Gaona v. State

733 S.W.2d 611, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 7488
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 4, 1987
Docket13-86-221-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by64 cases

This text of 733 S.W.2d 611 (Gaona 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
Gaona v. State, 733 S.W.2d 611, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 7488 (Tex. Ct. App. 1987).

Opinion

OPINION

NYE, Chief Justice.

Appellant appeals his conviction for the offense of involuntary manslaughter, for which he was assessed eight years' imprisonment. He brings nine points of error regarding the sufficiency of the evidence, the trial court's refusal to charge the jury on accident and involuntary conduct, and jury misconduct. We affirm.

By his eighth point of error, appellant attacks the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction. The State’s evidence of guilt reflects the following. Appellant and the victim, Jose Luis Rodulfo, were long-time neighbors and friends. They both attended the same high school, and both lived on Barcelona Street in Har-lingen, Texas. Rosalinda Sanchez, who lived on the south side of Barcelona, testified that, on September 14, 1985, she went to bed about 11:00 p.m.. She heard a noise and got up and looked out her front bedroom window. She saw the victim and appellant wrestling in the street in front of her home. Her son, Flavio Sanchez, was outside, with the other two boys, sitting on the curb in front of the Sanchez’ home playing his guitar. She testified there was a street light nearby and several porch lights were on which provided enough light to enable her to see what was happening. She was not particularly alarmed so she went back to bed. About fifteen minutes later she was awakened by a loud gunshot. She got up and looked through her window and saw a body lying in the street and appellant “with a weapon in his hand going toward his house.” She said the weapon was a rifle. She watched appellant go inside his home, and then she phoned the police.

Flavio Sanchez had grown up with both appellant and the victim. He testified that earlier in the evening he had been playing his guitar by a nearby canal. He came back home and resumed playing the guitar in his front yard. Appellant and the victim were already wrestling in the street when he arrived. He watched them wrestle for over an hour and was not concerned. He considered their activity normal horseplay.

Flavio testified that they began “wrestling rather rough,” and that he told the victim, “cool it, Ozzy [the victim’s nickname].” He said, “They started wrestling hard.” Several friends drove by in a car and appellant and the victim stopped and talked with them. After the friends left, appellant and the victim resumed pushing each other and arguing. Flavio stated that they looked liked they were going to wrestle again, but then the victim sat down in the street and appellant went inside his home. Appellant was inside for twenty or thirty seconds before he came out of his house with a rifle.

Flavio testified that appellant came outside his front gate and stood on a grassy area between his front fence and the curb, which was about fifty feet from where the victim was sitting in the street. Flavio’s specific testimony regarding the shooting was as follows:

A: He stopped; he put his hands, he just goes like that. 1
******
*614 A: He came out of the front gate, which is this small one, walked like that and pointed like that.
* * * * * *
Q: In which direction did he point?
* * * * * *
A: Where Jose Luis was sitting.
* * # * * ⅜
A: He just picked it up like that in one hand and fired. I saw smoke come out and I saw Jose Luis Rudolpho just went back.
* * * * * *
Q: And so then when the defendant pointed the weapon, did he raise it to his arms like this?
A: No, he did not.
Q: You are saying that when he raised it, he had it down to his side?
A: Yes.
Q: And raised it from about hip level?
A: Yes, sir.

Flavio Sanchez testified that, after the shooting, appellant went back to his house and closed the door “like nothing had ever happened.” Appellant stayed in his house “a little while,” then came out and “tried to wake him up. He was slapping him telling him to wake up, to get up.”

Flavio said he saw blood near the victim’s head and he ran into his house and told his mother: “ ‘He really shot him.’ I thought it was a prank.” He said he was surprised when appellant came out with a gun, but did not think appellant was going to shoot. He also testified that he had seen appellant with a rifle before on several occasions. He said that appellant went “to the canal hunting a lot [sic].”

Officer Neely testified that, when he arrived on the scene and asked the people standing in the area where the person was who had done the shooting, he was directed to appellant’s residence. As Neely walked toward appellant’s residence, appellant approached him and Neely asked appellant what had happened. Appellant responded, “I shot him. He’s not dead, is he”? Neely asked where the gun was, and appellant responded, “it’s in my house,” and then replied that it was a .22 rifle. A search of appellant’s residence revealed a .22 caliber rifle laying on appellant’s bed along with some bullets. A spent .22 caliber shell was found in the gutter of appellant’s driveway. There was also testimony that a rifle is a firearm. A pathologist testified the victim died of a gunshot wound to the hpad.

Detective Gray interrogated appellant at the police station. On cross-examination, the defense elicited testimony regarding the statements appellant made to him. Gray admitted that appellant told him that appellant had tried to make the victim stop pushing him but the victim persisted. Gray testified appellant told him that after he had “gained possession of the weapon” that “he had taken it outside ... he had pointed it at the ground told Mr. Rudolfo to just be cool and he pulled the trigger.” Gray further testified that appellant had told him, “I got my father’s .22 and went back outside and I shot the gun at the ground.”

When reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine if any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Gardner v. State, 699 S.W.2d 831, 836 (Tex.Crim.App.1985); Houston v. State, 663 S.W.2d 455, 456 (Tex.Crim.App. 1984).

A person commits the offense of involuntary manslaughter if he recklessly causes the death of another individual. Keith v. State, 692 S.W.2d 921, 923 (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 1985), pet refd, 721 S.W.2d 294 (Tex.Crim.App.1986); Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.05(a)(1) (Vernon 1974). A person acts “recklessly” when he *615

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
733 S.W.2d 611, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 7488, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gaona-v-state-texapp-1987.