Skinner v. State

• Decision Date: 21 May 1997
• Docket Number: No. 72131,72131
• Parties: Henry Watkins SKINNER, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 532

956 S.W.2d 532

Henry Watkins SKINNER, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee.

No. 72131.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

May 21, 1997.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 10, 1997.

Steven C. Losch, Longview, for appellant.

John Mann, District Attorney, Pampa, Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

OPINION

MEYERS, Judge.

Appellant was convicted of capital murder in March 1995. Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.03(a)(7)(A). Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure art. 37.071 §§ 2(b) and 2(e), the trial judge sentenced appellant to death. ¹ Article 37.071 § 2(g). Direct appeal is automatic. Article 37.071 § 2(h). We will affirm.

Appellant raises twenty-one points of error, including a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction. We will address the points in the approximate order in which they are raised. Review of the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict is necessary.

Appellant lived with his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two mentally-retarded sons, ² 22-year-old Elwin Caler and 20-year-old Randy Busby. Around 9:30 on the evening of December 31, 1993, Twila and appellant called a friend of Twila's, Howard Mitchell, ³ and told him they wanted to go to his New Year's party, but needed a ride there. Between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m., when Mitchell went to pick up the pair, he found appellant passed out on the couch and was unable to wake him. Apparently, appellant had been drinking.

Leaving appellant in his stupor, Twila and Mitchell went to Mitchell's trailer where a party was in progress. Twila was followed around at the party by her drunken uncle who made rude sexual advances toward her and generally agitated her until she asked Mitchell to take her home. Mitchell drove Twila home between 11:00 and 11:15 p.m., and left.

At midnight, Police Officer Fred Courtney was dispatched to investigate a stabbing at an address located across the alley from appellant's residence. He arrived to find Elwin Caler sitting on the porch of a neighbor's house with a blanket pressed against his side. Elwin had a mortal stab wound under his left arm and superficial wounds to his right hand and stomach. He was taken to the hospital where he died at 12:45 a.m..

Four blocks away, also at midnight, appellant knocked at the door of his former girlfriend, Andrea Reed. Reed asked appellant to leave, but he entered the house and told her that she had to help him because he had been stabbed and shot. Appellant's shirt and pants had a great deal of blood on them. Appellant removed his shirt, but Reed could find no injuries except for a bleeding cut in the palm of his right hand, which she agreed to suture.

Reed and appellant conversed for almost three hours during which time appellant made a series of inconsistent statements about the cause of and events surrounding his injury. At one point Reed attempted to leave the room to call the police, but appellant stopped her and threatened to kill her. Reed told him she was going to call Twila to ask her what happened and appellant claimed that he caught Twila in bed with her ex-husband and fought with him. Eventually, appellant offered to tell Reed what really happened if she would promise not to reveal it to anyone. When Reed promised not to tell, appellant stated that he thought he had kicked Twila to death.

While appellant was at Reed's house, the police were investigating Elwin's stabbing. As they approached the house where Elwin lived with his mother, brother, and appellant, the police noticed a trail of blood spots on the ground running from the front porch to the fence line. There was a blood smear on the glass storm door and a knife on the front porch. Upon entering the residence, the police found Twila's dead body on the living room floor. It was later determined that she had been strangled into unconsciousness and subsequently beaten at least fourteen times about the face and head with a club. An ax handle stained with blood and hair was leaning against the couch near her body and a black plastic trash bag containing a knife and a towel with wet brownish stains on it was laying between the couch and the coffee table.

Officer Morse Burroughs proceeded to the bedroom where Elwin and Randy usually slept in bunk beds. He found Randy's dead body laying face down on the upper bunk, covered by a blood spotted blanket. Randy had been stabbed in the back three times. A door leading out of the bedroom and into a utility room yielded further evidence. Burroughs noticed a bloody handprint located about 24 inches off the floor on the frame of this door. He also noted a bloody handprint on the door knob of the door leading from the kitchen to the utility room and a handprint on the knob of the door exiting from the utility room into the backyard.

