Rankin v. State
| Decision Date | 29 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | NO. 01-19-00156-CR,01-19-00156-CR |
| Parties | Angel Lee RANKIN, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
A jury convicted appellant, Angel Lee Rankin, of murder. After rejecting her claim of sudden passion, the jury assessed punishment at 15 years' confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In four issues, Rankin contends that (1) the trial court erred by denying her motion to suppress her statements, (2) the evidence is insufficient to defeat her self-defense claim, (3) the evidence is insufficient to support the jury's negative finding on sudden passion, and (4) the trial court erred by denying her motion for mistrial after a spectator's outburst during defense counsel's opening statements. We affirm.
One fall evening, Rankin went to the gas station to get snacks. Shortly after leaving her apartment complex, Rankin's car broke down. Her car was known for having "electrical problems with the wiring." Rankin always kept a pink paring knife in her car to open the hood because her car had been damaged in an accident. This occasion was no different.
Rankin called her 13-year-old daughter, M.R.1 She also called her boyfriend, Steven Willis, "a whole bunch of times" to help her jump start the disabled car because he was driving her Oldsmobile Cutlass. Willis eventually arrived, parked the Cutlass next to her car, and pushed her car into a washateria parking lot. While Willis retrieved the jumper cables from the trunk, Rankin took the knife from her knife kit to unlatch the hood. Meanwhile, M.R. went outside to check on her mother and saw Rankin and Willis in the washateria parking lot across the street. M.R. heard Willis "yelling" and saw him behaving "very aggressively." She noticed that Willis's "nostrils had flared up" and that his "face turned very bright red" with "rage."
According to Rankin, Willis "had an attitude" and acted "bother[ed]" when he first arrived to help her. As she was trying to unlatch the hood, Rankin repeatedly asked Willis where he had been. He responded, "Shut the fuck up." Next, Rankin asked him why he had not answered her calls sooner. She continued to question him. Eventually, Rankin no longer wanted Willis to help her because he grew increasingly "frustrated." She told him,
At that moment, M.R. saw Willis grab and lunge at Rankin. M.R. then "turned around and ran to get" a bat from their apartment. Meanwhile, Willis exclaimed, "Bitch, I'll kill you!" He grabbed Rankin's right wrist with his left hand, squeezed it, and began to choke her. He choked her for at least 30 seconds. Rankin begged Willis to release her neck and "cr[ied] out to God" because she started to "lose [her] breath" and felt like she "was about to die." Rankin struggled to pry her wrist from Willis's hand. Rankin still had the knife in her hand. When she broke free from his grasp, Rankin "called out for help from God," "took the knife," and "poked him once to get him off of" her. In describing what happened after she "poked" him with the knife, she explained:
As Willis walked away, Rankin sat in her car and cried with the door open. When she noticed Willis fall to the ground, Rankin ran over to help him. Because Willis was unconscious and unresponsive, Rankin picked him up, "put him in the passenger seat of the Cutlass," and called 911. While on the phone with the 911 operator, Rankin decided that she could get to the hospital quicker than an ambulance. She "took off ... doing 95 [mph] down Fondren the whole way." By the time M.R. returned with the bat, she saw her mother's car there, but the Cutlass, her mother, and Willis were gone.
Rankin and Willis arrived at the Southwest Hermann Memorial Hospital "six minutes" later. Willis had a stab wound to the chest and was unresponsive.2 The emergency room physician and other hospital workers carried him onto a stretcher and tried to resuscitate him by performing CPR.
A police officer sitting at the front desk of the hospital asked Rankin, "Who did this?" She responded, "I did." Houston Police Department Detective A. Hernandez came to the hospital to investigate the cause of Willis's injuries. Police took Rankin's cell phone, identification, and other items from her. There is a dispute about whether officers immediately handcuffed Rankin.3 Detective Hernandez met with Rankin. She did not advise Rankin of her constitutional rights under Miranda v. Arizona4 before questioning her about the incident.
Rankin explained that she called Willis to assist her with her car troubles. She also told Detective Hernandez that an argument ensued. She did not, however, tell Detective Hernandez that Willis had choked her because she was "afraid that once he got out of the hospital, if they were to arrest him, he was going to come hurt [her]." After the argument, Rankin realized that the knife in her right hand had accidentally penetrated Willis's chest when he had bent over. She also told Detective Hernandez that Willis "walked away" towards the Cutlass, sat in the car and then got out again, "took off his shirt," "grabbed his chest," and "fell to the ground." That is when Rankin first called the police and then rushed Willis to the hospital.
Rankin's "story seemed incomplete" to Detective Hernandez. She called the District Attorney's Office to "discuss the case," but they declined to charge her. Afterwards, Detective Hernandez "contacted the Homicide Division and requested investigators come to the hospital." When the other officers arrived, Rankin signed consent forms authorizing officers to search and seize her car and the Cutlass. Detective Hernandez handcuffed Rankin under Houston Police Department policy requiring officers to handcuff all persons transported for security. She drove Rankin to the Homicide Division for further questioning.
Officer R. Lujan met with Rankin. He told her that she was there voluntarily, she was not in any trouble, and he only wanted to get information about the incident. He did not read her Miranda warnings before taking her statement. Rankin repeated the version of events that she had given Detective Hernandez earlier, but she omitted the details about the argument and physical altercation. As before, Rankin never told Officer Lujan that Willis tried to choke or otherwise hurt her. Rankin did not appear injured. Officers returned her purse, identification, and cell phone to her and took her home after she gave her statement. Willis later died from his injuries.
The State indicted Rankin for murder. Before trial, Rankin moved to suppress the statements she made to the officers. Rankin, Detective Hernandez, Officer Lujan, and Officer B. Evans testified at the suppression hearing. At the end of the hearing, the trial court denied Rankin's motion to suppress:
At this time, I'll find that the statement, although it did not comply with Miranda , that she was not under arrest or part of custodial interrogation and that it was voluntarily made. I find the statements by Ms. Rankin made about her time in the video room are entirely inconsistent, which is what is on that video room, specifically about asking to call her daughter, specifically about asking to use the bathroom. The fact that she was transported in handcuffs alone does not rise to custodial interrogation.
At trial, during defense counsel's opening statement, a spectator yelled, "That's all lies!" Defense counsel immediately moved for a mistrial. Outside the presence of the jury, the trial court reprimanded the spectator and ordered him to leave the courtroom. After dismissing the spectator, the trial court denied the motion for mistrial.
Defense counsel then asked the trial court to instruct the jury to disregard the outburst, and the trial court gave the following instruction to the jury:
Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the interruption. We're not sure—the person is not a witness and will not be returning to the courtroom. He is ordered to be—he will not be back in the courtroom during the proceedings of this case. The only thing that you may consider as evidence in this case is evidence that's introduced to you and evidence received from the witness stand. I'm going to instruct you to disregard the statements from the audience. All right?
The jury convicted Rankin of murder, rejected her claim of sudden passion, and assessed punishment at 15 years' confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. This appeal followed.
In her first issue, Rankin contends that the trial court erred by denying her motion to suppress her statements to police at the hospital and at the police station. She argues that admission of the inculpatory statements was error because she was in custody when she made the statements but the officers never provided her with statutory warnings under Article 15.17 or Article 38.22 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.5 See TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. arts.15.17, 38.22. The State maintains that the trial court did not err because Rankin was not in custody when she made the statements. The State does not dispute that officers did not read Rankin the statutory warnings.
We review a trial court's decision to deny a motion to suppress for an abuse of discretion. Martinez v. State , 348 S.W.3d...
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