Wright v. State
| Decision Date | 30 March 2023 |
| Docket Number | 02-22-00035-CR |
| Parties | JACQUELYN GAIL WRIGHT, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Do Not Publish Tex.R.App.P. 47.2(b)
On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 3 Tarrant County Texas Trial Court No. 1573089R
Before Kerr, Bassel, and Womack, JJ.
A jury found Appellant Jacquelyn Gail Wright-a former Tarrant County Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4-guilty of three counts of tampering with a governmental record with the intent to harm or defraud another. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 37.10(a)(5), (c)(1). The trial court assessed her punishment and sentenced Wright to two years' confinement in state jail, probated for four years, on each count. Wright appeals from her conviction and raises three issues: (1) the trial court erroneously charged the jury on the law regarding extraneous offenses by giving an oral jury charge improperly commenting on the extraneous-offense evidence admitted at trial; (2) the trial court erroneously charged the jury on the law regarding extraneous offenses by giving an oral jury charge misstating the law on extraneous-offense evidence; and (3) the trial court abused its discretion by quashing Wright's subpoenas seeking information material and relevant to her selective-prosecution defense. We will affirm.
This case arises from Wright's claiming a residential-homestead exemption on property that she did not occupy as her principal residence. Relevant to this case, Wright owned three residential properties in Tarrant County: (1) 6100 Ivy Hill Road in Fort Worth; (2) 6104 Ivy Hill Road in Fort Worth; and (3) 4227 Maryanne Place in Haltom City. The Ivy Hill properties are located in Precinct 4; the Maryanne Place property is not.
Wright purchased 4227 Maryanne Place in 2004. In 2005, she applied for a general residential-homestead exemption for 6100 Ivy Hill. In 2008, Wright signed a warranty deed with vendors lien conveying 4227 Maryanne Place to her husband, and in 2009, he applied for an over-65 residential-homestead exemption on that property. Wright asked that the exemption on 6100 Ivy Hill be removed in 2010 and applied for a general residential-homestead exemption for 6104 Ivy Hill.
Two years later, in 2012, Wright applied for an over-65 residential-homestead exemption for 6104 Ivy Hill. In that application, Wright stated that she occupied the property as her principal residence, that she had done so since July 2010, and that she was not claiming a homestead exemption on another property.[1] But this was inaccurate: Wright resided at 4227 Maryanne Place with her husband-perhaps since as early as 2004-and there was a homestead exemption on that property.
In late 2018, a grand jury indicted Wright on three counts of tampering with a governmental record.[2] According to the indictment, Wright, on or about December 15, 2015, December 5, 2016, and January 3, 2018, did, with the intent to harm or defraud another, use a government record-the 2012 application for an over-65 residential-homestead exemption-with knowledge of its falsity, namely that she occupied 6104 Ivy Hill as her principal residence.
In December 2018, Wright moved to quash and to dismiss the indictment. The trial court heard the motion in January 2019, took it under advisement, and deferred making a ruling at that time. The following month, Wright supplemented her motion, raising a selective-prosecution defense based on her claim that her prosecution was politically motivated and that the State had not prosecuted others for improperly claiming homestead exemptions. The trial court denied Wright's motion in late September 2019.
In mid-December 2019, Wright subpoenaed (1) then-Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson; (2) then-Tarrant County Commissioner J.D. Johnson; (3) then-Constable Joe D. Johnson; (4) Judge Christopher Gregory, the new Tarrant County Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4; and (5) Nicole Benoit, an employee in Commissioner Johnson's Office. The State moved to quash the subpoenas, arguing, among other things, that the testimony and documents sought were not material or relevant to Wright's defense at trial.
In early January 2020, the trial court heard the State's motions to quash. After the trial court orally granted the motions to quash, Wright re-urged her motion to quash or to dismiss the indictment based on her selective-prosecution defense. The trial court again denied Wright's motion.
In late January 2022, guilt-innocence was tried to a jury. The State's theory of the case was that Wright had fraudulently obtained property-tax benefits for the 2015, 2016, and 2017 tax years by using the 2012 homestead-exemption application in which she had claimed to occupy 6104 Ivy Hill as her primary residence. During those tax years, Wright had lived with her husband at 4227 Maryanne Place and had leased 6104 Ivy Hill to a tenant.
