that she could seek medical care "later." Appellant then stayed with the complainant for a time, but eventually left for a couple of hours. The complainant stated that she did not "call for help" while appellant was away because he had broken her cellular telephone, although on cross-examination, she testified that her cellular telephone was not broken. Even so, after appellant returned, the complainant asked to go to the hospital, but appellant would not let her leave the house.
Two or three days after the assault, while trying to clean her room, the complainant felt pain. Appellant's father saw that she was in pain, and the complainant asked him to take her to the hospital. The complainant explained that she was scared, she had been in constant pain for those two or three days, and appellant would not let her leave the house during that time.
At the hospital, the complainant told hospital personnel that she injured herself when she "tripped" and "fell on a rock." The complainant stayed in the hospital for two weeks because she had sustained a spleen laceration and four brokenribs. After being released from the hospital, the complainant kept experiencing abdominal pain, and she was taken back to the hospital because she had more internal bleeding. At the time of trial, the complainant continued to attend follow-up appointments related to her injuries.
In February 2017, the complainant spoke to a law enforcement officer about the December 10, 2016 assault. The complainant clarified at trial that she did not "fall on any rocks."
Dr. Elizabeth Kim, who served as the trauma medical director at Medical City of Lewisville Hospital, testified that on December 11, 2016, while working at the hospital, she treated the complainant. Dr. Kim explained that the complainant told hospital personnel that she had fallen down two days before she arrived at the hospital.
An emergency room doctor first examined the complainant, and a computed tomography ("CT") scan revealed that she had two rib fractures on her left side and "at least a grade 3 splenic injury."4 The splenic injury included "a crush injury on part of the spleen," meaning that the spleen "got crushed"; "[t]here [was] a tear in it, and it kind of got smashed." The splenic injury also included a "4 to 5 centimeter laceration." Dr. Kim stated that the complainant "had a bunch of bleeding in [her]pelvis . . . as well as around [her] spleen" and the internal bleeding was because of the complainant's splenic injury. The complainant was admitted into the intensive care unit ("ICU") at the hospital.
Dr. Kim further testified that as the complainant's injuries were being monitored by hospital personnel, the complainant's "hemoglobin continued to drop." And because of this, Dr. Kim believed that the complainant was actively bleeding internally because of her splenic injury. Thus, Dr. Kim "called the radiologist to come in and embolize" the spleen because that would hopefully slow down the bleeding enough that the complainant's spleen would not have to be surgically removed. Ultimately, the embolization of the complainant's spleen stopped "a lot of [the internal] bleeding." The complainant stayed in the hospital for around a week.
As for the spleen in general, Dr. Kim noted that the spleen is in the left upper part of an individual's abdomen and it can tear easily from any kind of trauma. Because the spleen helps an individual "fight bacteria," a person who does not have a functioning spleen is more likely to get certain types of illnesses. And although the spleen can be surgically removed, a person without a spleen must have certain vaccinations to survive.5 According to Dr. Kim, if the complainant's spleen hadcontinued to bleed due to the splenic laceration that she sustained and if the complainant did not receive medical treatment for her splenic injury, the complainant would have had a substantial risk of death.
Finally, Dr. Kim explained that a "repeat CT scan . . . from like a year or two" after the assault showed that a majority of the complainant's spleen had begun functioning again. Even so, Dr. Kim explained that a portion of the complainant's spleen still was not functioning like it should. In Dr. Kim's opinion, the complainant's splenic laceration could have been caused by blunt force trauma and "a fist or a foot or an object" would have been capable of causing the injury.
The trial court admitted into evidence, without objection, the complainant's medical records. The records state that the complainant, when she arrived at the hospital, reported that she had fallen while running two days prior and had "hit some rocks." The complainant stated that she immediately felt rib pain on her left side and a shortness of breath. She also experienced left upper quadrant abdominal pain that "radiated into her pelvis." The pain worsened over the next two days, and by the time she arrived at the hospital, she rated her pain as an eight out of ten. According to the complainant, movement made her pain worse. The complainant appeared to have "multiple [other] bruises not related to [any] fall."6
The complainant's medical records also note that a CT scan of the complainant showed a "[s]evere splenic laceration," as well as "[l]eft lateral sixth and seventh rib fractures." And the complainant had a "[l]arge amount of free fluid in [her] pelvis and [a] small [amount of] free fluid in the left upper quadrant adjacent to [her] spleen." The complainant was diagnosed with a "[g]rade 3 splenic injury"7 and two rib fractures, and she was admitted to the ICU at the hospital. The complainant's medical records contain a notation from the complainant's emergency-room doctor stating that "[t]he services [that he] provided to [the complainant]," such as "consultant collaboration regarding findings and treatment options, medication orders and management, direct patient care, re-evaluations, vital sign assessments and ordering, interpreting, and reviewing diagnostic studies/lab tests," were to "treat and/or prevent clinically significant deterioration that could result in severe disability or death."
According to the complainant's medical records, while in the hospital, the complainant underwent a splenic embolization, and a report related to the embolization states that there were multiple areas of active bleeding in the complainant's spleen. But, through the embolization procedure, about ninety percent of the blood flow to the spleen was cutoff which helped reduce thecomplainant's active internal bleeding. The embolization report classifies the splenic laceration that the complainant sustained as a "grade 4 splenic laceration."
Further, the complainant's medical records describe her splenic injury as "a severe traumatic injury" and state that the laceration that she...
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