Young v. State

• Decision Date: 17 July 2019
• Docket Number: NO. 03-18-00080-CR,03-18-00080-CR
• Citation: 591 S.W.3d 579
• Parties: John S. YOUNG, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

591 S.W.3d 579

John S. YOUNG, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas, Appellee

NO. 03-18-00080-CR

Court of Appeals of Texas, Austin.

Filed: July 17, 2019

David M. Guinn Jr., Lubbock, John S. Young, Sweetwater, for Appellant.

Stacey M. Soule, Sarah M. Harp, for Appellee.

Before Justices Goodwin, Baker, and Triana

OPINION

Thomas J. Baker, Justice

John S. Young was charged with two counts of forgery, one count of theft, and one count of money laundering. See Tex. Penal Code §§ 31.03, 32.21, 34.02. The jury found Young guilty of all four charges, and Young's punishment was assessed at 730 days in a state jail facility for both forgery charges and eleven years in prison for the theft and money laundering charges. See id. §§ 12.32, .33, .35. In five issues on appeal, Young contends that the evidence is insufficient to support his convictions, that the district court erred by refusing to continue the trial until an alleged co-conspirator could testify, that the State made improper jury arguments and failed to disclose evidence, and that his trial attorneys did not provide effective assistance of counsel. We will affirm the district court's judgments of conviction.

BACKGROUND

Young was John Sullivan's criminal attorney on possession-of-child-pornography and solicitation-of-a-minor charges. After Sullivan was arrested on those charges, he hired Ray Zapata and Armando Martinez, local bail bondsmen, to help secure his bond. After Sullivan was bonded from jail, Zapata introduced Sullivan to Young.

Besides helping to secure Sullivan's bond, Zapata agreed to drive Sullivan around, to perform errands for him, and to monitor him. Approximately two months after Sullivan was released from jail and after Sullivan met Young, Zapata drove to Sullivan's home and knocked on his door, but Sullivan did not answer. When Zapata returned a few hours later, Sullivan still did not answer the door, and Zapata called Martinez for help. After Martinez arrived, he went into the home through a window. Once inside, Martinez found Sullivan's deceased body in the bathroom and then called the police. While at Sullivan's home, Zapata took a religious book that belonged to Sullivan.

Shortly thereafter, Young's friend and former employee, attorney Chris Hartman, cut two pages out of Sullivan's book that contained a holographic will ostensibly written by Sullivan and filed the will with the probate court. The will named Young as the sole beneficiary of the estate. Following a hearing, the probate court issued an order admitting the holographic will as a muniment of title and bequeathing all of Sullivan's sizeable estate to Young.¹

After the police began investigating the circumstances surrounding the creation of the will, Young was charged with the following offenses:

(1) encouraging or directing or aiding or attempting "to aid another" "with intent to defraud or harm" "to make or complete or execute a writing, namely: a will, that purported to be the act of ... Sullivan, who did not authorize the act of writing said will";

(2) encouraging or directing or aiding or attempting "to aid another" "with intent to defraud or harm" "to pass or publish to" the probate court "a forged writing, namely: a will, knowing such writing to be forged, and such writing had been made or completed or executed such that it purported to be the act of ... Sullivan, who did not authorize the act of writing said will";

(3) unlawfully appropriating, "by acquiring or otherwise exercising control over, property, namely: money or real property, of the value of $200,000 or more, from the Estate of ... Sullivan or from any heirs of ... Sullivan, the owner thereof, without the effective consent of the owner, and with intent to deprive the owner of the property"; and

(4) knowingly transferring "the proceeds of criminal activity, namely: a check written to ... Hartman for $167,500 which was proceeds derived from the theft from the Estate of ... Sullivan or theft from any heirs of ... Sullivan, and the value of the proceeds was $100,000 or more but less than $200,000."²

At the end of the guilt-or-innocence phase, the jury found Young guilty of all four charges.

Following his convictions, Young filed a motion for new trial. After convening a hearing and considering the parties' arguments, the district court denied the motion and issued findings of fact and conclusions of law supporting its ruling.

DISCUSSION

Sufficiency of the Evidence

In his first issue, Young contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions.

