Reyes v. State

• Court: Texas Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: STEVEN C. HILBIG, Justice
• Citation: Reyes v. State, 314 S.W.3d 74 (Tex. App. 2010)
• Decision Date: 17 March 2010
• Docket Number: No. 04-09-00210-CR.,04-09-00210-CR.
• Parties: Steve REYES, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

314 S.W.3d 74

Steve REYES, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 04-09-00210-CR.

Court of Appeals of Texas, San Antonio.

March 17, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Roderick B. Glass, Assistant Public Defender, San Antonio, TX, for Appellant.

Susan D. Reed, District Attorney, Bexar County, San Antonio, TX, for Appellee.

Sitting: KAREN ANGELINI, Justice, STEVEN C. HILBIG, Justice, MARIALYN BARNARD, Justice.

OPINION

Opinion by STEVEN C. HILBIG, Justice.

Steve Reyes was indicted for assault (causing bodily injury) to a member of his family or household.¹ Included in the indictment was an allegation that Reyes was previously convicted of a similar assault, which raised the underlying offense to a third-degree felony.² The indictment also included two enhancement paragraphs, each alleging Reyes had a prior felony conviction, which made Reyes eligible for punishment as a habitual offender.³ The jury found Reyes guilty of the offense as charged in the indictment and found the enhancement allegations to be true. The trial court sentenced Reyes to life in prison. Reyes appeals the judgment, arguing the trial court erred in admitting a 911 recording over his hearsay and confrontation objections. Reyes also claims the evidence is legally insufficient to support the jury's determination he had a prior conviction for assault against a family member. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

BACKGROUND

On February 23, 2007, Reyes's son called 911 at his mother's request to seek medical help. According to the 911 recording, the child requested assistance because his father "beat my mom." The caller expressed concern that his mother's leg may be broken because she was limping and his mother was "all beat up and she can't move." The child answered the 911 operator's questions as to whether Reyes had been drinking and possessed weapons.

The police were dispatched to the residence where they encountered the complainant Mary Mora. City of San Antonio police detective Juan Campacos testified he took pictures of Mora at the scene, and the pictures were placed into evidence. Detective Campacos testified the pictures reflected Mora had two black eyes and cuts over her eyebrows. Raul Rendon, a San Antonio patrol officer, testified that when he arrived at the residence he saw Reyes coming from a rear bedroom. He later saw Mora come from one of the back rooms and observed that her face and body were injured. Officer Rendon testified Mora told him Reyes had beaten her. Mary Dye, another San Antonio Police officer, testified that when she arrived at the scene she encountered a "fearful" child who said that a disturbance was "going on in the back." Officer Dye also testified Mora told her that Reyes had beaten her. At trial, Mora was a recalcitrant witness for the State. She read excerpts from her handwritten statement made on February 23, 2007, in which she stated Reyes had beaten her.

ADMISSION OF 911 RECORDING

The audio recording of the 911 call was admitted into evidence over Reyes's objection that the recording was hearsay and violated his right to confront witnesses. The State argued to the trial court that the recording fell within two exceptions to the hearsay rule—present sense impression and excited utterance. We review the trial court's decision to admit evidence under an abuse of discretion standard. Cameron v. State, 241 S.W.3d 15, 19 (Tex. Crim.App. 2007). We will uphold the trial judge's decision unless it is outside the zone of reasonable disagreement. Id. We will also uphold a trial court's ruling admitting evidence "if the ruling is reasonably supported by the record on any theory of law applicable to the case." Laney v. State, 117 S.W.3d 854, 857 (Tex.Crim.App.2003).

Hearsay

Our rules of evidence contain many exceptions to the general prohibition against the use of hearsay at trial. The present sense impression exception is defined as a "statement describing or explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter." TEX.R. EVID. 803(1). The excited utterance exception is defined as a "statement relating to a startling event or condition made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition." TEX.R. EVID. 803(2). The Court of Criminal Appeals recently described both exceptions as fitting the category of "unreflective statements."

