Threadgill v. State

• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
• Writing for the Court: Meyers, J.
• Citation: Threadgill v. State, 146 S.W.3d 654 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004)
• Decision Date: 13 October 2004
• Docket Number: No. 74458.,74458.
• Parties: Ronnie Paul THREADGILL, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

146 S.W.3d 654

Ronnie Paul THREADGILL, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. 74458.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, En Banc.

October 13, 2004.

Appeal from the 13th District Court, Navarro County, John H. Jackson, J Damara H. Watkins and Robert C. Dunn, Corsicana, for Appellant.

James Lagomarsino, Asst. District Atty., Corsicana, Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.

Before the court en banc.

OPINION

MEYERS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KELLER, P.J., and WOMACK, KEASLER, HERVEY, HOLCOMB, and COCHRAN, JJ., join.

Appellant was convicted in July, 2002 of capital murder. TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 19.03(a). Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071, §§ 2(b) and 2(e), the trial judge sentenced appellant to death. Art. 37.071, § 2(g).¹ Direct appeal to this Court is automatic. Art. 37.071, § 2(h). Appellant raises twenty-two points of error. We affirm.

In his first point of error, appellant claims that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress blood evidence taken from his clothing.² Following the shooting of a passenger in a car stolen by appellant, appellant was arrested and charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and a parole violation. Pursuant to standard Navarro County jail procedures, appellant was given a jail uniform, and his clothes and personal effects were inventoried and placed into paper bags to prevent contamination. The clothes were forwarded to a Department of Public Safety (DPS) laboratory for DNA analysis because officers believed there might be blood on them.³ Analysis revealed that the blood on appellant's clothes matched the blood of the victim. Appellant moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that the clothes should not have been tested without a warrant. The trial court denied appellant's motion, ruling the search incident to a valid arrest. Appellant argues that the DNA analysis of the blood on his clothes was an invalid search because it was conducted without a search warrant.

In Oles v. State, 993 S.W.2d 103 (Tex. Crim.App.1999), we granted the appellant's petition for discretionary review to decide whether "law enforcement, without a search warrant, may test the clothing of a person lawfully arrested and in custody for one offense in order to investigate that person's involvement in another (a second) offense, when there are no exigent circumstances to justify the warrantless testing, nor is there probable cause to test the clothing for the second offense." Id. at 104-05. We concluded that police may examine and test clothing validly within their control and custody, regardless of the existence of probable cause or exigent circumstances. Id. at 109. We further stated that "once it is determined that police lawfully seized the personal effects of an arrestee, his expectation of privacy is diminished in those effects until he can and does exhibit subjective expectations through his conduct, presumably at the time of release from detainment or incarceration." Id. at 110 (emphasis in original). In the absence of any evidence that the appellant harbored a subjective expectation of privacy in his clothing that was in police custody or any evidence that society would deem such belief reasonable, we held that the appellant's clothing did not fall under the protection of the Fourth Amendment and therefore the warrantless search was valid and reasonable. Id. at 110-11.

Appellant points to no evidence that he possessed a subjective expectation of privacy in his clothing that was in police custody. Since there was no reasonable expectation of privacy and the search of the clothing was not unreasonable under the circumstances, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying appellant's motion to suppress the DNA results. Id. Point of error one is overruled.

In his second point of error, appellant claims that the evidence is legally insufficient to support his conviction. He claims that the evidence is insufficient in three respects. He claims it does not support the findings that he was the offender, that he had intent to kill the victim, or that the murder occurred in the course of robbing the victim.

