Wells v. State

• Citation: 611 S.W.3d 396
• Decision Date: 18 November 2020
• Docket Number: NO. AP-77,070,AP-77,070
• Parties: Amos Joseph WELLS, III, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas
• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas

611 S.W.3d 396

Amos Joseph WELLS, III, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas

NO. AP-77,070

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Delivered: November 18, 2020

Helena F. Faulkner, for State.

John W. Stickels, for Appellant.

OPINION

Walker, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which Keller, P.J., and Keasler, Hervey, Richardson, Newell, Keel, and Slaughter, JJ., joined.

In November 2016, a jury convicted Appellant of capital murder for the 2013 murders of Chanice and Annette Reed committed during the same criminal transaction. TEX. PENAL CODE § 19.03(a)(7)(A). Pursuant to the jury's answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 37.071, sections 2(b) and 2(e), the trial judge sentenced Appellant to death. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 37.071, § 2(g).¹ Direct appeal to this Court is automatic. Art. 37.071, § 2(h). Appellant raises thirteen points of error. After reviewing Appellant's points of error, we find them to be without merit. Consequently, we affirm the trial court's judgment and sentence of death.

I. OFFENSE AND INVESTIGATION

At 5:39 p.m. on July 1, 2013, upset that his pregnant girlfriend, Chanice Reed, would not answer his calls, Appellant drove to Chanice's house on Pate Street in Fort Worth where she lived with her grandmother, mother, and two younger brothers. Chanice was home with her mother, Annette, and ten-year-old brother, E.M., when Appellant arrived.² Chanice's seventeen-year-old brother, K.S., was not at home, but he overheard Chanice and Appellant arguing when he called his mother, Annette, to ask permission to go swimming. K.S. heard Chanice say, "Stop, Amos, you're scaring me."³ He also heard Annette yelling at Appellant before she ended the call.

Around 6:00 p.m., Annette called her aunt, Joylene Parsons, and asked her to come over. Parsons described Annette as sounding very troubled on the phone and in the background she heard a man yelling at the top of his voice in a "bone-chilling scream."⁴ She also heard Annette say, "You not going in there."⁵ When Parsons asked who was there, Annette replied, "Chanice's boyfriend," whom Parsons knew was Appellant.⁶ Annette said, "She got to be the stupidest bitch to open the door to let that fool in," and then, before ending the call, she said, "Come on, come on."⁷ Parsons immediately started calling family members who lived nearby. At 6:09 p.m., Annette called 9-1-1 for help. As the 9-1-1 operator was asking questions, Annette reported, "He's going to his truck."⁸ And then the phone went dead.

Pascual Martinez, who had been working on a driveway two houses away, heard the commotion and watched as a man and a woman argued loudly in the front yard. He testified at trial that the argument started getting "bad, bad, bad."⁹ Martinez saw the man retrieve a handgun from a Chevrolet Tahoe parked in front of the house, return to the yard, and then shoot the woman as she screamed, "No, no, no."¹⁰ He then saw another woman try to bat the gun away before the man shot her, too. Martinez hid at the corner of the house where he was working and heard more shots before the shooter drove off in the Tahoe. Martinez then went to the victims’ house and saw a woman, later identified as Chanice, lying outside the front door with her eyes open; she was bleeding and unresponsive. A neighbor arrived and stated that he had called 9-1-1.

The first 9-1-1 call reporting the shootings came in at 6:15 p.m. Responding officers, firefighters, and paramedics arrived within minutes. Chanice had been shot four times. One shot entered between her eyes and traveled through the right side of her brain. Another shot entered her lower chest. A third shot entered her left abdomen, injuring her lungs, stomach, aorta, and thoracic spine. The fourth gunshot entered the left side of her back, causing a superficial wound

. Paramedics at the scene were not able to save her. Chanice's unborn baby also did not survive. Post-mortem testing revealed that Appellant was the biological father.

Annette had been shot two times. She suffered a large-caliber gunshot wound to her mid-forehead that severed her anterior cerebral artery and came to rest at the base of her brain. Another shot penetrated above her right ear, inflicting enormous brain damage and collapsing her left eye socket and eyeball. Although early responders found Annette on the ground screaming, she died soon after at the hospital.

E.M. had been shot four times. His dead body was found in a hallway inside the house. One shot went through his right ear, entered his neck on the right side, injured his left subclavian vein and lung, and exited his chest through his back. A second shot entered the front of his chest, hit his lower pericardial sac, continued through his diaphragm, liver, interior vena cava, lung, and rib, and exited through his back. A third shot entered the front of his chest and went through his stomach, colon, mesentery, and left iliopsoas muscle before exiting his back. The fourth gunshot entered the back of his left forearm and exited through his front forearm.

