Segundo v. State

• Decision Date: 29 October 2008
• Docket Number: No. AP-75604.,AP-75604.
• Citation: 270 S.W.3d 79
• Parties: Juan Ramon Meza SEGUNDO, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

270 S.W.3d 79

Juan Ramon Meza SEGUNDO, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. AP-75604.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

October 29, 2008.

Opinion Granting Rehearing December 10, 2008.

David A. Pearson, Fort Worth, for appellant.

C. James Gibson, Asst. Crim. D.A., Fort Worth, Jeffrey L. Van Horn, State's Attorney, Austin, for State.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J., delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court.

Appellant was convicted in December 2006 of capital murder for raping and strangling Vanessa Villa.¹ Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special punishment issues, the trial judge sentenced appellant to death.² Direct appeal to this Court is automatic. We have reviewed appellant's nineteen points of error, and, finding them without merit, we affirm the trial court's judgment and sentence.

Factual Background

This "cold case" prosecution involved the 1986 rape and murder of eleven-year-old Vanessa Villa. Appellant was not a suspect until 2005 when, during a routine CODIS³ computer run, his DNA profile "matched" that from sperm found in Vanessa's vagina.

Vanessa lived with her mother, Rosa Clark, her one-year-old brother, Enrique, her aunt, Alicia Avila, and her aunt's three children in a small house in northwest Fort Worth. On August 2, 1986, Vanessa came home at about 5-6 p.m. after working at a flea market. She fell asleep, fully clothed, in the bedroom that she shared with her mother and baby brother. At about 10 p.m., her mother and aunt left to run some errands. When they returned an hour later, Rosa went into her bedroom, and she "hollered" to Alicia. When Alicia came into the bedroom, she saw a comatose Vanessa lying on the bed. Her blouse and bra were pushed up, she was naked from the waist down, and her bare legs were slightly separated. The window fan was on a bedroom chair and the window screen was hanging loose. Alicia saw what she thought was semen on Vanessa's legs.

They called the police. Vanessa was taken to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. According to the medical examiner, the cause of her death was manual strangulation. Vanessa also had abrasions and bruises on her face consistent with a hand pushing down on her mouth and nose. There was muddy debris on her thighs, consistent with a hand grabbing her thigh, abrasions on her left breast, and a bruise on her right arm. She had a "huge tear" on the back wall of her vagina, and there was blood around her external genitalia. The medical examiner thought that these injuries were "perimortem"—caused right around the time she died. Sperm was found on the bedspread, the fitted sheet she was lying on, and in Vanessa's vagina. The medical examiner agreed that sperm can remain in the vaginal vault for anywhere from 48-72 hours.

Although the Fort Worth police investigated several possible suspects, three of them were eliminated when their DNA profiles did not match the DNA from the crime scene semen samples, and the investigation of other suspects led nowhere. Vanessa's rape and murder eventually became an unsolved "cold case."

In 2000, a DNA blood sample was taken from appellant.⁴ His DNA profile was entered in the Texas CODIS computer database. In March 2005, a DNA profile from the semen samples taken from Vanessa was also entered into the CODIS system. Two days later, a routine "search and match" computer test matched appellant's DNA profile with that of the semen. A verification test was performed the next month. Another DNA specimen was obtained from appellant, and, once again, his DNA matched that found in Vanessa's vagina and on her bedspread. The odds of another random DNA match to some other person were astronomical because appellant has a rare micro-allele in his DNA.

Although appellant had never been a suspect in Vanessa's rape and murder, he did know her family. Vanessa's mother and aunt worked with appellant's wife at a nursing home. Appellant would sometimes drive his wife over to Rosa's home. Alicia remembered that he had attended Vanessa's wake and had signed the guest book.

During the guilt phase, the State offered evidence of a second rape-murder appellant committed in 1995. During the punishment phase, the State offered evidence of a third rape-murder appellant committed in 1994. In both of these cases, the women were strangled, and semen containing appellant's DNA profile was found in the victims' vagina or mouth.

Other evidence at the punishment stage showed that, in 1987, appellant burglarized the home of Irene Perez by entering her bedroom through an open window one night. He grabbed her, hit her face, choked her, and covered her mouth. She thought she was going to die, but she fought him off, turned on the light, and recognized him as someone she used to work with. He did not have his pants on. He escaped and fled in a small black car.