The police arrested appellant at Reed's house at approximately 3:00 a.m.. They found him standing in a closet wearing blood-stained socks and blood-stained blue jeans. He appeared intoxicated. A toxicological test on a blood sample appellant voluntarily provided at 5:48 a.m. showed appellant to have 0.11 milligrams of codeine per liter of blood and a blood alcohol level of 0.11 percent. Tests on the blood on appellant's clothing was found to belong to Twila and Elwin. In a tape-recorded statement to the police, appellant claimed to remember little of what happened on the night of the murders after he fell asleep on the couch. Autopsy evidence showed all of the murders to have been committed in the same general time frame.

In his first point of error, appellant claims the evidence is legally insufficient to support the verdict that he killed three people during the same criminal transaction. Appellant concedes that the evidence is sufficient to prove that appellant killed both Twila and Elwin. He also concedes that appellant left the bloody handprints found in the house, including the one found on the frame of the door leading from Randy's bedroom into the utility room. However, appellant contends that it is simply not rational for a jury to conclude that appellant killed Randy in addition to killing Twila and Elwin because he had no motive and no further evidence connected him to Randy's murder. We disagree.

In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, this Court views all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). The physical evidence connected appellant to the murders of two of the victims. Appellant also stated that he thought he had killed Twila. All three victims lived in the same house, and all three were apparently home with appellant around the time of the murders. No evidence other than appellant's own statement indicates that anyone else was in the residence during the time of the murders. ⁴ Also a trail of blood spots ran from the front porch of the residence to the fence line and only one victim was found outside of the house. Given the totality of the evidence, it was rational for a juror to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant killed all three of the victims during the same criminal transaction. See Heiselbetz v. State, 906 S.W.2d 500, 504 (Tex.Crim.App.1995); Rios v. State, 846 S.W.2d 310, 313 (Tex.Crim.App.1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 1051, 113 S.Ct. 1946, 123 L.Ed.2d 651 (1993). Point of error one is overruled.

In points of error two through six appellant complains of the trial court's disclosure to the State of a document prepared by an expert for the defense. Appellant claims the document constituted privileged work product. The State contends the document was discoverable as underlying facts or data pursuant to Texas Rule of Criminal Evidence 705. The State also relies on United States v. Nobles, 422 U.S. 225, 95 S.Ct. 2160, 45 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975), for the proposition that the work product privilege, if applicable, was waived. ⁵ In point of error two, appellant claims the disclosure violated Rule of Criminal Evidence 705; in point of error three, appellant claims the disclosure violated Rule of Criminal Evidence 614; in point of error four, appellant claims the disclosure violated the attorney-client privilege; in point of error five, appellant claims the disclosure violated the work product doctrine; in point of error six, appellant claims the disclosure violated appellant's due process rights. Because we find error on the basis of point of error five, we do not address the merits of points three, four and six. We address point of error two because the State claims the disclosure was authorized under Rule 705.

Pursuant to a motion by appellant, the trial court appointed Dr. William T. Lowry to serve as an expert for the defense. See Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68, 105 S.Ct. 1087, 84 L.Ed.2d 53 (1985). Lowry, a toxicology expert, testified that calculations based on the results of the toxicological tests performed by the Department of Public Safety demonstrated that appellant's blood alcohol level was .21 percent and he had .4 grams of codeine per liter of blood at the time of the murders. Lowry stated that the two intoxicants had a synergistic effect that drastically increased their potency. He further testified that the majority of people under the influence of those levels of intoxicants would be in a stuporous state. ⁶ Lowry opined that under the circumstances described, it was "highly improbable" that appellant would have been physically capable of committing the three murders in question.

On cross-examination, the State sought the production of documents that had been furnished to Lowry that served as "the bases of his opinions." Tex.R.Crim.Evid. 705. Defense counsel responded that Lowry had primarily been furnished the State's file, but could not say exactly what else he...