Butler v. State

663 S.W.2d 492
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 29, 1984
Docket05-82-00492-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 663 S.W.2d 492 (Butler v. State) 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
Butler v. State, 663 S.W.2d 492 (Tex. Ct. App. 1984).

Opinion

ROWE, Justice.

Appellant was convicted of murder. His punishment, enhanced by a jury finding of two prior convictions, was assessed at life in the Texas Department of Corrections. Appellant presents seven grounds of error. After reforming the judgment to cure one ground of error, we overrule the other grounds and affirm.

In his first ground of error appellant complains that his constitutional rights to due process were violated by failure of the State’s Attorney, after due request, to disclose certain exculpatory evidence, to-wit: police discovery of the suspected murder weapon and scientific tests conducted upon it. A timely Brady motion having been granted by the trial court, we must decide whether appellant was entitled to these disclosures under these progeny of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), which he cites, such as Crutcher v. State, 481 S.W.2d 113 (Tex.Crim.App.1972), or whether the State properly withheld disclosure under those progeny of Brady which it cites, such as Crawford v. State, 617 S.W.2d 925 (Tex.Cr.App.1980) (en banc) cert. denied, 452 U.S. 931, 101 S.Ct. 3067, 69 L.Ed.2d 431 (1981). Important to our determination are both the posture of the case without this evidence and the nature of the evidence which was not disclosed.

Following appellant’s conviction, his attorney learned that the State’s Attorney had received information before trial that police had discovered a knife in connection with the case. The knife was supposedly found on the roof of a building near the scene of the crime but bore no discernible fingerprints. The State’s Attorney also had been told by his medical witness that blood found on the knife matched the blood of the deceased.

The chief witness for the State, Mary Louise Johnson, long time girlfriend of appellant, testified that when the deceased and appellant began a fight in her apartment one night she immediately fled outside and saw nothing that occurred inside, but thereafter did see the deceased fleeing the apartment and being pursued by appellant who said, “Nigger, I will kill you.” Both the deceased and appellant then disappeared behind the apartment building. Deceased was later found on the ground behind the apartment building bleeding to death from a stab wound in the chest. Johnson testified she saw no knife that night and never saw appellant with any weapon in his hands. No blood was found inside her apartment. She said she did not initially tell the police the true story, because appellant told her to lie if asked because he did not want to go back to the penitentiary.

The only other witness called by the State for its case in chief was the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles Petty. Dr. Petty testified to two wounds on the deceased’s body: (1) an incised wound on the tip of the fourth finger, left hand, of a type which occurs when a person attempts to ward off attack by a sharp instrument; and (2) a stab wound on the back, just inside the left shoulder blade, deep enough to have opened the aorta and caused death. The latter wound was about one half inch in length and had one blunt or dull edge and one sharp edge, such as would be made by a kitchen knife.

Testifying in his own defense, appellant admitted he got into a fight with deceased inside Johnson’s apartment and defended himself with a kitchen knife which he had taken shortly before from others engaged in a fight in a neighboring apartment. Although he did hit or cut the deceased with the knife and got blood on his own hands, he did not know the location of any wounds *495 on the deceased’s body. He denied following the deceased from the apartment or threatening to kill him. Appellant admitted that after others discovered the deceased near death from a stab wound, Mary Johnson’s sister, Shirley, took the knife from appellant and threw it on the roof of the apartment building.

The only fact witness called by appellant was Henry Johnson, no relation to the State’s witness, Mary Louise Johnson. Henry Johnson testified that after the homicide Mary Louise Johnson lived at his home in the same room with the appellant for over a month and did not appear to be afraid of appellant.

Appellant’s Brady motion generally sought evidence or any information known to the State’s Attorney which would be favorable to appellant on the issue of his guilt or innocence, but did not specifically mention the murder weapon. It did specifically seek any exculpatory evidence tending to affect adversely the credibility of any State’s witness and exculpatory evidence resulting from any scientific test conducted in the case.

With the above as predicate, we now address the legal issue presented by Brady and its progeny. In this connection we know first that Brady does not require a State’s Attorney to open his complete files or regurgitate all information to which he may personally be privy. Our justice system merely directs the State’s Attorney to honestly and fairly evaluate such evidence for due process purposes when disclosure on constitutional grounds is requested. The factors to be considered are the evidence’s “favorable character” for the defense and the “materiality” of the evidence as to the defendant’s guilt, Moore v. Illinois, 408 U.S. 786,795, 92 S.Ct. 2562, 2568, 33 L.Ed.2d 706 (1972). Further, the mere possibility that evidence might help the defense or otherwise affect the outcome of the trial does not establish its materiality in the constitutional sense; rather, when evaluated in the context of the entire record, to require its disclosure the evidence must be such as to “create a reasonable doubt [about the defendant’s guilt] that did not otherwise exist.” U.S. v. Agars, 427 U.S. 97, 113, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 2402, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976).

Although no precise test for determining materiality has yet been formulated, when the above general principles governing the constitutional aspects of disclosure are applied here we conclude that appellant’s rights to due process were not violated by the State’s failure to disclose information it had concerning the knife in question. It is apparent from the record that appellant was aware that the murder weapon was a kitchen knife. The fact that the knife was a kitchen knife and not some other kind ordinarily carried by persons “looking for trouble” cannot be considered exculpatory in view of the evidence that appellant admittedly brought the knife to the scene of the crime concealed on his person as would a person “looking for trouble.” We disagree with appellant’s contention that if the knife’s history subsequent to the murder date had been known to appellant, the credibility of certain witnesses might have been impeached. This contention is too speculative to merit consideration on appeal, especially where there is no showing that any witnesses playing a crucial role as to guilt were capable of being so impeached. Cf. Giles v. Maryland,

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Eric Deon Rollins v. the State of Texas
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2025
Hanyel Leon-Gomez v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2019
Promise Lashawn Kelley v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2016
Ricky Neal Jr. v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2015
Wilson, Clint Weldon
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2015
Wilson, Clint Weldon
Texas Supreme Court, 2015
Clint Weldon Wilson v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2014
Brandon Lynn Darkins v. State
430 S.W.3d 559 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2014)
Whipple v. State
281 S.W.3d 482 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2009)
Damon Keith Hunter v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2008
Mary Jean Whipple v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2008
Clifton Wayne Perry v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2008
James Howard Fitch v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2007
Searcy v. State
231 S.W.3d 539 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2007)
Michael Wesley Searcy v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2007
Roy Witcher v. R. Darryl Bennett
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2006
Gonzales v. State
2 S.W.3d 600 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1999)
Banks v. State
955 S.W.2d 116 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1997)
Hermosillo v. State
903 S.W.2d 60 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1995)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
663 S.W.2d 492, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/butler-v-state-texapp-1984.