The first set of hearsay exceptions, unreflective statements, are "street corner" utterances made by ordinary people before any thoughts of litigation have crystallized. These unreflective statements used to be called "res gestae," an imprecise Latin legalese term, because the speaker was not thinking about the legal consequences of his statements. In most instances, the speaker was not thinking at all; the statement was made without any reflection, thought process, or motive to fabricate or exaggerate.

Fischer v. State, 252 S.W.3d 375, 379 (Tex. Crim.App.2008) (footnotes and citations omitted). The court went on to explain:

The rationale for the present sense impression exception is that the contemporaneity of the statement with the event that it describes eliminates all danger of faulty memory and virtually all danger of insincerity.

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The rule is predicated on the notion that "the utterance is a reflex product of immediate sensual impressions, unaided by retrospective mental processes." It is "instinctive, rather than deliberate." If the declarant has had time to reflect upon the event and the conditions he observed, this lack of contemporaneity diminishes the reliability of the statements and renders them inadmissible under the rule.

Id. at 380-81 (footnotes and citations omitted).

Reyes argues the recording was not admissible under the present sense impression exception because the recorded statements recounted past events and fail to meet the contemporaneous or immediacy requirement of the hearsay exception. The 911 recording includes statements by the caller that his mother was "limping" and that she "needs" an ambulance. These statements indicate the caller was describing events as they were happening and falls within the hearsay exception of present sense impression. The caller's statement that his father had beaten his mother also appears to be a description of a past event, although it is not clear from the recording when the event took place. When an exhibit contains both admissible and inadmissible evidence, the burden is on the objecting party to specifically point out which portion of the recording is inadmissible. Whitaker v. State, 286 S.W.3d 355, 369 (Tex.Crim.App.2009). A trial court does not abuse its discretion when it admits the exhibit in its entirety if the objecting party fails to segregate the admissible from the inadmissible. See id. Reyes objected to the entire recording and he did not request specific portions to be excluded. Because at least some statements in the recording appear to be a contemporaneous statement about an event the caller was witnessing, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the recording.⁴ See id.

Confrontation

Reyes also argues his right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment was violated by the admission of the 911 recording because he did not have a prior opportunity to cross-examine the caller, the State did not demonstrate the caller was unavailable to testify, and the recording was testimonial. See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). Both parties agree the key to the resolution of this issue is whether the recording is testimonial.

Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.

Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006). In Vinson v. State, the court of criminal appeals suggested a non-exhaustive list of factors to consider in determining whether the statements were testimonial:

1) whether the situation was still in progress; 2) whether the questions sought to determine what is presently happening as opposed to what has happened in the past; 3) whether the primary purpose of the interrogation was to render aid rather than to memorialize a possible crime; 4) whether the questioning was conducted in a separate room, away from the alleged attacker; and 5) whether the events were deliberately recounted in a step-by-step fashion.

252 S.W.3d 336, 339 (Tex.Crim.App.2008) (citing Davis, 547 U.S. at 829-30, 126 S.Ct. 2266). We review de novo the question of whether a statement is testimonial or nontestimonial. Wall v. State, 184 S.W.3d 730, 742 (Tex.Crim.App.2006).

We agree with the trial court that the statements contained in the 911 recording are not testimonial. The 911 operator's questions were designed to evaluate the situation at the time the call was received in order to determine if an emergency existed that required a response. The questions by the 911 operator clearly indicate their primary purpose was to determine the extent of the emergency rather than memorializing information for later use in a criminal prosecution. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the 911 recording.

LEGAL SUFFICIENCY—PRIOR ASSAULT CONVICTION

In two separate issues, Reyes challenges the legal sufficiency of the evidence.⁵ Reyes argues the evidence is legally insufficient to prove his prior assault conviction, and there was a material variance between the allegation in the indictment and the proof at trial as to the date of the previous assault conviction.⁶ Reyes raises...