Corey Allen Trumbull v. the State of Texas

• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas
• Decided: August 19, 2025
• Docket: 01-23-00741-CR
• Status: Published

Opinion

Opinion issued August 19, 2025

In The Court of Appeals For The

First District of Texas ———————————— NO. 01-23-00741-CR ——————————— COREY ALLEN TRUMBULL, Appellant V. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

On Appeal from the 30th District Court Wichita County, Texas Trial Court Case No. DC30-CR2023-0666-1

MEMORANDUM OPINION

The appellant was convicted of capital murder for intentionally causing the

death of a child between the ages of ten and fifteen. The trial court assessed

punishment at confinement for life with no possibility of parole. See TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art 37.071, § 1. In a single point of error, the appellant claims the

evidence was legally insufficient to support his conviction.1 We affirm.

Background

When Stormy Johnson met the appellant, the lives of Stormy’s two children

would soon get much worse. Over the course of a few months, fourteen-year-old

Lacy was forced to watch as the appellant subjected her brother, eleven-year-old

Luke, to increasingly abusive treatment that culminated in Luke’s death.2

Stormy met the appellant in 2019, and soon moved herself and the children

into a Midland motel with the appellant in mid-July. Stormy’s mother, Dorothy, was

concerned about the situation and called CPS, which apparently prompted Stormy

and the appellant to move to another motel in Midland, and soon after that hundreds

of miles away to Chilicothe. Dorothy lost contact with them, except for once in

September when Stormy and the appellant came to her house to get furniture. They

did not let Dorothy see her grandchildren on that occasion.

1 The Texas Supreme Court transferred this case to this Court from the Court of Appeals for the Second District as part of a docket equalization order. See TEX. GOV’T CODE § 73.001. We must apply the precedent of the transferor court “if the transferee court’s decision otherwise would have been inconsistent with the precedent of the transferor court.” TEX. R. APP. P. 41.3. The parties have not argued there is any relevant area of law where our precedent varies from the Second Court’s, nor are we aware of any. 2 We use pseudonyms for the child victims.

2 The appellant, Stormy, and the children stayed at a trailer in Chilicothe for

some time before getting evicted and moving to a Red Roof Inn in Wichita Falls on

October 2. The evidence at trial of what occurred in the Chillicothe trailer and the

Wichita Falls hotel room came from Lacy’s testimony and from forensic

examination of Luke’s body.

Lacy testified the appellant treated Luke in increasingly abusive ways. In the

Chillicothe trailer, the appellant forced Luke to stay in a room covered with dog

urine and feces and full of dirty clothes. There was no mattress in the room; Luke

slept on a makeshift pallet of dirty clothes. The appellant and Stormy would make

fun of Luke for this. When Luke came out of the room the appellant—who weighed

approximately 220 pounds—would become aggressive and sometimes strike or kick

Luke. The appellant also controlled when Luke ate. He did not let Luke eat every

day, and he would threaten to cut off Luke’s fingers if he caught Luke trying to sneak

food.

The appellant had three dogs, one male and two female. After the move to the

Wichita Falls hotel room, the appellant began calling Luke “Bitch Boy,” telling him

he was subservient to the male dog. The appellant allowed the dogs to sleep on one

of the two beds in the room but made Luke sleep on the floor under the sink. The

appellant and Stormy fed Luke dog food and forced him to drink from the dog bowls.

They would not allow Luke to use the restroom so that he was forced to urinate on

3 himself. Lacy testified the appellant also would “cut [Luke’s] urethra” so it was

painful to urinate.

Lacy testified the appellant regularly assaulted Luke in both Chillicothe and

Wichita Falls. The appellant would strike Luke with his fist while wearing a large

skull ring. The appellant also had a stick he had sanded down and reinforced with

epoxy and tape that he used to beat Luke.3 Lacy testified that Stormy sometimes

participated in the beatings and cheered the appellant on.

The appellant’s most traumatic attack on Luke occurred sometime in

December. The appellant got angry with Luke for making noises and kicked him

into the wall. Luke, who was bleeding and crying, retreated by lying down under the

sink. The appellant then stomped on Luke’s head. Luke went unconscious; the

appellant and Stormy laughed and walked away from Luke.

Lacy testified that when Luke regained consciousness the next day he acted

differently, “almost like a high special needs child.” He had developed a lazy eye

and “couldn’t really walk or talk.” Lacy said it was obvious to her Luke needed

medical attention but the appellant told her not to call 911 because that if she did

they would go to jail.

