Williams v. State, No. 01-03-01295-CR (TX 3/17/2005)
| Decision Date | 17 March 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 01-03-01295-CR,No. 01-03-01296-CR,01-03-01295-CR,01-03-01296-CR |
| Parties | JOSEPH TYRONE WILLIAMS, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
On Appeal from the 230th District Court, Harris County, Texas, Trial Court Cause Nos. 956410 & 947331.
Panel consists of Justices NUCHIA, JENNINGS, and ALCALA.
Appellant, Joseph Tyrone Williams, was charged in three separate indictments with the felony offenses of aggravated assault, robbery, and the unlawful possession of a controlled substance, namely Phencyclidine ("PCP"). Appellant pleaded not guilty in all three cases. The cases were tried before a single jury, which found appellant guilty of aggravated assault and robbery, but not guilty of possession of PCP. The trial court assessed punishment at 20 years in prison for the aggravated assault, and 40 years in prison for the robbery, with the sentences to run concurrently.
In his appeal of the aggravated assault conviction, appellant presents six points of error. In his first and second points of error, appellant asserts that the trial court erred by (1) denying his motion to quash the indictment because it does not set out the manner and means by which he used a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon and (2) failing to compel the State to elect one transaction on which to base a conviction for aggravated assault upon a public servant. In his third, fourth, fifth, and sixth points of error, appellant asserts that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to prove that he threatened the complainant with imminent bodily injury as alleged, and to prove that the motor vehicle he operated constituted a deadly weapon.
In his appeal of the robbery conviction, appellant presents four points of error in which he asserts that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to prove that he caused complainant bodily injury by pushing complainant with his hands, and to prove that he was committing a theft when the complainant was injured. We affirm.
Houston Police Department ("HPD") officers N.R. Kuehn and W.J. Wehr testified at trial that they saw appellant sitting in a stolen car in front of a restaurant in the 9400 block of Homestead Road. When they approached the stolen car, Officer Kuehn told appellant to get out of the car. Appellant did not comply and backed the car into Kuehn's patrol car, cutting the car's steering wheel sharply to do so. Appellant then drove away at a high rate of speed. Both officers pursued appellant, but lost him in traffic.
Reginald Clark testified that he was sitting behind the wheel of his parked but running 1988 Oldsmobile, which was on the side of the road in front of the house of a friend he had been visiting. Clark stated that his 11-month-old son was buckled into a child safety seat in the back seat of the car, and his wife was standing outside the car talking with an elderly lady. Clark said he saw appellant running toward him and then jump into the passenger side of the car. Clark testified that appellant offered Clark $200 for a ride, but Clark refused. Clark told appellant, whom he did not know, that he couldn't give him a ride because "my baby is in the car." Clark said his wife began ordering appellant out of the car and, when she told appellant that a police car was coming, appellant asked Clark to act like he knew him. Clark stated that he stepped partially out of the car to alert the approaching HPD patrol car by making motions toward appellant. Appellant then pushed him all the way out of the car and drove off. Clark testified that he reached back inside the car and grabbed the steering wheel but was thrown off by the acceleration of the car. Clark said his left leg was injured when he was thrown from the speeding car.
When Officer B. L. Diettrich saw appellant sitting in the car and Clark's gestures, he approached the car and ordered appellant to get out, but appellant pushed Clark from the car and sped off. Diettrich said he heard Clark's wife screaming that her baby was in the car and he returned to his patrol car to pursue appellant. The ensuing chase involved as many as ten patrol cars and ten HPD officers. During the chase, appellant attempted to ram Clark's car into Diettrich's patrol car multiple times, causing at least three collisions between the two vehicles. Diettrich said that the first time appellant rammed his patrol car was when he had gotten out in front of appellant, who "started to slow down, but then he sped up and rammed the back of my patrol car." As a result of this collision, Diettrich said he hurt his knee when it was slammed into the dashboard. Diettrich testified that appellant then backed up and that "his car hit me again," although he didn't think the second collision was intentional because appellant's car was "pushed" by Officer S. F. Casko's patrol car. Diettrich said that he continued to pursue the appellant, who ran red lights, sped the wrong way down busy streets, rammed into the back of a pickup truck, and hit some railroad ties under a bridge and slammed into the bridge wall. Shortly after his car hit the bridge wall, appellant rammed his car into Diettrich's patrol car again, running it into a ditch. Both Diettrich and Casko testified that, at this point, appellant pulled his car over because it was no longer driveable. Appellant still refused to get out of the car and had to be pulled out by officers. The officers found Clark's 11-month-old son, covered with shattered glass but appearing otherwise unharmed, still strapped into the child safety seat.