On the evening of April 14, 2001, a birthday party was held at the Pleasure Garden Club in Navarro County for Christopher Lane and his sister, Mona Lane. The party ended sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. Dexter McDonald and Kevin Williams planned to ride home with Christopher. Williams got in the front passenger seat of Christopher's car and McDonald got in the back. Christopher was driving. Before leaving Pleasure Garden, Christopher got out of the car to talk to someone and left the car running with the driver's side door open. Christopher testified he left Williams and McDonald in possession of his vehicle. Christopher then heard gunshots and saw his car being driven out of the parking lot. The car stopped at the stop sign at the access road and then headed north on Interstate 45 toward Dallas. Williams had jumped out of the car before it left the Pleasure Garden parking lot, but the driver pulled McDonald from the car and left him on the ground when the car stopped at the stop sign. Friends took McDonald to the hospital where he died of a gunshot wound to the chest.

Danyel Dwayne Nellums attended the birthday party and was in the parking lot afterwards. He was walking toward Christopher's car when he saw a man run from behind the car and jump into the driver's seat. According to Nellums, the man fired a shot and Williams jumped out. The man fired a second shot, which struck McDonald, and drove off. The man was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He had a bandana over the lower part of his face and was carrying a black pistol. Although Nellums stated that he was not able to identify the shooter in a lineup because of the bandana, he nonetheless testified that he recognized the shooter as a person he saw earlier in the night sitting in an old car parked next to Christopher's car in the Pleasure Garden parking lot.⁴ Nellums identified appellant in the courtroom as the person he saw that night, stating that he was "positive" it was him.

Mona Lane testified that she did not see the shooter's face, but saw him from the back. He was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and dark shoes. She testified that a car she had seen parked in the club's parking lot earlier in the night pulled up beside her brother's car, and the driver jumped out and ran around Christopher's car, yelling to the passengers to get out. Then she heard gunshots. She testified that she had seen the shooter earlier in the night sitting in the driver's seat of a car outside of the club. She identified appellant as the man she saw earlier in the night sitting in the driver's seat of a car in the parking lot.

The incident was immediately reported to police, and a dispatch went out for the stolen vehicle. Officers with the Ennis Police Department heard the dispatch and saw a vehicle matching the given description traveling on I-45. The officers pursued the vehicle with their sirens on and lights flashing. The vehicle exited the freeway and attempted to turn the wrong way onto the one-way service road. The driver slammed on the brakes and skidded into a ditch, disabling the vehicle. The driver got out of the vehicle and ran to a nearby Mobil Station where a number of semi-trucks were parked. The officers surrounded the station, and found Appellant hanging from the axle underneath a semi-truck trailer. A bandana was found stuffed under the frame of the trailer where he was hiding. He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Ennis police officer Randy Owen identified appellant as the person he saw get out of Christopher's vehicle and the person who was found hiding under the truck. Appellant's fingerprints were matched to fingerprints lifted from the rear passenger door of Christopher's vehicle. The blood of the victim matched blood on appellant's clothes.

Appellant called Kevin Williams, the passenger who escaped from the front seat of the car before it left the Pleasure Garden parking lot. Williams testified that he did not get a good look at the shooter because of the scarf obscuring his face from the middle of his nose down. However, he testified that he believed the skin color of the shooter was a little lighter than appellant's. When questioned further by appellant's counsel, he stated that he was positive the shooter was lighter than appellant. When questioned by the prosecutor, however, Williams agreed that he was not saying that appellant was not the shooter, that he could have been. On re-direct Williams reiterated that he was positive the person who got in the car was a lighter skin color than appellant. Again, on re-cross Williams agreed that he was not saying the shooter was not appellant and he agreed that it could have been.

Identity

Appellant concedes that the evidence is sufficient to show he was at the scene prior to the shooting and that he later obtained the stolen car, but claims the evidence is legally insufficient to show that he was the shooter. He argues that the DNA and fingerprint evidence shows only that he might have been in the car when the shootings occurred but does not establish that he was the shooter. He hypothesizes that the shooter could have abandoned the car after leaving Pleasure Garden but before the pursuit by the Ennis Police, and appellant could have obtained it at that point.

In assessing the legal sufficiency of the evidence, the reviewing court considers 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, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). The Jackson standard of review "gives full play to the jury's responsibility fairly to resolve conflicts in the...