Richter v. State

• Decision Date: 22 December 2015
• Docket Number: No. 06–15–00126–CR,06–15–00126–CR
• Citation: 482 S.W.3d 288
• Parties: Martha Aracely Richter, Appellant v. The State of Texas, Appellee
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

482 S.W.3d 288

Martha Aracely Richter, Appellant

v.The State of Texas, Appellee

No. 06–15–00126–CR

Court of Appeals of Texas, Texarkana.

Submitted: December 8, 2015

Decided: December 22, 2015

Julissa Martinez, Law Office of J. Martinez, Waxahachie, TX, for Appellant.

Patrick M. Wilson, Ellis County District Attorney, Waxahachie, TX, for Appellee.

Before Morriss, C.J., Moseley and Burgess, JJ.

OPINION

Opinion by Justice Moseley

On Valentine's Day 2014, after a heated argument with her boyfriend resulted in a breakup, Martha Aracely Richter crashed a car violently into a guardrail on Interstate Highway 45 in Ellis County, Texas.¹

During the investigation of the one-vehicle crash, Richter told emergency responders that she was depressed, indicated that she wanted to die, and admitted that she had ingested some of her regularly-prescribed medication on the day before the accident. The responding police officer's encounter with Richter led him to believe that she was driving while under the influence of her prescription medication. Following a bench trial, Richter was convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI), a class B misdemeanor. Her sentence of 180 days' confinement in the Ellis County Jail and the assessment of a $300.00 fine were suspended, and she was placed on community supervision for a period of two years.

On appeal, Richter argues that the evidence is insufficient to support the trial court's finding of guilt. She also argues that the trial court erred in allowing (1) State Trooper Craig Henry, a drug recognition expert, to offer expert testimony that Richter was intoxicated solely based on his review of medical records and the audio/video recording (recording) of the field-sobriety tests and (2) the arresting officer to testify about statements made by Richter's boyfriend over her hearsay objections. We find that the verdict is supported by legally sufficient evidence, that the trial court did not err in allowing the drug recognition expert to testify, and that the statements made by Richter's boyfriend were not offered for the truth of the matter asserted and, thus, were not hearsay. Consequently, we affirm the trial court's judgment.

I. The Evidence is Sufficient to Support the Trial Court's Finding of Guilt

A. Standard of Review

In Lucio v. State,

the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals expressed the standard of review for a sufficiency issue as follows:

In determining whether the evidence is legally sufficient to support a conviction, a reviewing court must consider all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and determine whether, based on that evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom, a rational factfinder could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 318–19, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560, (1979)

; Hooper v. State, 214 S.W.3d 9, 13 (Tex.Crim.App.2007). 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." Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781. "Each fact need not point directly and independently to the guilt of the appellant, as long as the cumulative force of all the incriminating circumstances is sufficient to support the conviction." Hooper, 214 S.W.3d at 13.

Lucio v. State, 351 S.W.3d 878, 894 (Tex.Crim.App.2011)

.

In conducting a legal sufficiency review, we " ‘consider[ ] all evidence in the record of the trial, whether it was admissible or inadmissible [,]’ ... ‘proper or improper.’ " Winfrey v. State, 393 S.W.3d 763, 767 (Tex.Crim.App.2013)

(quoting Dewberry v. State, 4 S.W.3d 735, 740 (Tex.Crim.App.1999) ; Conner v. State, 67 S.W.3d 192, 197 (Tex.Crim.App.2001) ). "If the record supports conflicting inferences, we must presume that the factfinder resolved the conflicts in favor of the prosecution and therefore defer to that determination." Kelly v. State, 453 S.W.3d 634, 636 (Tex.App.–Waco 2015, pet. ref'd)

(citing Jackson, 443 U.S. at 326, 99 S.Ct. 2781 ). "[T]he fact-finder is entitled to judge the credibility of witnesses and can choose to believe all, some, or none of the testimony presented by the parties." Id. (citing Chambers v. State, 805 S.W.2d 459, 461 (Tex.Crim.App.1991) ).

"The sufficiency of the evidence is measured by reference to the elements of the offense as defined by a hypothetically correct jury charge for the case." Jackson v. State, 399 S.W.3d 285, 290 (Tex.App.–Waco 2013, no pet.)