Casko testified that he had joined the pursuit, had witnessed appellant's attempts to ram Diettrich's patrol car, and had witnessed the actual collisions. Casko said that, after appellant's car quit working and he had placed appellant under arrest, he found two brown bottles in the front seat of the car appellant had stolen from Clark. Casko testified that he believed that one bottle contained PCP and that the other contained marijuana.
Motion to quash indictment for aggravated assault
In his first point of error, appellant asserts that the trial court erred in denying his motion to quash the indictment in the aggravated assault case because the indictment "fails to set out the manner and means by which the appellant used or exhibited a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon." We review a trial court's ruling on a motion to quash an indictment under an abuse of discretion standard. State v. Goldsberry, 14 S.W.3d 770, 772 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2000, pet. ref'd) (). Subject to rare exceptions, an indictment tracking the language of the statute will satisfy constitutional and statutory requirements, and the State need not allege facts that are merely evidentiary in nature. Murphy v. State, 95 S.W.3d 317, 321 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2002, pet. ref'd) (citing State v. Mays, 967 S.W.2d 404, 406 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998)). An indictment must convey sufficient notice to allow the accused to prepare his defense. Id. Upon review, we first determine if the notice given is sufficient and, if it is, our inquiry is ended. Crum v. State, 946 S.W.2d 349, 359 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1997, pet. ref'd).
Here, the indictment alleges that appellant did, "while in the course of committing theft of property owned by Reginald Clark and with intent to obtain and maintain control of the property, intentionally, knowingly and recklessly cause bodily injury to Reginald Clark, by pushing the Complainant from a motor vehicle with his hands." Appellant admits that the indictment tracks the language of the applicable penal code and states an offense. He asserts, however, that driving a motor vehicle is "otherwise innocent conduct" requiring the State to give "notice of the precise acts" that constituted the use of the motor vehicle as a deadly weapon, and suggests that his use of the car might not be a criminal offense at all, or might constitute the alternative offenses of "reckless conduct, a terroristic threat, or disorderly conduct."
A motion to quash should be granted only when the language concerning the defendant's conduct is so vague or indefinite as to deny the defendant effective notice of the acts he allegedly committed. DeVaughn v. State, 749 S.W.2d 62, 67 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988). The indictment in appellant's aggravated assault case gives him sufficient notice of the acts he allegedly committed. See St. Clair v. State, 26 S.W.3d 89, 95-96 (Tex. App.—Waco 2000, pet. ref'd) (); Hare v. State, 713 S.W.2d 396, 398 (Tex. App.—El Paso 1986, pet. ref'd) (). The "precise acts" appellant seeks were evidentiary in nature and did not need to be alleged in the indictment for notice purposes. See Murphy, 95 S.W.3d at 321. We hold that the language of the indictment was not so vague or indefinite as to deny appellant effective notice of the acts he allegedly committed. We overrule appellant's first point of error.
Failure to compel election in aggravated assault case
In his second point of error, appellant asserts that the State should have been required to elect only one instance of appellant's attempts to ram Clark's car into Diettrich's patrol car. Appellant correctly states the general rule that, when an indictment alleges a single offense and the proof at trial shows the alleged offense occurred more than one time, the defendant is entitled to...
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