Under a legal-sufficiency standard of review, appellate courts view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and 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, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). When performing this review, an appellate court must bear in mind that it is the factfinder's duty to weigh the evidence, to resolve conflicts in the testimony, and to make "reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts." Id. ; see also Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 36.13 (explaining that "jury is the exclusive judge of the facts"). Moreover, appellate courts must "determine whether the necessary inferences are reasonable based upon the combined and cumulative force of all the evidence when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict." Hooper v. State , 214 S.W.3d 9, 16-17 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). Furthermore, appellate courts presume that conflicting inferences were resolved in favor of the conviction and "defer to that determination." Clayton v. State , 235 S.W.3d 772, 778 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). Courts must bear in mind that "direct and circumstantial evidence are treated equally" and that "[c]ircumstantial evidence is as probative as direct evidence in establishing the guilt of an actor" and "can be sufficient" on its own "to establish guilt." Kiffe v. State , 361 S.W.3d 104, 108 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2011, pet. ref'd).

In reviewing the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting a conviction, appellate courts consider "all evidence that the trier of fact was permitted to consider, regardless of whether it was rightly or wrongly admitted." Demond v. State , 452 S.W.3d 435, 445 (Tex. App.—Austin 2014, pet. ref'd). The evidence is legally insufficient if "the record contains no evidence, or merely a ‘modicum’ of evidence, probative of an element of the offense" or if "the evidence conclusively establishes a reasonable doubt." Kiffe , 361 S.W.3d at 107 (quoting Jackson , 443 U.S. at 320, 99 S.Ct. 2781 ).

When presenting this issue on appeal, Young contends that the money-laundering charge "is facially derivative from" the theft charge and that both of those charges are "impliedly derivative from" the two forgery charges. Building on this premise, Young urges that "if the evidence is insufficient to demonstrate either that (1) the will was a forgery, or (2) that ... [he] knew it was a forgery, then" all four judgments of conviction "must be reversed and this Court must render" judgments "of acquittal." For the purpose of resolving this issue on appeal, we will assume without deciding that Young's proposition is correct and will consider whether the evidence is sufficient to establish that the will was a forgery and that Young knew that the will was a forgery.

Under the Penal Code, " ‘[f]orge’ means ... to alter, make, complete, execute, or authenticate any writing so that it purports: (i) to be the act of another who did not authorize that act; (ii) to have been executed at a time or place or in a numbered sequence other than was in fact the case; or (iii) to be a copy of an original when no such original existed" or "to issue, transfer, register the transfer of, pass, publish, or otherwise utter a writing that is forged within the meaning" set out in the first portion of the definition. Tex. Penal Code § 32.21. Moreover, a "person commits an offense if he forges a writing with the intent to defraud another." Id. § 32.21(b). "Intent to defraud or harm may be established by circumstantial evidence," Leroy v. State , 512 S.W.3d 540, 543 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2016, no pet.), including "the conduct of the" defendant, Guevara v. State , 152 S.W.3d 45, 50 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004).

When challenging the sufficiency of the evidence pertaining to whether the will was forged, Young concedes that the State presented evidence suggesting that the handwriting in the document at issue did not belong to Sullivan, but Young contends that the evidence came from "marginally competent lay witnesses" and from "an inconclusive expert report." More specifically, Young notes that the State called Sullivan's former attorney Joe Hernandez and Sullivan's half sister Louise Chabot to testify about the handwriting found in the will, but Young contends that the witnesses' familiarity with Sullivan's handwriting was "stale" because Hernandez represented Sullivan in a legal matter several years before the events in question and because "Sullivan had cut off contact with ... Chabot nearly fifteen years" before the will was made. Similarly, Young notes that Sarah Pryor testified as a handwriting expert for the State, but he contends that Pryor's testimony was generally inconclusive regarding who wrote the will and that she could not identify or eliminate any individual as being the author of the will or as the person who signed Sullivan's signature. Additionally, Sullivan's financial advisor, Greg Estes, testified that the signature in the will looked like it was Sullivan's writing and that the signature appeared similar to the signature on a prior holographic will that Sullivan wrote before having surgery years earlier. Furthermore, Sullivan's friend, Jean Bundrant, testified that the directives in the will naming Young as a beneficiary were consistent with statements Sullivan made months earlier about his estate.

Alternatively, Young asserts that even if...