Rodriguez v. State
| Decision Date | 06 September 2018 |
| Docket Number | NO. 02-17-00028-CR,02-17-00028-CR |
| Parties | EUNICE CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ APPELLANT v. THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
FROM CRIMINAL DISTRICT COURT NO. 2 OF TARRANT COUNTY
MEMORANDUM OPINION1Appellant Eunice Cristina Rodriguez appeals from her felony-murder conviction for which she received a life sentence. In five points, she challenges the denial of her pretrial motion to suppress, the jury charge, and the sufficiency of the evidence to support her conviction. Because sufficient corroborating evidence supported Rodriguez's conviction, rendering the absence of a chargeinstruction on corroborative testimony not egregiously harmful, and because Rodriguez did not preserve her appellate suppression argument in the trial court, we affirm the trial court's judgment.
Tommy Brown, who worked as a night cleaner for a Fort Worth janitorial-services company, was in a relationship with Connie Moreno.2 Moreno was a "very petite," Hispanic woman whom Brown regularly introduced as his wife although they apparently were not married. In 2003 or 2004, Brown also became involved with Rodriguez, who was taller than Moreno, heavier set, and Hispanic.3 Brown referred to Rodriguez as his girlfriend to some, but he told his sister Andrea Brown that he was only "trying to help [Rodriguez] out." Brown told Andrea that Rodriguez was from El Paso.
In early 2013, Rodriguez met Brayden Ellis on a bus trip to her hometown of El Paso and they became romantically involved. Ellis found out about Rodriguez's relationship with Brown in March or April of 2013. Ellis eventually moved to El Paso to be with Rodriguez but they returned to the Fort Worth area in July 2013. Rodriguez and Ellis then planned to move to Georgia to live withhis mother, and Rodriguez told Ellis that she wanted to talk to Brown before they moved.
On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Ellis dropped off Rodriguez near Brown's home. Rodriguez later called Ellis to tell him that Brown had slapped her and that she was pregnant with Ellis's child. Ellis became angry, threatening to drive there and "beat [Brown] up," and Rodriguez told Ellis that she would "take [Brown's] things."
According to Ellis, he drove his Dodge Intrepid to Brown's neighborhood late that night and waited until Rodriguez texted him to come to Brown's home. When Rodriguez let Ellis into Brown's home, Brown was gone. Ellis hid in a back bedroom for "a real long time." During this time, Brown returned and he and Rodriguez left together. When they returned, Ellis grabbed a toilet-tank lid from a nearby bathroom and hit Brown in the head, breaking the lid and deeply cutting Ellis's right hand. Ellis began punching Brown with his fists until Brown fell to the floor. Rodriguez then handed Ellis a pot and said, "Here, use this."
Ellis hit Brown in the head three times with the pot and then tied Brown's hands behind his back with one of Brown's shoelaces. Rodriguez told Ellis to put a bag over Brown's eyes, which he did. Rodriguez taped Ellis's injured hand and "cleaned up what she could clean up" with bleach. Rodriguez wore "see-through medical gloves" while cleaning up.
Rodriguez told Ellis that she was going to take Brown's truck and television but that she needed to get some other "things" as well. Ellis left with thetelevision, believing that Brown was still alive. Ellis put the television in Brown's truck and then sat in his Intrepid. After about five minutes, Ellis drove away, and Rodriguez pulled up behind him in Brown's truck. At a nearby convenience store, Ellis and Rodriguez moved the television and "a few bags" to the Intrepid and drove away together in the Intrepid, leaving the truck with the keys in it. Ellis discovered that Rodriguez also had taken Brown's cell phone and wallet. The pair then drove to Ellis's hotel, where he threw away his bloody clothes, and then drove to a hospital to get his hand treated.
Two days later, Andrea went to Brown's home to check on him after a neighbor reported that she had not seen Brown for a few days, which was unusual. Indeed, Andrea had not seen Brown since September 2 and had unsuccessfully tried to contact him by text the morning of September 7: "call me ASAP." She found Brown lying face down on the floor of the hallway bathroom with his hands tied behind his back with a black shoelace. It appeared he had been doused with bleach because his clothes were discolored. There was a plastic bag over his head secured by duct tape wrapped around his lower face and neck eleven times. There was a second plastic bag underneath this bag. Brown had several head injuries caused by blunt-force trauma, injuries to his neck muscles and hyoid bone, and nine rib fractures. There were bloody shoe prints in the kitchen "with distinctly different tread patterns," and the hallway walls were spattered in blood.
