Creekmore v. State

860 S.W.2d 880, 1993 Tex. App. LEXIS 2505, 1993 WL 136608
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 28, 1993
Docket04-89-00600-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by39 cases

This text of 860 S.W.2d 880 (Creekmore 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
Creekmore v. State, 860 S.W.2d 880, 1993 Tex. App. LEXIS 2505, 1993 WL 136608 (Tex. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinions

OPINION

RICKHOFF, Justice.

Appellant, Jerry Creekmore, was convicted by a jury of the offense of indecency with a child. Punishment was assessed at ten years [882]*882confinement. On appeal, appellant raises five points of error. We affirm.

The ten-year-old complainant sought to cry out the offense of sexual abuse by her stepfather to her school counselor in Floresville, Wilson County, Texas, by placing two notes in the counselor’s school mailbox. Summoned to the counselor’s office, the child told the counselor that two weeks before the initial outcry appellant sexually abused her and that the abuse had occurred on a regular basis in the past. The child described the abuse in detail and testified it occurred after school in either the child’s or appellant’s bedroom.

Point of error one complains that venue was not demonstrated sufficiently. The complainant clearly indicated the offense took place in her home, in Floresville, two weeks prior to her report to her counselor at school in Floresville and the Department of Human Services worker testified that the appellant and complainant lived in a trailer at 501 Goliad Rd., Wilson County, State of Texas. Venue is sufficiently established from the record. The point of error is overruled.

Next, appellant complains that the trial court erred in overruling his motion to dismiss because of former jeopardy. This court previously considered this issue by way of an interlocutory appeal from the trial court’s order overruling an application for writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that appellant was denied “his rights under the United States Constitution and under ‘Article I, section 14 of the Texas Constitution.’” In Cause No. 04-89-00403-CV, this court denied relief on August 8, 1989, for lack of jurisdiction.

The first trial began on June 12, 1989. The second trial began on August 21, 1989. In the first trial appellant requested and was granted a mistrial during the testimony of the first witness. Pretrial motion rulings will not be reversed unless there is a clear abuse of discretion, and in this context, facts presented that demonstrate that reasonable minds could not disagree as to the cause of the mistrial — that is, the identified intentional misconduct of the prosecutor. See Jacobs v. State, 787 S.W.2d 397, 400 (Tex.Crim.App.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 882, 111 S.Ct. 231, 112 L.Ed.2d 185 (1990).

Appellant states he was required to request a mistrial because the prosecutor violated the court’s order to disclose “certain very important information regarding multiple offenses and multiple outcries by the complainant.” No findings on the disputed fact issues were made or requested. The complainant during the first trial testified about leaving the two notes and then about sexual abuse which began about four years prior. The defense objected alleging surprise and prejudice and moved for a mistrial, which was granted. Appellant admitted to receiving discovery information that included allegations of previous abuse by this victim. The counselor testified the prosecutor asked her for the notes but she could not locate them in the school files so she could not furnish them to the prosecutor. The appropriate standard of review is set forth in Sanders v. State, 801 S.W.2d 955 (Tex.App.— El Paso 1990, pet. ref'd), as to when alleged intentional misconduct of the prosecutor constitutes the functional equivalent of an intent to provoke a mistrial. We cannot deduce from a close reading of this record such intentional prosecutorial misconduct. This point of error is overruled.

In the third point of error appellant complains that the trial court failed to submit his plea of former jeopardy to the jury. The record, however, shows that the plea, though filed, was not verified, that no evidence was submitted to the jury in support of the plea, that no submission was sought and that no objection to its absence from the charge was made. These failures and appellant’s failure to comply with Texas Code of Criminal Procedure articles 36.14 and 36.15 prevented his special plea from being heard by the trier of fact in accordance with article 27.07. See Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. arts. 36.14, 36.15 (Vernon 1981 and Supp.1993) and art. 27.07 (Vernon 1989).

Point of error four complains of the admission of “third party extraneous offenses concerning appellant in violation of rule 404(b), Texas Rules of Criminal Evidence.” See Tex.R.Crim.Evid. 404(b). In rebuttal, prosecutors produced three witnesses who testi[883]*883fied they were about the same age as the complainant and in the appellant’s care when he sexually abused them in the same way. Defense objected “not only under Rule 6081 and the Boutwell2 theory, but on objections that these are going to be remote, going to prevent the Defendant from conducting cross examination on the basis that we are not prepared and asking for a continuance to defend and cross examine these witnesses?” The objection was overruled.

The first witness was appellant’s daughter who testified her mother was in the hospital having another baby when her father took her in a bedroom and “made me take his pants down, and he had an erection and he made me touch his penis and he proceeded to ejaculate in front of me.” She never told anyone until she was seventeen when she told the man who is now her husband. On cross-examination she admitted this was not the only time appellant abused her.

The next witness was appellant’s niece. She testified when she was eight or nine appellant was living behind her grandfather’s house in an apartment. When visiting, appellant would pick her up and “his hand went up and under my panties, and he fondled my private area.” On another occasion appellant “came home unexpectedly and caught me in the house in the restroom by myself ... I was in the process of pulling my shorts, or my underwear, or whatever I had on at the time, up, and he pulled them down and fondled my private parts and pulled my shirt up and fondled my breast.” She never told anyone till the second or third year of her marriage. On cross-examination she said,

I volunteered to help in any way that I could to get this stopped because I know what it did to my life ... in a child’s mind, my mind, I assumed that I was doing something, that I just didn’t know why it was happening to me because I assumed that it never happened to anybody else in the world.

She admitted she never confronted the appellant about this because she was terrified of him.

The third witness was another niece who testified she was eight when she returned to the States with her missionary parents for a reunion with the family. Appellant, “would attempt to get me in a corner or out of the house, or somewhere, and he would proceed to kiss me and fondle my breasts, or take my hands and cause me to fondle him, and this type of thing.” When she was seventeen she told her mother.

These rebuttal witnesses appeared after the victim’s testimony was challenged by: suggesting she was jealous; that she told lies; that her testimony was contradicted by defense witnesses; suggesting the child’s mother was lesbian; that the child and her mother watched x-rated movies; that mother and child touched each other in sexual ways and numerous other suggestions of general immorality all leading to the general premise that this was a plot against the appellant because he was a disciplinarian.

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Bluebook (online)
860 S.W.2d 880, 1993 Tex. App. LEXIS 2505, 1993 WL 136608, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/creekmore-v-state-texapp-1993.