Gonzales v. State

190 S.W.3d 125, 2005 WL 3454121
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 24, 2006
Docket01-05-00066-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by50 cases

This text of 190 S.W.3d 125 (Gonzales 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
Gonzales v. State, 190 S.W.3d 125, 2005 WL 3454121 (Tex. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinion

OPINION

LAURA CARTER HIGLEY, Justice.

Appellant was charged by indictment with capital murder for kidnapping and murdering his ex-wife, Maria Villatoro. Tex. Pen.Code Ann. § 19.03 (Vernon Supp. 2005). After a plea of not guilty, the jury found appellant guilty and assessed punishment at life in prison. On appeal, appellant argues that (1) appellant’s confession was inadmissible because it did not comply with Texas law, (2) the corpus delicti of kidnapping was not sufficiently established to support a charge of capital murder, (3) the evidence was legally and factually insufficient to support conviction, (4) the trial court erred in allowing hearsay testimony, and (5) certain evidence should not have been admitted because it was improperly obtained by a warrantless search.

We affirm.

BACKGROUND

Appellant and Villatoro were married and had two daughters together. Appellant became abusive to Villatoro and their daughters. Eventually, Villatoro left appellant and had him arrested on assault charges. Villatoro divorced appellant, later met another man, and remarried. She made efforts to avoid appellant and to prevent him from knowing where she was.

Appellant became upset about Villatoro’s new marriage and began searching the city, hoping to find out where they lived. Appellant finally located the daycare for his two daughters. On July 31, 2003, appellant waited outside the daycare for Vil-latoro to arrive. After Villatoro picked up her daughters, appellant forced his way into Villatoro’s car, showed her a handgun, and told her to drive off. Appellant spent between two and three hours in the car with Villatoro and her daughters, arguing with her, telling her where to drive, and looking for an isolated place to kill her. Eventually, appellant led her to a remote area of Katy, Texas. He shot Villatoro once while she was in the driver’s seat, moved her to the passenger seat, and then shot her two more times.

At 7:30 that night, appellant called his brother, Andres Gonzales, and told Andres to meet him at a parking lot in Katy. Andres drove appellant’s car to the location. There he saw appellant in Villatoro’s car with a dead body in the passenger seat. Andres followed appellant to an isolated construction site, where appellant moved the girls into his ear and left with his brother, leaving Villatoro’s body in her car.

*129 After dropping Andres off, appellant drove with his daughters to Mesquite, Texas. He pulled into a parking lot near a Greyhound bus station and purchased tickets to Santa Barbara, California.

Meanwhile, a worker at the construction site found Villatoro’s body and contacted police. Based on their initial investigation, appellant became an immediate suspect and an Amber Alert was issued notifying the public that the daughters were missing. A man who had been at the Greyhound bus station in Mesquite learned about the Amber Alert and told police that he had seen appellant. Upon verifying appellant’s destination, Houston authorities notified the Santa Barbara Police Department.

The Santa Barbara police arrested appellant as the bus came into the station. At the police station, he was read his Miranda rights. Appellant submitted to interrogation and eventually confessed to the murder. During this time, Mesquite police impounded appellant’s car and, under instruction from Houston police, retrieved the handgun used in the shooting.

Custodial Confession

For his fourth point of error, appellant argues that his confession was erroneously admitted because it did not comply with Texas law.

A. Standard of Review

We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress for an abuse of discretion. Balentine v. State, 71 S.W.3d 763, 768 (Tex.Crim.App.2002).

Applying this standard, we afford deference to the trial court’s determination of the historical facts but decide de novo whether the trial court erred by misapplying the law to the facts. See Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). If no fact findings are filed, we presume that the trial court made implicit findings of fact that support its ruling, provided these facts are supported by the record. See Carmouche v. State, 10 S.W.3d 323, 328 (Tex.Crim.App.2000). We review de novo application-of-law-to-fact questions that do not turn on an evaluation of credibility and demeanor. See Guzman, 955 S.W.2d at 89.

Article 38.22 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure controls the admissibility of custodial confessions in a criminal trial. Tex.Code Ceim. PROC. Ann. art. 38.22 (Vernon 2005). In this case, whether the requirements of article 38.22 were satisfied is an application-of-law-to-fact question. Cf. Vann v. State, 93 S.W.3d 182, 184 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2002, pet. ref'd) (applying de novo review to question of compliance with Tex. Fam.Code Ann. § 52.02(b)). In making this determination, we will view the evidence at the suppression hearing in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling and review de novo the trial court’s resolution of the question. See id.

B. Analysis

After the police arrested appellant at the bus station in Santa Barbara, they took him into custody. Detective Velasco of the Santa Barbara Police Department read appellant his rights and proceeded to interrogate him. The interrogation was recorded on video and audio tape. The trial court admitted these tapes into evidence over appellant’s objection.

Appellant argues that the interrogation violated the requirements of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 38.22, making the interrogation inadmissible at *130 trial. 1 Section 3 of the article prescribes the requirements to make oral custodial statements admissible at trial and, among other things, codifies the Miranda warnings required to be given prior to custodial confessions. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22 § 3(a); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1630, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). However, section 3 requires a fifth warning not explicitly required under Miranda, namely that the accused “has the right to terminate the interview at any time.” Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art 38.22, §§ 2(a), 3(a)(1)(2). The Miranda warnings that appellant received in California did not contain this fifth warning, and appellant argues that this rendered the statements inadmissible for his trial.

Appellant, however, ignores section 8 of article 38.22 in making his argument. Section 8 provides that a statement obtained in another state in compliance with the laws of that state is admissible. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22 § 8(1).

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Bluebook (online)
190 S.W.3d 125, 2005 WL 3454121, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gonzales-v-state-texapp-2006.