Capps v. State

244 S.W.3d 520, 2007 WL 4292400
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 12, 2008
Docket2-05-175-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 244 S.W.3d 520 (Capps 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
Capps v. State, 244 S.W.3d 520, 2007 WL 4292400 (Tex. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION 1 ON APPELLANT’S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice.

Pursuant to rule of appellate procedure 50, we have reconsidered our previous opinion on Appellant Hardy Don Capps’s petition for discretionary review. 2 We withdraw our judgment and opinion dated October 18, 2007, and substitute the following.

A jury convicted Appellant of murder and assessed his punishment at life imprisonment in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a fine of $10,000. The trial court sentenced him accordingly. Appellant brings six points on appeal, arguing that the trial court erred by refusing to quash the prospective venire panel and by denying a mistrial when the prosecutor improperly interjected his personal opinion as to Appellant’s guüt during voir dire and final argument, respectively (points one and six); that the evidence is both legally and factually insufficient (points two and three); and that the trial court erred by excluding impeachment evidence and by admitting Appellant’s jailhouse conversations (points four and five). Because we hold that the evidence is both legally and factually sufficient to support the jury’s verdict and that the trial court did not err, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Summary of Facts

Appellant’s wife Gina Capps was killed on December 16, 1995. Her body and her pickup were found off of Highway 59 in Jack County, Texas, about five miles outside of Jacksboro.

Lane Akin, the Texas Ranger who investigated the murder, testified that when he arrived at the scene, he discovered a pickup truck parked by the side of the road. The truck’s window was down, and the engine was still running. Inside the truck, he found a two-year-old child, unharmed, strapped into a car seat. In a ditch beside *523 the truck, he found the body of Gina Capps. Akin observed both slash and cut wounds to the body. He concluded that there had been a struggle outside the truck and that a knife had been used to cause the wounds during the struggle. The medical examiner testified that the complainant was killed with a knife with a serrated edge.

Akin spoke with Appellant, the complainant’s husband, who suggested Michael Dearick, the complainant’s former husband, as the possible killer, explaining that Dearick had been abusive to the complainant in the past and was currently behind on child support. Appellant stated that the complainant and Dearick had planned to meet for a child visitation exchange that morning in Jacksboro.

Michael Dearick testified that Gina had been insured and that the primary beneficiary was Appellant. Dearick also testified that he owed $8,000 in child support to Gina but claimed that they had worked out the arrearage between themselves. Dear-ick also admitted that he had been jailed twice for “mess[ing] with” Gina but claimed that they had had no problems when they met in Jacksboro the day she was killed. Lisa Callahan, who was Dear-ick’s wife on the day of the murder, testified that she had been with him when he picked up Gary, his child with Gina, from Gina around 8:45 a.m. that day.

In explaining his own whereabouts, Appellant claimed variously that he had gone deer hunting, that he had gone to his office, that he had gone to check on oil wells, and that he had stayed in bed until being notified to call the sheriffs office. Appellant denied that there were problems in his marriage to Gina and denied knowing that Gina was planning to leave him. He admitted that he and Gina had had one argument during their three-and-a-half-year marriage.

Appellant told Akin that on December 16,

The alarm had gone off. They had gotten up early. He went outside to check the oil on her car, and I think at one point he said it was at 6:35 a.m. on that misty morning when he went out to check the oil, the water, and the transmission fluid on ... her pickup.
He helped her get the boys ready, and then she left at about 7:00 and drove toward Saint Jo.

Appellant also told Akin that he drove behind Gina for about fifteen or twenty minutes in that direction, that he received the phone call about the murder around 10:00 a.m. at home, and that he then drove to Jacksboro, stopping in Nocona to get gas.

Appellant talked to then deputy sheriff Danny Nash, now the sheriff of Jack County. Appellant told Nash that “they had got[ten] up around 6:00 o’clock. Gina dressed and then dressed the two boys, and they ate. He [then] went out and checked the oil and water in the pickup.” Appellant stated that he left the house at around 7:15 a.m. that morning, after Gina did, to go check the wells. When he got back home, the telephone company called to give him the phone number of the Jack County Sheriffs Office.

Nash testified that Appellant called the sheriffs office between 9:56 and 9:58 and that the logs reflected that. The log in Defense Exhibit 5 does not contain an entry for when Appellant called, but it does contain an entry at 9:51 providing, “Contact family. Texas Ranger” and a series of numbers. The dispatcher testified that he believed that this entry indicated that the sheriff had called him to contact the family, the Texas Rangers, a deputy, and the highway patrol. He further testified that he believed that he was *524 talking to Appellant within a matter of minutes.

Gina’s older son testified that he was seven years old when his mother was killed. He testified that Appellant did not get out of bed before he and his mother and brother left the house on the morning of his mother’s death and did not go out and check the oil and water in her pickup. The youth also testified that things were “pretty good” for the most part between his mother and Appellant, except when Appellant was drinking and “all that other stuff,” and that Appellant would not return his mother’s kiss that morning, which was unusual.

Appellant testified that he had lied to the police in all of his statements, that he had checked the oil and water in Gina’s pickup around 2:30 or 3:30 a.m. on the morning of her death, that he had not gotten up before she and the children left that morning, and that he did not leave the house until he got the telephone call from the telephone company sometime before noon asking him to call the sheriff, which he did immediately.

Akin testified that it takes less than an hour to drive from Appellant’s home in Montague County to Jacksboro.

Deputy Nash testified that Curtis Keck had given him a knife that was similar to the knife Keck had given Appellant for Christmas. The knife was admitted into evidence as State’s exhibit 45. Curtis Keck testified that he was Appellant’s cousin and had given Appellant a serrated knife as a gift the day before Gina died. Keck also testified that Appellant kept the knife in his pickup and that the knife he had given Appellant was similar to State’s exhibit 45. Keck testified that he had seen Gina and Appellant together the night before her death and that Gina had seemed afraid that day, but he did not know why. Keck testified that Appellant went drinking at the YFW Hall that night.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
244 S.W.3d 520, 2007 WL 4292400, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/capps-v-state-texapp-2008.