Andrea called the police. Officers arrived and noted that Brown's truck and television were missing and that a toilet tank was missing its lid. A responding officer recalled having Brown's truck towed on the morning of September 6 from a nearby convenience store where it had been found abandoned with the keys in it. When officers checked the truck, they found a plastic bag containing pieces of a toilet-tank lid, a shoe, and a belt. The items tested positive for blood. Rodriguez, Ellis, and Brown could not be excluded as contributors to the mixed DNA profile found on the belt.
While the lead detective, Thomas O'Brien, was driving Andrea to the police station to interview her, she received a text message from Brown's phone, apparently in response to her earlier text: "Im driving to El Paso what u want?" O'Brien instructed Andrea how to respond: Andrea gave O'Brien Rodriguez's name and mentioned that she was from El Paso. O'Brien determined that Rodriguez had "an extensive criminal history," including a 2003 conviction for aggravated robbery.
O'Brien spoke with two of Brown's neighbors, Billy Henderson and Willie Wingfield. Wingfield stated that on the night of September 5, he saw Brown leave and a "female who is taller and heavier set [than Moreno] walk a stranger into the house." He was sure that the woman was not Moreno. He described the stranger as a tall, black man with braided hair. Wingfield did not recognize the stranger but knew he did not "belong there." When Brown returned, Wingfield saw Brown be forcibly "yanked" inside the house. That was the last timeWingfield saw Brown. The next morning, Wingfield noted that Brown was not smoking on his front porch as was his habit.
Henderson also last saw Brown on the night of September 5. He saw Brown and his tall, Hispanic girlfriend go into Brown's home. After Brown left, Henderson saw a tall, black man with glasses and braids go into the home. Wingfield was unable to pick Rodriguez's photo out of a photo array as the person he saw with Brown that night.4 Similarly, another neighbor of Brown's, Keith Moultry, did not choose Rodriguez's photo when asked to identify the woman he saw Brown with on September 5. Both Wingfield and Moultry chose the same "filler" photo.
O'Brien reviewed security video for the business Brown cleaned the night of September 5 and saw Brown and Rodriguez arrive together at 10:10 p.m. and leave at 10:56 p.m. Brown was wearing the same shirt in the video that he was found murdered in. Because Brown's wallet was not found at the scene, O'Brien began tracing Brown's debit card through bank records and security video from the businesses where the card was used. O'Brien discovered that Rodriguez and Ellis began using Brown's debit card in the early morning hours of September 6 through September 7, moving east from Fort Worth into Mississippi, until Brown's money was gone.
O'Brien searched police reports for Brown's address and found that Brown had accused Rodriguez of theft earlier that year, in July 2013. Brown had reported that he believed Rodriguez had taken his wallet and that when he called Rodriguez to confront her, Rodriguez threatened to send "her male friend" to Brown's house to "kick his ass." Brown heard a male laughing in the background during the call.
On September 8, O'Brien swore to these facts in an affidavit, stating that he had "good reason to believe" that Rodriguez committed the capital murder of Brown and seeking an arrest warrant. A magistrate signed a warrant authorizing Rodriguez's arrest that same day. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 15.03 (West 2015).
Three days after Andrea found Brown's body—September 10—O'Brien interviewed Deborah Grimes, the bookkeeper at the janitorial-services company Brown worked for. Grimes had been receiving and sending texts to Brown's cell-phone number after his murder. She had texted Brown on September 7 after he did not show up to a September 6 cleaning assignment: "Call me." She received a reply text from Brown's number, "Im driving to El Paso had a emergency." She responded, Brown's number replied, Grimes then asked where Brown's vacuum cleaner was but received no immediate response.
Two days later on September 9, the texter using Brown's number told Grimes he would "be back no time soon," explained that he had lost his walletand was "low in cash," asked to borrow money, and requested that she send "the money to my causin [sic] his name is Braylon Ellis." On September 10, Grimes texted Brown to tell him that she was worried about him and asked if he still wanted his paycheck to be sent to Braylon Ellis. Brown's number responded, explaining that he could only text and not call from the phone because it had been dropped and asking that the money be sent to his cousin by money gram.
The police then tracked the location of Brown's phone to "just outside of Atlanta, Georgia." Rodriguez and Ellis were arrested...
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