Padilla v. State

• Decision Date: 06 October 2010
• Docket Number: No. PD-1283-09.,PD-1283-09.
• Citation: 326 S.W.3d 195
• Parties: Pablo PADILLA, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

326 S.W.3d 195

Pablo PADILLA, Appellant,

v.The STATE of Texas.

No. PD-1283-09.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Oct. 6, 2010.

Danice L. Obregon, Corpus Christi, for Appellant.

Douglas K. Norman, Asst. Dist. Atty., Corpus Christi, Jeffrey L. Van Horn, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

HERVEY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which KELLER, P.J., WOMACK, JOHNSON, KEASLER, HOLCOMB, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

OPINION

A jury convicted appellant of capital murder (murder during the course of a robbery or an attempted robbery), and, with the State not having sought the death penalty, appellant received the mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. See § 12.31(a)(2), Tex. Penal Code. The ground upon which we granted review asks, "Did the Court of Appeals fail to follow Texas jurisprudence in erroneously affirming Petitioner's conviction because the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to support a conviction as a principle [sic] or a party to capital murder?" See Padilla v. State, No. 13-08-470-CR, slip op. at 7-11, 2009 WL 5247434 (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi, delivered August 20, 2009) (memorandum opinion not designated for publication) (deciding that the evidence is legally and factually sufficient to support appellant's capital-murder conviction). We address only the legal-sufficiency question and decide that the evidence is legally sufficient to support appellant's conviction. See Zuliani v. State, 97 S.W.3d 589, 593 (Tex.Cr.App.2003) (this Court is without jurisdiction to review evidence for factual sufficiency in non-death-penalty cases).

The evidence in this case shows that the murder victim (Victor Morales) sold small quantities of drugs from his home in Corpus Christi. The victim's wife (Traci Romero) testified that the victim did this on the side "besides the roofing work" that he did. Romero did not like the victim's drug-dealing activities, and they argued over it. They even separated over it for about two or three months. They got back together about three months before the offense with the understanding that the victim "wasn't going to do anymore of those drug-dealings." The victim, however, apparently continued his drug-dealing activities, the extent of which he apparently kept secret from Romero. The night before the offense, the victim told Romero that a person named Carlos Gonzales owed him $1,000. This caused Romero and the victim to argue. Romero testified that she had seen Gonzales at their home about a year before to buy drugs from the victim.

The next morning, Romero went to work, leaving the victim home alone. When Romero returned home at about 5:20 p.m. that evening, she found the victim dead lying in a pool of blood on the floor by the front door. Their bedroom had been ransacked, and jewelry was missing. The victim's pit-bull dog was in the back yard. Romero testified that the dog was very protective of the victim. She also testified that the victim usually kept the dog in the house when he was home alone, but that he would put the dog in the back yard when a stranger came to the house.

The medical evidence shows that the victim was severely beaten about the head and the neck and that his skull had been fractured.¹ The medical examiner testifiedthat the victim's skull fracture would have been immediately incapacitating and would have caused death within about fifteen to thirty minutes. The medical examiner also testified that the injury to the victim's skull was consistent with having been caused by a blunt instrument such as a baseball bat or some other tool and that the injuries to the victim's neck, nose, mouth, cheeks and jaws were consistent with the victim having been kicked. The medical examiner also stated that all of the victim's injuries "could have been made by a single instrument" and that they "could have all been done by one person." The medical examiner further testified that there was "no way of telling how many people were involved in the infliction of these injuries."

Within about a week after the offense, the police discovered that appellant and Gonzales had been involved in pawning the victim's jewelry. ² Appellant and Gonzales lived in Mathis, which was about an hour's drive from Corpus Christi, where the victim lived. The police arrested appellant and Gonzales.

About six months later, appellant provided a videotaped statement to the police in the presence of his attorney and the prosecuting attorney. Appellant stated in this videotaped statement that Gonzales was one of his "closest friends." ³ Appellant stated that Gonzales had been to the victim's home before and that he thought that Gonzales was getting his drugs from the victim. Appellant also stated that he went with Gonzales once before to the victim's home, but that he waited in the car while Gonzales went inside.

