Archie Lee Harris Jr. v. the State of Texas

CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 6, 2023
Docket09-22-00112-CR
StatusPublished

This text of Archie Lee Harris Jr. v. the State of Texas (Archie Lee Harris Jr. v. the State of Texas) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Archie Lee Harris Jr. v. the State of Texas, (Tex. Ct. App. 2023).

Opinion

In The

Court of Appeals

Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont

________________ NO. 09-22-00112-CR ________________

ARCHIE LEE HARRIS JR., Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee ________________________________________________________________________

On Appeal from the 252nd District Court Jefferson County, Texas Trial Cause No. 21-37749 ________________________________________________________________________

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appellant Archie Harris was convicted of burglary of a habitation, a second-

degree felony, and was sentenced to seven years in the Institutional Division of the

Texas Department of Criminal Justice. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 30.02(a)(1).

Appellant contends that he was not guilty of burglarizing a “habitation.” See Tex.

Penal Code Ann. §§ 12.35(a), 30.02(c)(1). We affirm the trial court’s judgment.

1 Evidence at Trial

Helen Cormier’s 1 Testimony

Helen testified that she and her husband moved into their house in

Beaumont, Texas during the summer of 2017, and the home had three bedrooms

and a garage and garage apartment. The garage and garage apartment were

attached to the house by a covered walkway. According to Helen, they were in the

process of remodeling their house.

During the renovations in December 2020, they moved to a temporary

residence because the demolition and remodeling process left the house without a

bathroom. Although the garage apartment had running water and electricity, and

was therefore “habitable,” and although the Cormiers could have lived in the

garage apartment during the renovations, they chose not to do so. Instead, they

used the garage apartment to store some of their property, including dishes, tools,

collectibles, and the like. They used the open double carport area to store a riding

lawnmower and sports equipment.

Helen testified that on April 27, 2021, she was driving past the property

when she noticed that the previously locked door to the garage apartment was

open. She then discovered the padlock on the door had been removed and the door

1 We use pseudonyms to refer to the alleged victims. See Tex. Const. art. I, § 30 (granting crime victims “the right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy throughout the criminal justice process[]”). 2 had been forced open, “[e]verything from inside the garage apartment that [they]

had stored with the exception of a few items that were on the floor[]” was missing,

and she called the police. According to Helen, the missing items included items

such as an air compressor, tools, and ice chests. The Cormiers immediately

installed a motion-activated video camera, and that camera recorded additional

thefts on April 29, May 6, and May 7. Helen testified that in June her husband

drove by the property and noticed that their lawnmower that had been parked

underneath the carport had been stolen. Neither Cormier nor her husband gave the

person depicted in the video or any other person permission to remove any of the

items from their property, and she had never met or seen Appellant. According to

Helen, only a few of the stolen items were recovered, including the lawnmower.

Testimony of Brandy Dyson

Evidence technician Brandy Dyson testified and described her training and

her usual day-to-day job duties, which include taking photographs, lifting

fingerprints, and collecting evidence. She outlined the procedures for lifting and

identifying latent fingerprints, noting that the computer generates a list of possible

suspects, but that she personally performs the final identification. Her colleague

then verifies Dyson’s opinion of the fingerprint match. Dyson and her colleague

matched the sole usable fingerprint taken from the crime scene to Appellant’s

fingerprint.

3 Testimony of John Courts

Courts, an eighteen-year officer with the Beaumont Police Department also

testified. Courts summarized his training and experience as a law enforcement

professional. At the time of trial, he was assigned to the burglary unit. He

confirmed Cormier’s testimony about the burglary location, and noted that there

were several burglaries at that same property over a short span of time. Courts also

confirmed Dyson’s testimony about matching a fingerprint found at the crime

scene to Appellant. After obtaining the fingerprint evidence and the photographic

evidence from the Cormier’s security camera which showed a suspect who

matched the physical description of Archie Lee Harris, the police arrested Archie

Lee Harris for the burglaries. Courts interviewed Harris about the burglaries on the

day of the arrest, and during that interview, according to Courts, Harris admitted he

is the person on the video taken by the Cormier’s camera, and Harris admitted he

entered the structure in the garage apartment and that he had taken items from the

Cormiers. After the interview, Courts escorted Harris to Harris’s home, where

some of the stolen goods were found. The Cormier’s riding mower was recovered

from Harris’s house, along with some glassware and a few other items.

Additional Evidence

In addition to Harris’s fingerprint, the record contains multiple photographs

taken at the crime scene and photographs of items found at Harris’s home. There

4 were additional exhibits with still images downloaded from the Cormier’s security

camera. The security camera still images or photographs show a person taking

items from the Cormier property and leaving the premises with the items. A video

recording of Appellant’s interview by law enforcement was also admitted into

evidence.

Issues

In three appellate issues Appellant challenges his conviction. First, he argues

there was insufficient evidence that the structure he burglarized was a habitation.

Second, he contends the trial court erred by admitting evidence of Appellant’s

extraneous offenses. And third he argues the trial court erred by omitting a jury

instruction on the lesser included offense of burglary of a building.

Standard of Review

When reviewing the legal sufficiency of the evidence, we review all the

evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any

rational factfinder could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a

reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979); Hooper v. State,

214 S.W.3d 9, 13 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). The jury as the factfinder is the sole

judge of the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony.

Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319. We give deference to the factfinder’s responsibility to

fairly resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw

5 reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. Hooper, 214 S.W.3d at 13.

If the record contains conflicting inferences, we must presume that the jury

resolved such facts in favor of the verdict and defer to that resolution. Brooks v.

State, 323 S.W.3d 893

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Related

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443 U.S. 307 (Supreme Court, 1979)
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