Cleveland v. State

177 S.W.3d 374, 2005 WL 826943
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedSeptember 14, 2005
Docket01-03-01040-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by135 cases

This text of 177 S.W.3d 374 (Cleveland 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
Cleveland v. State, 177 S.W.3d 374, 2005 WL 826943 (Tex. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinions

ELSA ALCALA, Justice.

Appellant, Andre Cleveland, pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering his wife. A jury found appellant guilty of murder, found against appellant on the special issue of sudden passion, and assessed punishment at confinement for life in prison. Appellant brings four points of error concerning the guilt-innocence phase of his trial. In his first two points of error, appellant contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress [378]*378evidence of the search of his residence and by overruling his objection to closing argument by the State that allegedly commented on appellant’s post-arrest silence. In his third and fourth points of error, appellant contends that the State failed to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed his wife while acting in self-defense, and that the evidence is therefore legally and factually insufficient to sustain his murder conviction. Concerning the punishment stage of his trial, appellant’s fifth and sixth points of error assert that, although he had the burden to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that he killed his wife out of sudden passion arising out of an adequate cause, the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to sustain the jury’s negative answer to the sudden passion special issue. We affirm.

Background

Carolyn Cleveland and appellant, her husband, had been together for approximately 15 years. They lived in Spring, Harris County, Texas, with their 15-year-old daughter Andrea, Carolyn’s 20-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Jessica’s infant baby. Two firearms, a handgun and a shotgun, were kept in the house. On the afternoon of March 6, 2003, Carolyn gave the handgun and the shells for the shotgun to Jessica to hide because Carolyn planned to serve appellant with divorce papers that evening.

When appellant arrived at the house at about 6:00 p.m., Carolyn went downstairs to give appellant the divorce papers. Andrea, Jessica and Jessica’s baby were in the upstairs portion of the house. Appellant and Carolyn had been discussing matters for about an hour and a half when Jessica’s baby became hungry. Jessica walked downstairs, holding her five-month-old baby, to get the child’s formula from the refrigerator. As Jessica approached the kitchen, Jessica saw her mother seated on a sofa. Appellant was on his knees in front of her. Jessica heard appellant tell Carolyn that he wanted a divorce, but that “he would kill her before he would let her get a divorce and take the house.” When appellant saw Jessica, he cursed at her, accused her of causing problems in the marriage, and told her to go back upstairs. Jessica got the baby’s formula and began to return to her room.

As Jessica reached the top of the stairs, she heard her mother “squeal” loudly. Jessica put her baby in a room upstairs and ran downstairs to help her mother, accompanied by Andrea, who had also heard the scream. Andrea and Jessica saw appellant pin Carolyn down with one of his knees as he used one arm to beat her and the other arm to stab her. Andrea and Jessica tried to help Carolyn, but appellant “wrestled” them. Although Jessica managed to escape into the kitchen and get a knife, appellant took the knife from her and used it to stab her in the chest. When Carolyn collapsed, bleeding, on the floor by the front door, Jessica went upstairs to call 911.

Appellant scrubbed the sofa with a towel where Carolyn had been seated, but then returned to stabbing Carolyn as she remained face down on the floor. Andrea tried to help Carolyn by striking appellant with a cooking pan, but she had to back away from him when he swung at her. After Jessica called 911, she and Andrea attempted CPR on Carolyn. Appellant did not assist, scream, cry, or do anything to help Carolyn. He did, however, treat his own injury by wrapping a cloth around the small cut on his hand.

At 8:39 p.m., a Harris County deputy constable approached appellant’s house in response to a stabbing-in-progress call. Appellant walked out of the house towards the deputy and very calmly said, “I [379]*379stabbed her because she always — ,” but did not complete his sentence. The deputy handcuffed appellant and took him into custody. When the deputy heard Andrea and Jessica screaming hysterically for help, he entered the house. He brought appellant with him, in handcuffs, because no other officers were present to assist. As Andrea and Jessica continued to attempt CPR on their mother, appellant appeared “very, very calm” as he observed his wife on the floor.

After emergency personnel arrived at the house and pronounced Carolyn dead, the deputy returned the handcuffed appellant to the patrol car. Harris County Sheriffs Deputy J.D. Gideon arrived at the scene and read appellant his rights. Appellant waived his rights and agreed to speak to the officers.

J. Ortiz, a deputy assigned as a crime-scene technician and latent fingerprint examiner in the identification division of the Harris County Sheriffs Department, obtained appellant’s consent to search the house. Deputy Ortiz entered the house, photographed and videotaped it, and collected evidence that included six knives. The autopsy showed that Carolyn received 22 stab wounds and died as a result of multiple, sharp-force injuries.

Appellant gave an oral statement to Deputy Gideon while in custody at the police station. In that conversation, appellant told Deputy Gideon that his wife informed him that she had filed for divorce, that she would take the house and the money, that he “lost it,” walked to the kitchen, went back to the couch, and stabbed her.

At trial, appellant testified that he did not want to divorce Carolyn and still loved her, but he acknowledged that he had previously filed for divorce and that they had discussed divorce months earlier. Appellant claimed that, when he knelt down before Carolyn in an attempt to persuade her to attend marriage counseling with him, she pulled a four-inch knife that was slightly larger than a steak knife from the side of the sofa, which caused him to fear for his life. According to appellant, Carolyn swung the knife at him once, but she did not cut him, and he quickly disarmed her. Appellant stated that, at that point, “I panicked and I started stabbing her.” Appellant described his mental state at the time of the stabbing as “in another world,” “panicking,” and in “fear of [his] life,” but he denied being upset. Appellant acknowledged that nothing prevented him from simply leaving the house after he took the knife from Carolyn and that Jessica, who cut him with a knife, inflicted the only wound that he received that night. Appellant denied stabbing Jessica and denied making any statement about stabbing his wife to the deputy constable who first arrived at the house. Appellant acknowledged that, before peace officers responded to the stabbing at his house, he spoke on the telephone to family members, his employer, and to the 911 operator, whom he told that he had stabbed his wife, but without mentioning self-defense.

Sufficiency of the Evidence to Establish Murder by Disproving Self-Defense

Because appellant raised the issue of self-defense, to convict him for murder, the State had to prove the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, and the State had to persuade the jury that appellant did not kill his wife in self-defense. Zuliani v. State, 97 S.W.3d 589, 594 (Tex.Crim.App.2003).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
177 S.W.3d 374, 2005 WL 826943, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cleveland-v-state-texapp-2005.