Williams v. State, 05-19-00428-CR
| Decision Date | 29 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-19-00428-CR,No. 05-19-00429-CR,05-19-00428-CR,05-19-00429-CR |
| Parties | JOHN JAMES WILLIAMS, Williams v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
On Appeal from the Criminal District Court No. 4 Dallas County, Texas
Trial Court Cause Nos. F-1835119-K and F-1835120-K
Before Justices Molberg, Reichek, and Evans
Opinion by Justice Molberg
Following a bench trial, the trial court found appellant John James Williams guilty of aggravated assault and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, made an affirmative deadly weapon finding (a firearm), and sentenced him on each charge to five years' imprisonment in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In two issues, Williams asserts the evidence is insufficient to support either judgment. We disagree and affirm both judgments.
On October 18, 2018, around 8:45 a.m., Melody Bower was awakened in her home by a commotion involving fighting, yelling, and Williams saying he was going to shoot somebody. Bower lived in the home with Joseph Nolde and another female, who was an on-again, off-again girlfriend of Williams.
When she was awakened, Bower came out of her room and saw Williams arguing in the living room with a man named Josh Flowers. Williams had a black gun in his hand, pointed at Flowers, and was saying he was going to shoot somebody. Panicked and scared, Bower went to her room and called 911.
This was the second time that day that Williams brandished a gun in the house. Earlier that morning, around two o'clock, he kicked open the front door and went room-to-room with a gun, looking for a man nicknamed Spanky.1 He did not lower the gun as he did so. Though she was scared, Bower did not call 911 during that event. Williams eventually calmed down, left the house, and returned again later.
When Bower called 911 around 8:45 a.m., she placed the phone beneath her pillow and left the call open so the 911 operator could hear what was happening. Williams went into Bower's room, asked her if she had called the police, and pointed the gun at her face, causing her to fear for her safety. Nolde was behind Bower onthe bed when Williams did this. Bower testified it was a real gun, and Nolde testified he believed the gun was real.2
When Williams realized Bower had called 911, Williams was angry, became more heated, and yelled more. He told Bower he was "about to light [her] place up." He left her room, ran about the house for "about two seconds" and "bolted out the door." Bower was "pretty sure" Williams took the gun with him.
Meanwhile, Aubrey Shepard, a patrol officer with the Irving Police Department, heard a radio call about a man with a gun waving it at people at the house. Because of his proximity to the scene, Officer Shepard went to the call. As he approached the house, he saw Williams enter a car on the passenger side and close the door. Officer Shepard quickly approached and ordered Williams to open the door and exit the vehicle. Williams complied.
Other officers arrived, and Officer Jason Banks searched the car and found a pistol under the front passenger seat where Williams had been. Officer Banks described it as a Glock subcompact pistol and said it had bullets in the chamber andthe magazine. Officer Banks could not say whether the gun was the same one Williams waved in the house, but he testified that the weapon he found under the seat was a real gun with bullets in the magazine and in the chamber.
Williams told officers he used a BB gun.3 Irving Police Detective Andy Ausen testified that Williams initially denied having a gun but later told him his "fingerprints would be on the gun" officers found in the car because he and another person had recently been target shooting.
In November 2018, Williams was charged by indictment with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon under Texas Penal Code section 22.02(a)(2) and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon under Texas Penal Code section 46.04(a). See TEX. PENAL CODE §§ 22.02(a)(2), 46.04(a). When read together, the indictments alleged that on October 18, 2018, Williams:
Before trial commenced, the State filed a motion to amend the latter indictment, seeking to add a new paragraph, stating:
after said defendant was duly and legally convicted on the 14th day of June, 2018, of the offense of THEFT LESS THAN $2,500 WITH 2 PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS in the CRIMINAL DISTRICT COURT 4 of DALLAS County, Texas, in a case docketed as F1833752, and said court had jurisdiction over said prior offense.
The trial court granted the State's motion to amend the indictment. Williams waived his right to a jury trial, and the cases were tried to the court on March 14, 2019.
Seven witnesses testified at trial, including Bower, Nolde, Officer Shepard, Officer Banks, Detective Ausen, and Darren Hodge, an investigator with the Dallas County District Attorney's office.4
Williams also testified and denied pointing a gun at anyone. While he said he had a BB gun, he denied pointing it at others. He agreed he was frustrated when he went into the home and stated he had smoked meth that morning and had been drinking the night before. He also agreed he was in the vehicle where the gun was found and had ridden in the car before. He testified he could not recall whether he told Detective Ausen or others that his fingerprints would be on the gun found in the car because he and another person had been target shooting recently, but he did not deny doing so. Finally, Williams agreed that in 2018, he pled guilty to an attemptedretaliation charge and to a state jail felony of theft of less than $2,500 with two previous convictions. The court admitted a copy of the judgment from the latter conviction into evidence. That judgment was entered on June 14, 2018 and reflected Williams was sentenced to ninety days' confinement, a period that would have ended only approximately one month before the events at issue here.
After the parties rested and closed, the trial court found Williams guilty on both charges and assessed punishment on each charge at five years' confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, plus court costs. The trial court entered judgments to that effect in each case.5
Following entry of the court's judgments, Williams filed notices of appeal. He sought and obtained new counsel, and his counsel filed a motion for new trial, asserting that the verdict in each case was contrary to the law and evidence.6 The record does not reflect that the trial court ruled on the motion within seventy-five days of its filing, and the motion was therefore deemed overruled. See TEX. R. APP. P. 21.8(c).
In reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we view all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict in order to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979). We consider all of the evidence, whether or not properly admitted. Dewberry v. State, 4 S.W.3d 735, 740 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999).
The fact finder is the sole judge of the weight and credibility of the evidence and witness testimony. See TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 38.04; Brown v. State, 270 S.W.3d 564, 568 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008). We are "not to become a thirteenth juror" and thus "may not re-evaluate the weight and credibility of the record evidence and thereby substitute our judgment" for the fact finder's. Isassi v. State, 330 S.W.3d 633, 683 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010) (quoting Dewberry, 4 S.W.3d at 740)). Instead, we defer to the fact finder's responsibility "to fairly resolve conflicts in testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts." Hooper v. State, 214 S.W.3d 9, 13 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007) (quoting Jackson, 443 U.S. at 318-19).
We consider "the cumulative force of all the incriminating evidence," and each fact "need not point directly and independently to the guilt of the appellant, as long as [that cumulative force] is sufficient to support the conviction." Id. at 13 (citing Johnson v. State, 871 S.W.2d 183, 186 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993)).
We presume the fact finder resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the prosecution and defer to that resolution. Jackson, 443 U.S. at 326. We apply the same standard of review for direct and circumstantial evidence cases. Hooper, 214 S.W.3d at 13. Circumstantial evidence is as probative as direct evidence in establishing the defendant's guilt. Id.
In his first issue, Williams argues the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon because there is no evidence he intentionally or knowingly threatened Bower with imminent bodily injury and because the State failed to show a link between Williams and the firearm retrieved at the scene.
Although not limited to these means, a person commits an aggravated assault if he intentionally or knowingly threatens another with imminent bodily injury and uses or exhibits a deadly weapon during the commission of the assault. TEX. PENAL CODE § 22.02(a)(2). "Deadly weapon" is defined by statute and includes a firearm, which is the specific...
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