Clement v. State

248 S.W.3d 791, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 1302, 2008 WL 467411
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 21, 2008
Docket2-06-435-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by44 cases

This text of 248 S.W.3d 791 (Clement 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
Clement v. State, 248 S.W.3d 791, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 1302, 2008 WL 467411 (Tex. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

OPINION

TERRIE LIVINGSTON, Justice.

Introduction

Appellant Amber Nicole Clement appeals her conviction for the offense of resisting arrest or transport. In issues one through four, appellant argues that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to support her conviction. In issue five, appellant asserts that the jury did not render a unanimous verdict because of the erroneous disjunctive submission of two different offenses or theories of committing the crime in the charge. We affirm.

Background Facts

On December 13, 2005, at about 3:00 p.m., Carrollton Police Officer Robert Hay saw the twenty-one-year-old appellant striking her boyfriend, Kyle Compagna, in the parking lot of a shopping center in the 1000 block of East Frankford Road in Denton County. Officer Hay saw that Compagna put his hands up in a defensive motion as he tried to walk away from appellant, but she followed him. Officer Hay pulled into the parking lot, turned on the lights on his marked patrol car, and called for backup. He then tried to separate appellant and Compagna. Officer Hay testified that while appellant continued to strike Compagna, Officer Hay walked up behind her and grabbed her arms. He also testified that appellant pulled away from him and resisted his directions. Officer Hay was wearing his police uniform.

*795 Carrollton Police Officer Glenn Michna responded to Officer Hay’s call and arrived in the parking lot about thirty seconds after Officer Hay called for backup. When Officer Michna arrived, he saw Officer Hay following appellant, who was chasing a male. He then saw Officer Hay place appellant in handcuffs.

After handcuffing appellant, Officer Hay placed her on the curb and went to speak to Compagna. While Officer Hay conducted his investigation, appellant slipped her left hand out of the handcuffs. Officer Hay testified that appellant wore a thick sweater and because of her resistance to being handcuffed, he placed the handcuffs over the sweater. The sweater came out from beneath the handcuffs, which gave appellant enough room for her left hand to come out. When Officer Hay saw that appellant’s left hand was free, he and Officer Michna went to recuff her. Officer Michna corroborated Officer Hay’s testimony about the handcuffs.

After the officers recuffed appellant, they tried to put her in the back of Officer Hay’s police car. Officer Hay testified that appellant did not cooperate and that he had difficulty getting her to the car because she moved in the opposite direction from the one directed by the officers and continued to resist and struggle. He also testified that appellant pushed against him and Officer Michna the entire time and that from the beginning “it was a constant battle.” Officer Michna testified that he heard Officer Hay tell appellant that she was going to jail. When Officers Hay and Michna finally got appellant into the car, she began to kick, scream, and bang her head against the windows of the car. While Officer Hay finished his investigation, appellant continued to scream and cry hysterically in the car. Appellant repeatedly banged her head against the side window and on the Plexiglass that separated the front seat from the back seat. Appellant also lay down across the seat and kicked the side windows. After about fifteen minutes, Officer Hay got into his car to take appellant to the police station, but he drove only about thirty yards before he had to stop because appellant continued to kick the side windows in the police car; appellant kicked the windows so hard that they came out of their frames. He and Officer Michna opened the door to restrain appellant’s feet, and she kicked at Officer Hay’s face, although her foot did not make contact. Appellant continued to kick, convulse, and scream as the officers placed her feet in restraints. Appellant also continued to bang her head against the Plexiglass.

After securing appellant’s feet in restraints, Officer Hay continued to the police station, which was about five to ten minutes away. Officer Hay pulled into the garage area of the jail, and several officers came to help get appellant out of the car. An officer asked appellant to stop fighting and to calm down, but she continued to cry hysterically as they took her inside.

The State charged appellant with the offense of resisting arrest, search, or transport. On November 16, 2006, a jury found appellant guilty of that offense. The trial court sentenced appellant to three hundred days’ confinement, suspended for twenty-four months.

Sufficiency of the Evidence

In appellant’s issues one through four, she argues that the evidence was legally and factually insufficient to support her conviction for resisting arrest or transport.

Standard of review

In reviewing the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we view all the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution in order to determine whether any rational trier of *796 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, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); Clayton v. State, 235 S.W.3d 772, 778 (Tex.Crim.App.2007). This standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. at 2789; Clayton, 235 S.W.3d at 778. The trier of fact is the sole judge of the weight and credibility of the evidence. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.04 (Vernon 1979); Margraves v. State, 34 S.W.3d 912, 919 (Tex.Crim.App. 2000). Thus, when performing a legal sufficiency review, we may not re-evaluate the weight and credibility of the evidence and substitute our judgment for that of the fact-finder. Dewberry v. State, 4 S.W.3d 735, 740 (Tex.Crim.App.1999), cert. denied, 529 U.S. 1131, 120 S.Ct. 2008, 146 L.Ed.2d 958 (2000). Instead, we “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). We must presume that the fact-finder resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the prosecution and defer to that resolution. Jackson, 443 U.S. at 326, 99 S.Ct. at 2793; Clayton, 235 S.W.3d at 778.

The sufficiency of the evidence should be measured by the elements of the offense as defined by the hypothetically correct jury charge for the case. Malik v. State, 953 S.W.2d 234, 240 (Tex.Crim.App. 1997); Bowden v. State, 166 S.W.3d 466, 470 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2005, pet. refd).

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Bluebook (online)
248 S.W.3d 791, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 1302, 2008 WL 467411, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clement-v-state-texapp-2008.