Wood v. State
Decision Date | 19 September 2018 |
Docket Number | NO. PD-1100-17,PD-1100-17 |
Citation | 560 S.W.3d 162 |
Parties | Cynthia Kaye WOOD, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas |
Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Ted Wood, Assistant Public Defender, Harris County, Texas, State Bar of Texas No. 21907800, 1201 Franklin, 13th Floor, Houston, Texas 77002, for Appellant.
Eric Kugler, Assistant District Attorney, Harris County, Texas, 1201 Franklin, Suite 600, Houston, Texas 77002, Stacey Soule, State's Attorney, Austin, for The State of Texas.
Appellant, Cynthia Kaye Wood, was indicted for the offense of attempted capital murder. She entered into an open plea of guilty. Following the completion of a pre-sentence investigation report, the trial court conducted a sentencing hearing. At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court sentenced Appellant to life imprisonment. Appellant appealed her conviction and sentence, alleging five points of error. Finding Appellant's life sentence to be an illegal sentence, the court of appeals reversed Appellant's conviction for attempted capital murder and ordered the trial court to adjudge Appellant guilty of attempted murder.1 The case was remanded to the trial court to hold a new sentencing hearing. The State petitioned this Court to review the decision of the court of appeals. We hold that Appellant's sentence is not an illegal sentence. We reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case to the court of appeals to address Appellant's remaining points of error.
Appellant gave birth prematurely to a baby boy named K.W. on May 10, 2014. The baby spent the first three months of his life in the hospital. Two days after being released to go home, K.W. was brought back to the hospital because he had stopped breathing, and he remained at the hospital for another five days. On September 19, 2014, after vomiting, K.W. was brought back to the hospital and he underwent surgery. K.W. was readmitted to the hospital—the intensive care unit—on September 30, 2014, because Appellant claimed that he was not breathing and did not have a pulse. Medical personnel conducted several tests to determine what was wrong with K.W., but they could not find anything wrong with him, and the baby's repeated hospitalizations appeared to be out of proportion to his healthy appearance. Appellant requested that a gastrostomy tube
(a "G-tube") be inserted so that K.W. would get food directly to his stomach, but no medical reason could be found to support the insertion of a G-tube. During the two days in the intermediate care unit of the hospital—October 8 and 9, 2014—K.W. did very well. Appellant was not there at that time, but K.W.'s grandmother was with him.
When Appellant visited K.W. on October 10, 2014, he had another lack-of-breathing episode. K.W. was put in a new room, and the medical staff placed a hidden camera in the room to observe. On October 11, 2014, Appellant was seen placing an oxygen bag (that was not hooked up to oxygen) over K.W.'s face. The next day, the video recording captured Appellant attempting to suffocate K.W. on two separate occasions. She first pulled a blanket up over K.W.'s face, then she put her hand over his face, setting off his oxygen monitors both times. He was thereafter transferred to the intensive care unit. When K.W. recovered, he was separated from his mother and sent to a foster home.
The State charged Appellant with the felony offense of "Attempted Capital Murder." The indictment against her read as follows, in pertinent part:
[I]n Harris County, Texas, CYNTHIA KAYE WOOD hereafter styled the Defendant, heretofore on or about OCTOBER 12, 2014, did then and there unlawfully intentionally, with the specific intent to commit the offense of CAPITAL MURDER of K.W., hereafter styled the Complainant, do an act, to-wit: USE HER HAND TO IMPEDE THE COMPLAINANT'S ABILITY TO BREATHE, which amounted to more than mere preparation that tended to but failed to effect the commission of the offense intended.2
The offense of "Murder" under Texas Penal Code § 19.02(b)(1) occurs if a person "intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual."3
The offense of Capital Murder under Texas Penal Code § 19.03(a)(8) occurs if a person "commits murder as defined under Section 19.02(b)(1) and ... the person murders an individual under 10 years of age."4
An "attempted" offense is one category lower than the offense attempted.5 Texas Penal Code § 15.01 defined "Criminal Attempt" as follows:
The key to our analysis in this opinion is the well-established rule that an indictment charging criminal attempt is not fundamentally defective for failure to allege the constituent elements of the offense attempted.7 Although Appellant does not allege that the indictment was defective, the basis for her illegal-sentence claim is that, since the indictment omitted one of the elements of capital murder, the indictment alleged only attempted murder, not attempted capital murder, and so she only pled to, and should only be convicted of, attempted murder, not attempted capital murder.8 The court of appeals agreed with Appellant, finding her life sentence illegal because "[t]he indictment in this case did not authorize a conviction for attempted capital murder."9 The specific reasoning behind the appellate court's decision can be found in the following excerpt from the lower court's opinion on the motion for rehearing:
Here, the indictment charged a complete offense—attempted murder. Although the State intended to charge appellant with the offense of attempted capital murder, it did not do so because the aggravating factor was missing from the indictment. See Crawford v. State , 632 S.W.2d 800, 801 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1982, pet. ref'd) ( ). The term "capital murder" is a term that describes a sentencing regime rather than a criminal offense. There is no crime of capital murder that is different from murder. Capital murder is murder. But, it is murder that is accompanied by an aggravating factor that provides the State with a greater range of punishment than that which applies to the offense of murder. The requirement that the indictment allege the aggravating factor under section 19.03(a)(2) is particularly important given that the statute lists nine possible aggravating circumstances elevating the offense of murder to capital murder. The indictment in this case did not authorize a conviction for attempted capital murder, and the State is held to the offense charged in the indictment. See Sierra [v. State ], 501 S.W.3d [179], 183 [ (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2016, no pet.) ].10
Appellant argues to this Court that the appellate court is correct—that her sentence is illegal because her indictment did not charge, and she did not plead to, the offense of attempted capital murder. Appellant claims that the court of appeals correctly held that the indictment charged, and she pled to, the offense of attempted murder, which made her life sentence illegal because it fell outside the permissible punishment range for attempted murder.
It is true that "[a] sentence that is outside the maximum or minimum range of punishment is unauthorized by law and is therefore illegal."11 However, based on our precedent discussed below, we hold that Appellant was charged with, pled to, and was properly sentenced for, the offense of attempted capital murder.
We concluded in Whitlow that the indictment, which is similar to the one in this case, charged attempted escape with a deadly weapon, and thus it was not fundamentally defective.15 We cited to our decision in Williams v. State ,16 wherein this Court unanimously rejected the contention that an indictment charging an attempted offense is defective for not alleging an essential element of the consummated offense that was alleged to have been attempted.17 In fact, we made it a point to note in Whitlow , that "[i]f this were a conviction for a consummated escape, the contention[—that the indictment failed to include each of the elements of the offense of escape—] would have merit."18
In Jones v. State ,19 a jury convicted the appellant of attempted murder. The appellant alleged on appeal that his motion to quash should have been granted and that the court's charge was fundamentally...
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