(citing Malik v. State, 953 S.W.2d 234, 240 (Tex.Crim.App.1997) ). A hypothetically-correct jury charge (1) accurately sets out the law, (2) is authorized by the indictment, (3) does not unnecessarily increase the State's burden of proof or unnecessarily restrict the State's theories of liability, and (4) adequately describes the particular offense for which the defendant was tried. Malik v. State, 953 S.W.2d 234, 240 (Tex.Crim.App.1997).

"A person commits an offense if the person is intoxicated while operating a motor vehicle in a public place." TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 49.04(a)

(West Supp. 2015). "Intoxicated" means "not having the normal use of mental or physical faculties by reason of the introduction of alcohol, a controlled substance, a drug, a dangerous drug, a combination of two or more of those substances, or any other substance into the body." TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 49.01(2)(A) (West 2011). Here, Richter challenges whether the evidence was legally sufficient to demonstrate that she was intoxicated.

B. The Evidence at Trial

Gilbert Ruiz, an officer with the Palmer Police Department, responded to Richter's one-vehicle crash at approximately 4:00 a.m. The car sustained significant damage in the collision, which had caused the air bag to be deployed. Ruiz testified that upon arriving at the scene, he found Richter in the driver's seat, that she was glassy-eyed when she spoke, slurred her speech, and spoke in a "very disoriented" fashion. An audio/videotaped recording² of Ruiz' encounter with Richter confirmed Ruiz' testimony.³ After obtaining Richter's driver's license, Ruiz spoke by telephone with Richter's then-boyfriend, Emigdio Castillo. On the recording, which included Ruiz' side of the conversation, Ruiz can be heard asking Castillo what kind of pills Richter had taken. During that same recording, Ruiz states to another officer, "I just talked to her ... boyfriend. She's taken a lot of pills."

According to Ruiz, Richter told emergency medical responders that she was suffering from back pain, was "very depressed," and was in possession of several prescription medications. Richter told Ruiz that she had taken something for anxiety and two Tramadol

for pain. In addition to those medications, Ruiz found Tylenol–Codeine, Celexa, and Baclofen in her purse. According to Ruiz, Richter admitted to taking "some" pills, but did not clarify exactly how many pills she had taken before the accident.

Richter was eventually cleared by emergency medical personnel. Because he did not smell any alcohol on Richter's breath, Ruiz decided to administer field-sobriety tests to determine whether Richter might be under the influence of prescription drugs. Ruiz testified that Richter had a difficult time following directions during his administration of the horizontal-gaze nystagmus (HGN) test, which yielded six clues of intoxication. Ruiz' testimony and the recording of the walk-and-turn and one-leg-stand tests both demonstrate Richter's horrible performance. Based on Richter's performance on the field-sobriety tests, Ruiz determined that she did not have the normal use of her mental and physical faculties as a result of her ingestion of prescription medication. Nevertheless, because "she was very depressed," Ruiz decided not to arrest Richter so long as she agreed to get medical help. Castillo arrived on the scene, and the video recording showed that he told Ruiz that he and Richter had recently engaged in a heated argument, that Richter was on many medications, and that she had taken many pills.⁴

Richter was transported to the hospital. Thomas R. Gordon, a registered nurse, testified that he was working at Ennis Regional Hospital when Richter arrived. Gordon testified that Richter's vital signs, including her pulse, blood pressure, and body temperature, were "very good" and that he "would call them the vital signs of maybe an athlete." Richter's medical records described her as alert, awake, and oriented; noted that her heart rate and eyes appeared normal; noted that her pupils were "equal, round, and reactive to light and accommodation"; and listed the medications that had been prescribed to Richter, including an opiate. The records also indicated that Richter had sustained neck injury and pain, but noted that she had neck pain and right knee pain before the accident "due to domestic violence recently." According to Gordon, Richter said that "she had been beat[en] up by her boyfriend."

A urine drug screen showed that Richter was negative for all screened drugs, except for an unknown amount of opiate. Dwain Fuller, the technical director of a toxicology laboratory and a forensic toxicologist, testified that the urine drug screen was an amino acid test meant for medical diagnostic use only. Fuller explained that because the amino acid tests can result in false positive indications for the presence of opiates, they require confirmation by another more specific method of testing prior to use for legal purposes. He pointed to the test results, which contained the notation "[u]nconfirmed screening results should not be used for non-medical purposes." He testified, "[Y]ou can't even tell if it's really truly positive ... since it's not confirmed." Fuller also added that codeine can be picked up for "about two to four days after the last use in the urine" and that he found no other evidence in the medical records demonstrating that she was intoxicated.

The record...