Appellant stated that he and Gonzales were riding around in Gonzales's mother's car smoking marijuana on the day of the victim's murder. Gonzales was driving the car. For some reason, which appellant did not explain, Gonzales drove the car from Mathis to the victim's home and parked. According to appellant, Gonzales got out of the car and went inside the home while appellant waited in the car. Shortly thereafter, Gonzales came back to the car and told appellant to come inside the house. When appellant did so, he saw the victim's body which, according to appellant, caused appellant to go into a state of shock. Appellantclaimed that he stood by the front door still in shock while Gonzales ransacked the victim's home and took money and jewelry. Appellant claimed that Gonzales told him that he struck the victim in the back of the head with a tire-checker tool.⁴ Appellant and Gonzales drove back to Mathis in "complete silence." Appellant helped Gonzales dispose of evidence at an abandoned caliche pit in Mathis including four or five pairs of gloves and the tire-checker tool (State's Exhibit 31), which the police recovered. Appellant stated that Gonzales gave him some cash and some of the victim's jewelry. Appellant claimed that he was afraid of his good friend Gonzales and that he pawned some of the victim's jewelry for Gonzales because Gonzales told appellant that he did not have a driver's license.⁵ Appellant later said that both he and Gonzales pawned the victim's jewelry. Appellant claimed that he did not know that Gonzales planned to kill the victim when they parked in front of the victim's home.⁶

Appellant claims on discretionary review that the evidence is legally insufficient to show that he is guilty, either as a principal or as a party, to murdering the victim.⁷ He further argues that whomeverthe evidence shows murdered the victim, the evidence also shows that the robbery was an afterthought and not related to the victim's murder.⁸ Appellant argues:

In affirming Padilla's conviction for capital murder, the Court of Appeals summarily relies on (1) mere presence (not sufficient alone to support a conviction); (2) "flight" in that he left the crime scene with the co-defendant (not sufficient alone to support a conviction); (3) splitting the proceeds from the theft and (4) pawning the victim's jewelry after the fact. Obviously, none of these factors relate to a robbery in the course of murder or the murder itself; they are completely consistent with Padilla's complicity in a theft that occurred after the murder was completed by Gonzales.

(Citation to Appendix omitted; emphasis in italics in original).

Under a legal-sufficiency review, the reviewing court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict and then determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). This "familiar standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts." See id. Faced with a record of historical facts that support conflicting inferences, the reviewing court "must presume ... that the trier of fact resolved any such conflicts in favor of the prosecution, and must defer to that resolution." See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 326, 99 S.Ct. 2781. A "mere modicum" of incriminating evidence cannot "by itself rationally support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt." See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781.

We decide that a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant willingly and actively participated in the victim's murder during the course of a robbery with his "best friend" Gonzales, who owed the victim $1,000. The evidence shows that these "best friends" made the approximately one-hour drive from Mathis to the victim's home in Corpus Christi where the victim was brutally murdered just minutes after their arrival. The victim's pit-bull dog was in the back yard when the victim's wife returned home from work. She testified that the victim would put the dog in the back yard when a stranger came over. This is some evidence that at least one stranger was in the house. And, even though the medical examiner testified that he could not say how many people attacked the victim, the medical examiner's testimony does support a finding that the victim could have been attacked by two people.

The evidence also shows that money and jewelry were taken from the victim's home immediately after the victim was attacked. See Cooper v. State, 67 S.W.3d 221, 223-24 (Tex.Cr.App.2002) (theft occurring immediately after a murder will support an inference that the murder occurred during the course of a robbery). The evidence further shows that appellant helped Gonzales dispose of evidence, that appellant and Gonzales split up the victim's money and jewelry, and that appellant and Gonzaleswere involved in pawning the victim's jewelry. See Hooper v. State,...