At trial, the jury heard testimony from Wright's tenant at 6104 Ivy Hill, as well as from two of Wright's neighbors on Maryanne Place. The tenant testified that he had leased 6104 Ivy Hill from Wright from December 2014 to July 2019 and had lived there during that time. Wright's neighbors testified that Wright had lived at 4227 Maryanne Place during the 2015, 2016, and 2017 tax years. One neighbor testified that Wright and her husband had lived at 4227 Maryanne Place since 2004. That neighbor also testified that Wright had said that she did not have to live in Precinct 4 but could "run [for office] over there" because she owned property there.
Precious Bowers, a support-services manager with the Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD), testified about the property-tax benefits of a homestead exemption. She explained that the exemption is allowed only on the owner's primary residence and that a married couple can claim only one exemption. Bowers also testified regarding the various homestead-exemption applications Wright had filed since 2005, the homestead-exemption application Wright's husband had filed in 2009, and the request for confidentiality on 4227 Maryanne Place based on Wright's status as a judge,[3] which Wright and her husband had filed in 2017.
Bowers stated that by signing the 2012 homestead-exemption application, Wright not only claimed that she qualified for the exemption but also agreed to notify TAD when she no longer qualified for it. Based on Wright's filings with TAD, it was Bowers's opinion that Wright understood homestead-exemption laws and knew how to update her exemption status. Bowers further stated that, in 2018, TAD had cancelled Wright's homestead exemption for 6104 Ivy Hill for the 2013 through 2018 tax years because (1) Wright's husband had claimed a homestead exemption on 4227 Maryanne Place for those tax years and (2) Wright did not occupy 6104 Ivy Hill as her primary residence because she had leased it to a tenant during that time.
Jeff Hodge, the assessment manager for the Tarrant County Tax Assessor- Collector, also testified. Through Hodge, the State admitted the tax records for 6104 Ivy Hill and a summary of those records, which showed that Wright had avoided over $10,000 in property taxes from 2011 through 2017 by claiming a homestead exemption on 6104 Ivy Hill. According to Hodge, Wright had paid all the back property taxes that she owed.
The jury also heard testimony from Jennifer Hall, the Tarrant County Republican Party Chair from December 2011 through June 2016. Hall testified that a person must live in Precinct 4 to run for Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4. In 2013 and 2017, Wright filed applications with the Tarrant County Republican Party to run for Justice of the Peace, Precinct 4. In her 2013 application, Wright claimed 6104 Ivy Hill as her "permanent residence address" and stated that she had lived in the precinct continuously for 43 years. In her 2017 application, she claimed 6100 Ivy Hill as her "permanent residence address" and stated that she had lived in the precinct continuously for 50 years. By signing both applications, Wright swore that "the foregoing statements included in my application are in all things true and correct."
As part of her defense, Wright called Marcus Rink, a police officer with the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Office who was assigned to investigate Wright. During its cross-examination of Rink, the State emphasized much of the extraneous-conduct evidence already admitted during its case-in-chief, and it offered other extraneous-conduct evidence not previously admitted, including the fact that the water bill for 6100 Ivy Hill was in Wright's sister's name[4] the day before Wright had filed her 2017 application to run for Justice of the Peace but was put in Wright's name the day after she filed her application.
The jury found Wright guilty on all three counts. After the jury was dismissed, the trial court heard additional evidence in the punishment phase. The trial court then sentenced Wright to two years in state jail on each count, probated for four years, along with ten days in jail as a probation condition. Wright has appealed.
In Wright's first and second issues, she complains that the trial court erroneously charged the jury on the law regarding extraneous offenses by giving an oral jury charge (1) that improperly commented on the extraneous-offense evidence admitted at trial and (2) that misstated the law on extraneous-offense evidence. We start by recounting the trial court's comments and their context and dissecting Wright's appellate complaints. We will next address whether Wright invited error and then whether she preserved her complaints for appellate review. Finally,...
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