Goodman v. State

190 S.W.3d 823, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 2529, 2006 WL 820181
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 30, 2006
Docket2-04-413-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 190 S.W.3d 823 (Goodman 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
Goodman v. State, 190 S.W.3d 823, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 2529, 2006 WL 820181 (Tex. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinions

[827]*827OPINION

ANNE GARDNER, Justice.

I. Introduction

A jury convicted Appellant Louis Earl Goodman of manslaughter and assessed his punishment at eighteen years’ confinement. In three issues, Appellant contends: (1) the trial court erred by failing to submit the lesser included offense of criminally negligent homicide to the jury; (2) a fatal variance exists between the indictment and the proof at trial; and (3) the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction. We affirm.

II. BACKGROUND

On November 25, 2003, Appellant, Ted Garland, Henry Quinten Clay, and Shawn Davis were working the evening shift on a gas drilling rig in Denton County, Texas. Appellant, as the driller, was in charge of the crew that evening because Lonnie Lav-ergne, the “tool pusher,” was not at the site. At about 8:00 p.m., Clay went into the top doghouse1 where Appellant, Garland, and Davis were sitting around and talking. At some point, the conversation turned to initiating Davis since he was a new member of the crew.2 Several initiation techniques were mentioned, including hoisting Davis up with either the “cat line” or the “boom line.” A “cat line” consists of a rope, a cable, and a chain with a hook on it. One end of the rope is wrapped around the cathead for traction, and the other end of the rope is attached to the cable that runs through a shiv on the derrick. The cable is then attached to the chain, which is wrapped around whatever needs to be lifted. Generally, a cat line is used to pick up pipe and put it in the “mousehole” on the rig floor.3

After Clay had gone downstairs, Appellant and Garland suggested to Davis that they put a derrick belt on him. A derrick belt is a belt or harness that a crew member wears to help him climb the derrick. In the front of the belt are two “D-rings,” or pieces of metal woven into the belt, where a chain attaches. Davis replied that he did not want to put a belt on and that they would have to put it on him. The three men wrestled, and Appellant and Garland succeeded in putting the belt on Davis. Appellant then retrieved the cat line.

Clay was making his way back up the stairs when he saw Appellant walking into the top doghouse with the chain end of the cat line. Clay testified that he began shaking his head because he thought that “wasn’t very smart.” He stated that the kelly, the device located on the rig floor that is used to drill into the ground and rotates at seventy rounds per minute, was turning and, based on his experience, he knew that any slack in the cat line could get caught on the kelly as it turned. Clay saw the end of the cat line going up the backside of the derrick, indicating that it [828]*828either had slack in it and the weight of the chain on the cable was pulling it up or that it had gotten caught in something. Clay-then saw that the chain part of the cat line was tight and was being pulled in reverse out of the top doghouse; therefore, he knew that the cat line was wrapping around the kelly.

Meanwhile, inside of the top doghouse, Appellant hooked the cat line onto the belt Davis was wearing and said, “I got you.” Without taking his hand off the cat line, Appellant immediately tried to unhook it. However, Appellant stated that he felt something start to pull the cat line, and he was unable to unhook the cat line as it pulled Davis out of the door of the top doghouse.

Clay saw Davis being dragged, face first, out of the building. Clay testified that Davis hit the bottom half of the doghouse door, taking it off the hinges. Davis was then dragged to the kelly bushing where he was spun around approximately ten to twenty times as his body hit several different pieces of equipment and surfaces. Clay testified that Davis was getting beaten to death; therefore, he yelled for Appellant so that Appellant would shut down the equipment. Appellant shut down the rotary table, and Clay “kicked the pumps out” to stop the rotary table from spinning backwards.

Appellant, Garland, and Clay checked on Davis. Appellant tried to use the company rig phone to call 911, but the phone would not work. Clay went to his truck, called 911 on his cell phone, and drove to a convenience store to meet the ambulance. While Clay was gone, Appellant removed the belt from Davis and hung it back up in the top doghouse. Clay returned to the rig with the ambulance. The paramedics checked Davis for a pulse, but he was dead.

While they waited for the police officers to arrive, Appellant, Garland, and Clay talked about what had happened. Clay testified that Appellant wanted him to tell the police officers that the cat line had come loose from a pipe, that Davis was then showing the cat line to Appellant, and that Davis accidentally got too close to the kelly, causing the cat line to wrap around it. When Troy Mac Hohenberger, the fire chief for the Argyle Fire District and a paramedic, arrived on the scene, Appellant told him this story five or six times. Additionally, when Appellant spoke with Deputy David Brawner that night about how Davis had died, he told Deputy Brawner a similar story.

In Clay’s written statement that he gave to the police that night, he simply wrote down what he had seen — that he had seen Davis getting wrapped up in the kelly. He testified that he did not put everything in the statement because Garland was standing right behind him when he wrote it. The following morning, however, Clay called Investigator Don Britt of the Den-ton County Sheriffs Office. Investigator Britt testified that based on his conversation with Clay that morning, he was no longer looking at the incident as an accident.

After obtaining the owner’s permission to go back out to the drilling rig, Investigator Britt, Investigator Larry Kish, and Lieutenant Terry Kimbell returned to the scene. They collected several belts that were hanging on a hook inside the top doghouse. Investigator Britt also located both halves of the top doghouse door that had been taken off the doghouse and placed behind a shed. Investigator Britt noticed that on one of the door halves, the hinge was bent off and there was blood on it. Carolyn Van Winkle, a senior DNA analyst with the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office, later testified that the [829]*829blood on the belt was a “positive match” to Davis’s blood and that it was “highly likely” that the blood on the door was Davis’s blood.

While the officers were investigating at the drilling rig, Appellant arrived for work. Investigator Britt asked Appellant to come to the sheriffs office with him so that he could interview Appellant about what happened. Appellant agreed to do so. When they first arrived at Investigator Britt’s office, Appellant related the same story to Investigator Britt that he had told the law enforcement officers on the previous night. Investigator Britt told Appellant that they had reason to believe the incident happened differently than Appellant’s story. Appellant then gave the following statement, which Investigator Britt typed as Appellant related the facts to him:

All four of us was in the dog house talking about Thanksgiving: me, Quin-tín, Ted and Shawn. Quintín left, down onto the ground, to do some work. The three of us was sitting in there drinking coke and coffe [sic], talking.
Ted said something about initiating Shawn. He was the new hand on the crew. It is something that normally happens with the new guy.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
190 S.W.3d 823, 2006 Tex. App. LEXIS 2529, 2006 WL 820181, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/goodman-v-state-texapp-2006.