3 In an interview with police, the appellant called this the “Gotta Beat a Bitch” stick. The appellant claimed Luke, an eleven-year-old boy, was a masochist and liked being hit with this stick.

4 Lacy estimated Luke was in this condition for about two weeks, but she also

said her notion of time may have been distorted because the appellant was giving

her methamphetamine. Lacy testified that the only medical treatment Luke received

during this period was a butterfly bandage the appellant put on a gash on Luke’s

head.

After Luke sustained these injuries, the appellant promised Luke he would

never hit him again. Yet the abuse continued: both the appellant and Stormy

continued to punch Luke and beat him with a belt that had a metal buckle.

Lacy testified that while Luke lingered in this condition the appellant and

Stormy did not give him any food. Eventually Stormy prepared some chicken noodle

soup for Luke and propped him up on a bed. She tried to feed him the soup, but Luke

began coughing up blood then lost consciousness. The appellant tried unsuccessfully

to give Luke CPR, but no one called 911.

Lacy testified that the appellant checked Luke for a pulse and realized he was

dead. The appellant covered Luke’s body with a sheet and later moved Luke’s body

to the bathtub. The appellant and Stormy went to the convenience store and returned

with three large bags of ice and a bottle of bleach. They dumped the ice on Luke’s

body to slow decomposition, and they forced Lacy to clean up Luke’s blood from

around the sink with the bleach.

5 Lacy testified that Luke’s body stayed in the bathtub for about three days as

the appellant and Stormy sought a location to dump it. Eventually Stormy removed

the bloody clothes from Luke’s body, dressed the body with clean clothes, and put

it in a wheelchair. The appellant and Stormy rolled Luke’s body out of the hotel

room in the middle of the night and left Lacy by herself. When the appellant and

Stormy returned, without Luke’s body, they were “[p]roud” and acted “like they just

came back from having, like, a night out.” Lacy testified they were laughing. Lacy

testified that after disposing of Luke’s body the appellant and Stormy did some drugs

and watched Futurama, an animated sitcom, on the television.

On December 27, the appellant, Stormy, and Lacy got evicted from the

Wichita Falls hotel room. They drove to Las Vegas, Nevada. In February 2020,

Stormy was in the hospital and Detective Metzger from the Las Vegas police

department spoke with her about an unrelated matter. During that meeting Stormy

called her mother, Dorothy, who asked to speak to Detective Metzger. Dorothy

asked Detective Metzger how Lacy and Luke were. Detective Metzger was aware of

Lacy but did not know who Luke was. When Detective Metzger asked Stormy how

Luke was, Stormy began to cry and “wail in pain.” Stormy told Detective Metzger

that Luke had died in Texas. Detective Metzger forwarded the information she had

to the Wichita Falls Police Department.

6 Wichita Falls police officers found Luke’s body on February 27. It was in the

backseat of a car parked behind an abandoned house half a block from the Red Roof

Inn. The body was buried under a pile of clothes and was entering a state of

mummification.

Dr. Suzanne Dakil, a physician certified in child abuse pediatrics, described

Luke’s body as that of “a battered, emaciated child.” Dr. Dakil described injuries all

over Luke’s body—he showed signs of being beaten with a stick on his buttocks, his

back, and his front. Dr. Dakil described injuries to Luke’s buttocks as “confluent,”

meaning there were so many bruises she could not tell individual bruises apart. Dr.

Dakil said Luke would not have been able to sit down without pain. Dr. Dakil said

the injuries to Luke’s face came from “multiple blows” and were the equivalent of

getting “hit with . . . a 2 by 4 to the face.” Dr. Dakil compared it to injuries that

would have resulted from “ejection from car accidents.” Dr. Dakil said the injuries

would have impaired Luke’s ability to breathe, and he would not have behaved

normally after sustaining these injuries. She said that the injuries could have resulted

from an adult stomping on Luke’s head when his head was on a hard floor surface

because in such a situation “there’s nowhere to go back so you can’t reduce that

force.” Dr. Dakil testified that the weight loss between the summer of 2019—where

Luke weighed 96 pounds at a doctor’s appointment—to February 2020—where he

weighed 69 pounds at autopsy—was consistent with a pattern of starvation. Dr.

7 Dakil testified that Luke’s death was likely caused by “a continual loss of blood,

hemorrhaging out into all of his tissues from all of this really deep muscular

bruising…combined with muscle damage and starvation, likely led to some aspect

of kidney disease or kidney injury as well. And that ultimately proved fatal.”

Dr. Stephen Hastings of the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Officer

testified that Luke’s death was a homicide resulting from blunt force trauma to the

head that had caused subdural hemorrhage in the front and back of Luke’s skull. Dr.