Three years later, appellant burglarized Sandra Holleman's apartment, coming in through a living-room window, as she and her two small children were asleep on a mattress in the living room. Ms. Holleman woke up to see appellant lying naked beside her, trying to pull her pants down. As she screamed, he tried to choke her. He escaped by climbing back out the living-room window. She thought that she recognized him as someone who had once lived in the same apartment complex.

The State also offered evidence that appellant repeatedly molested his girlfriend's five-year-old daughter in the late 1980's. When he babysat her, he would buy her candy and then make her give him oral sex. Afterwards, appellant said that if she ever told her mother he would kill her and her mother. She was too afraid to tell her mother what appellant had done until she was sixteen years old.

Other evidence showed that appellant was arrested in 1993 when an officer saw him and another man pointing guns at each other on a Fort Worth street at 2:00 a.m. Appellant's gun, a Larcin semi-automatic, was loaded with one round in the chamber and six more in the magazine. While appellant was in prison in 1998, guards found four metal rods, in the process of being sharpened into "shanks," in the cell occupied by appellant and another man.

During the defense punishment case, appellant's brother, Val Meza, testified that appellant and his two brothers grew up in "a ghetto area" of El Paso. They moved from California with their mother because appellant's father physically abused their mother. They were very poor and had to scavenge for food when their mother disappeared for days at a time. Appellant fell down some stairs when he was about one, but he did not receive medical attention for that injury. Appellant seemed "slow" and "always in a daze" after that. Shortly thereafter, appellant and his brothers were taken to an orphanage, but they were eventually reunited with their mother, who remarried in 1967. Three years later, they moved to Fort Worth with their mother and stepfather, who was a physically abusive alcoholic.

Mr. Meza testified that appellant called him in 2000 from a halfway house and asked if he could stay with him. When Mr. Meza went to pick appellant up, he didn't recognize his brother, he "looked so broken down and so pitiful." Mr. Meza took him in on certain conditions, including attending church and getting a job. Appellant got a job, got married, and re-established a relationship with his son, Joe Segundo, whom he had not seen since 1982.⁵ One of appellant's employers, the director of a non-profit church entity, testified that appellant turned his life around after 2000. Several other witnesses also testified that appellant was now a "good person," a faithful member of his church, and sincere in making personal changes.

A clinical neurologist, Dr. Hopewell, testified that appellant's "extensive history of inhalant abuse" and his failure to have "a stimulating background upbringing" may have caused significant brain dysfunction. Appellant's IQ tested at 75, and his memory is impaired, but he is not mentally retarded. Dr. Hopewell stated that appellant had "very poor" insight, "poor" judgment, and "significant difficulty" with executive functioning.

The jury found appellant guilty of capital murder, and, in accordance with their answers to the special issues at the punishment stage, the trial court sentenced him to death.

A. Admission of the Extraneous Murder at the Guilt Stage.

In his first point of error, appellant claims that the trial judge erred in admitting evidence of Maria Navarro's rape and murder in 1995 because it "was not committed in a manner sufficiently similar so as to be a `signature' offense," and the charged offense was too remote in time from that crime. Appellant also argues that this evidence should not have been admitted because appellant's identity as the person who both sexually assaulted and strangled Vanessa Villa was not undermined by his cross-examination of the State's DNA experts. Based solely on the cold record, we do not think that appellant's identity was seriously contested.⁶ However, appellant argued at the jury-charge conference that he was entitled to instructions on the lesser-included offenses of aggravated sexual assault and murder because his cross-examination had raised an issue concerning the identity of the murderer;⁷ therefore, we must agree that identity was disputed.

How strongly must identity be disputed before uncharged misconduct may be admissible? The trial judge has considerable latitude in determining that identity is, in fact, disputed.⁸ It may be placed in dispute by the defendant's opening statement or cross-examination, as well as by affirmative evidence offered by the defense.⁹

That the impeachment was not particularly damaging or effective in light of all of the evidence presented is not the question. The question is whether impeachment occurred that raised the issue of identity. If so, Rule 404(b) permits the introduction of extraneous offenses that are relevant to the issue of identity.¹⁰

Although it is a...