The cartridge casings found at the scene were all of the same .9 millimeter caliber and brand. It was later confirmed that they had all been fired from the same gun.

Based on statements from witnesses and family members gathered at the scene, officers focused on Appellant as the prime suspect. At 6:35 p.m., the police dispatcher issued an alert to be on the lookout for a shooting suspect described as a "black male, 22 years of age, Amos, unknown clothing, possibly occupying a gray or gold Tahoe, last seen eastbound on Wilbarger."¹¹

Fort Worth homicide Detective Matthew Barron arrived at the scene at 7:15 p.m. Between 7:15 and 7:25 p.m., responding officer Sean Nguyen entered details gathered from witnesses into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, which generated information associated with Appellant's driver's license. This information included Appellant's full name, driver's license number, date of birth, and Engblad Drive address. Nguyen immediately reported this information to Barron. At 7:48 p.m., Nguyen attached the NCIC return with Appellant's information to the centralized "call sheet" record—an electronic database used to post updates in a developing investigation.

Meanwhile, Appellant called his former girlfriend, Valricia Brooks, with whom he shared a daughter, and told her what had happened. At the time of the call, Brooks was walking in a park with her friend, Brittany Minor, who overheard the conversation. Appellant told Brooks that he had shot and killed Chanice, Annette, and E.M. and that he was thinking about leaving, but he only had one bullet left in his gun and ninety-seven miles remaining before running out of gas. Minor described Appellant as sounding "distraught ... talking fast, frantic, remorseful, [and] crying."¹² At some point, the call became a three-way conversation between Appellant, Brooks, and Appellant's brother, Amron Wells, whom Appellant had also told about the shootings. Appellant asked Amron to take care of his daughter and indicated that he intended to drive somewhere and shoot himself. Brooks arranged a phone call between Appellant and his daughter, and then told Appellant to turn himself in.

At approximately 7:30 p.m., Appellant walked into the Forest Hills Police Department lobby and, in a rambling and incoherent manner, blurted, "Put me in jail; kill me."¹³ Noting that Appellant was a "sweaty, big guy, muscular, [and] had a dazed kind of spacey look on him," Sergeant Christopher Hebert handcuffed him as a safety precaution.¹⁴ He described Appellant's demeanor as being "like a calm storm ... calm demeanor but aggressive," and "look[ing] like he could [ ] explode any second."¹⁵ Hebert sat with Appellant in the lobby and explained that he could not arrest him without more information. Appellant, using two- to three-word sentences, kept repeating that something bad had happened and that the officers would soon hear about it. Appellant briefly mentioned that he had been in Fort Worth, but he did not provide further details. From tattoos on Appellant's arms, Forest Hills officers eventually discerned his name and birthdate, facts Appellant confirmed. They called the Fort Worth Police Department to inquire further and were told to detain Appellant until Fort Worth officers could pick him up for questioning about a homicide that had happened in Fort Worth that evening.

Fort Worth officers transported Appellant to a Fort Worth police station where Detectives Barron and Tim O'Brien attempted to interview him around 8:35 p.m. Without reading Miranda¹⁶ warnings, Barron began by asking Appellant routine questions such as his name, birthdate, and address, all of which Appellant provided. He then asked Appellant questions such as: what he had done that day; why he went to the Forest Hills station; whether he had been on Pate Street; and what had happened on Pate Street. Appellant denied being on Pate Street that day. When Barron asked Appellant to tell him what had happened on Pate Street, Appellant stated repeatedly, "You tell me what happened." After forty-one minutes of questioning and an eight-minute break without obtaining useful information, the detectives stopped Appellant's interview and focused on interviewing other people who had been asked to provide statements at the station. By 1:00 a.m. on July 2, Barron determined that he had probable cause to arrest Appellant and search his residence. Barron obtained a search warrant for Appellant's residence at 1:55 a.m.

Evidence gathered in the search included: an undegraded empty cardboard .9 millimeter ammunition box found in a toilet tank; an opened .9 millimeter ammunition box that contained thirty-eight of fifty unspent cartridges matching the spent cartridge casings found at the crime scene; a gun magazine loaded with thirteen .9 millimeter rounds; an otherwise empty plastic handgun case that contained a single unspent .9 millimeter round; and a...