Hastings testified that, based on the lack of healing, he believed the head injuries

occurred fewer than five days before Luke died. Dr. Hastings testified about

“numerous extensive blunt force injuries” he saw across Luke’s body. Dr. Hasting

commented on injuries to Luke’s buttocks as showing “an extreme amount of

hemorrhage. It was impressive.” Dr. Hastings said he found no food in Luke’s

stomach. Dr. Hastings concluded the autopsy had shown him “a child [who] was

beat to death.”

The State admitted evidence of three interviews the appellant gave to police

in Las Vegas. In the first interview—which occurred before police found Luke’s

body—the appellant was speaking with Las Vegas police about an unrelated matter

when he mentioned that Luke was in a mental health facility in Midland.

In the next interview, the appellant began by claiming that Luke had run away

while they were staying in the hotel in Wichita Falls. When police revealed they had

8 “found [Luke],” the appellant said that Luke had fallen in the bathtub, started

convulsing, and died. The appellant said that Stormy hid the body, he merely

accompanied her. In the third interview the appellant admitted to hitting Luke’s

buttocks with a stick. In this interview the appellant said he “sparred” with Luke,

hitting him mostly on the arms and chest, but on the fatal day he hit Luke once on

the head then Luke had a seizure, fell, and later died.

Sufficiency of the Evidence

In a single point of error the appellant claims the evidence is insufficient to

support his conviction.

The standards for sufficiency review for criminal convictions are well settled.

The evidence is sufficient if a rational factfinder could find each element of the

charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Williams v. State, 582 S.W.3d 692, 700

(Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2019, pet. ref’d). In assessing sufficiency, we must

view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, deferring to the

factfinder’s implicit credibility determinations. See Temple v. State, 390 S.W.3d 341,

360 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013) (“The jury is the sole judge of credibility . . . .”).

“[W]here there are two permissible views of the evidence, the fact finder’s choice

between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” Braughton v. State, 569 S.W.3d 592,

608 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (quotation and brackets omitted). Part of viewing the

evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict is that we may not indulge

9 alternative hypotheses that lead to inferences the jury rejected. Melgar v. State, 593

S.W.3d 913, 922 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2020), pet. dism’d,

No. PD-0243-20, 2022 WL 2240263 (Tex. Crim. App. June 22, 2022).

The indictment alleged the appellant intentionally or knowingly caused the

death of Luke, a child between the ages of ten and fifteen,

by repeatedly beating and assaulting [Luke] about the head and/or body and/or buttocks by the following: by punching and/or striking the face and/or body of [Luke] with the [appellant]’s hand and/or fist and/or a stick and/or a pipe and/or another object; and/or by stomping on [Luke’s] head and/or face and/or body with the [appellant]’s foot and/or feet; and/or by kicking [Luke]’s body with the [appellant’s] foot and/or leg; and/or by cutting [Luke]’s body with a knife and/or other sharp object.

The appellant does not contest that he caused Luke’s death, nor does he

contest Luke’s age. He contests only whether the evidence was sufficient to prove

he caused the death intentionally or knowingly. We restrict our review to that

argument. See English v. State, No. 01-20-00139-CR, 2021 WL 4202159, at *3 (Tex.

App.—Houston [1st Dist.] Sept. 16, 2021, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for

publication) (limiting sufficiency review to single element defendant challenged).

Capital murder is a result of conduct offense, meaning the evidence must

prove the mental state as it relates to the result of the offense—the death of the

complainant. Louis v. State, 393 S.W.3d 246, 251 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012). A person

acts intentionally with respect to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious

objective or desire to cause the result. TEX. PENAL CODE § 6.03(a). A person acts 10 knowingly with respect to a result of his conduct when he is aware that his conduct

is reasonably certain to cause the result. Id. § 6.03(b).

The appellant argues, as he did to the jury, that the evidence of abuse shows

he had no intent to kill Luke because he would have preferred to keep Luke alive to

continue abusing him. The appellant also argues the evidence does not show he

knowingly killed Luke because the State failed to introduce evidence the appellant

was aware of the lethal nature of stomping on an eleven-year-old’s head.

In homicide and assaultive cases, there is often no direct evidence of a

defendant’s state of mind. Factfinders may, and often must, infer the defendant’s

state of mind from circumstantial evidence. For instance, in the leading case about

sufficiency review, Jackson v. Virginia, the Supreme Court upheld a murder

conviction by holding that the factfinder could have inferred an intent to kill from

the circumstances of the offense. 443 U.S. 307, 324–25 (1979). Events before and

after the offense may create inferences about the defendant’s state of mind.

Modarresi v. State, 488 S.W.3d 455, 463 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2016,

no pet.).

In his closing argument, the trial prosecutor analogized the appellant’s abuse

of Luke to that of a cat toying with a mouse before killing it: “And we know how

cat and mouse ends. It’s an escalating pattern, but we know how it always ends. The

cat kills the mouse. That’s how the game ends. It’s not a question of if, but when.”

11 There is ample evidence to support the jury’s conclusion that the appellant’s

conscious desire or objective was for his abuse to cause Luke’s death.

First there is the starvation. Lacy’s testimony established the appellant

deprived Luke of food over a long period of time. This was despite the fact that the

hotel they stayed at offered a complimentary breakfast; Stormy and the appellant

had ample food for themselves and Lacy (and the dogs), but Luke went hungry. The

autopsy showed Luke had lost over a quarter of his body mass over just a few

months, and his stomach contained no food at the time of his death. The natural

consequence of long-term starvation and severe beatings is death. See Herrera v.

State, 526 S.W.3d 800, 810 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2017, pet. ref’d) (“[A]

jury may infer that a criminal defendant intended the natural consequences of his

acts.”).

Second is Lacy’s testimony about the stomping. Lacy said that when the

appellant stomped Luke’s head, Luke began bleeding and went unconscious. She

said it was obvious that Luke needed medical treatment but the appellant laughed

and walked away. Dr. Dakil and Dr. Hastings both testified that it would have been

obvious a child with Luke’s facial injuries needed medical assistance. Lacy said she

was prevented from calling 911 because the appellant said he feared going to jail.

The jury could have inferred the appellant did not get medical treatment for

Luke because he did not want to get arrested. Another reasonable inference,

12 however, is that the appellant forbade Lacy from calling 911 because the appellant

intended for Luke to die. People who intend to kill other people do not call for

medical assistance after delivering a seemingly-fatal blow. As the trial prosecutor

analogized, “The cat isn’t getting medical attention for the mouse.” This inference

supports the verdict, and, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the

verdict, we presume the jury drew this inference and we may not second guess that.

See Braughton, 569 S.W.3d at 608 (“[W]here there are two permissible views of the

evidence, the fact finder’s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous.”).

Lacy testified that during the period after the stomping, as Luke lingered in a

semi-incapacitated state, the appellant continued to beat him with his hand and with

a belt buckle. Lacy said that the appellant forbade her from touching or comforting

Luke during this period. Lacy testified that during this period Luke fell off a bed and

the appellant ordered Lacy to leave him on the floor. This continued abuse of, and

failure to care for, an obviously incapacitated child supports an inference that the

appellant intended to beat Luke to death.

Lacy’s testimony about the appellant’s reaction to dumping Luke’s body

supports an inference of intent to kill. Lacy said the appellant and Stormy returned

to the hotel room “[p]roud” and acted “like they just came back from having, like, a

night out.” The jury could have inferred from this seeming elation at having killed

and disposed of an eleven-year-old boy that Luke’s death was the appellant’s desired

13 result all along. See Darby v. State, 145 S.W.3d 714, 721 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth

2004, pet. ref’d) (defendant’s lack of remorse after killing supports inference killing

was intentional).

Intent may “be inferred from the extent of the injuries and the relative size and

strength” of the assailant and the victim. Patrick v. State, 906 S.W.2d 481, 487 (Tex.

Crim. App. 1995); see also Lindsey v. State, 501 S.W.2d 647, 648 (Tex. Crim. App.

1973) (“In considering whether or not an assault was committed with the intent to

murder, this Court must take into account the extent of the injuries and the relative

size and strength of the parties.”). The appellant was a 220-pound man who caused

horrific injuries to an eleven-year-old boy who was less than half the appellant’s size

even before the appellant began starving him. Dr. Dakill testified that the extreme

bruising on Luke’s buttocks would have made it impossible to sit without pain. The

appellant stomping on Luke’s head left him as a “special needs child” with breathing

difficulty. The nature of Luke’s injuries and the size difference between Luke and

the appellant support an inference that the appellant intended to kill Luke.

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, it is sufficient

to support a finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the appellant beat Luke to death

with the intent to kill him. We overrule the appellant’s sole point of error.

14 Conclusion

We affirm the trial court court’s judgment.

Clint Morgan Justice

Panel consists of Justices Rivas-Molloy, Guiney, and Morgan.

Do not publish. TEX. R. APP. P. 47.2(b).