Hooper v. State

170 S.W.3d 736, 2005 Tex. App. LEXIS 5565, 2005 WL 1654745
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 13, 2005
Docket10-04-00265-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 170 S.W.3d 736 (Hooper 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
Hooper v. State, 170 S.W.3d 736, 2005 Tex. App. LEXIS 5565, 2005 WL 1654745 (Tex. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinions

OPINION

BILL VANCE, Justice.

I. Introduction

Appellant Reginald Hooper raises three issues to challenge his conviction by a jury of being a party to the offense of aggravated assault of a public servant and the thirty-year sentence assessed by the jury. Hooper’s third issue complains of the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction. Because we hold that the evidence is legally insufficient to support Hooper’s conviction, we will reverse and render a judgment of acquittal.

II. Factual Background

Senaida Nash, the manager of the Cash 2 U store on Highway 69 in Woodville, testified that on March 17, 2004, at approximately 4:00 p.m., two men walked into the store and claimed they were conducting a cell phone survey. Nash did not see them pull up to the store in a car. One man— later identified as Carl Austin' — -was tall and thin and was wearing a red jersey, black shorts, and red and white tennis shoes. The other — later identified as Jason Nicholson — was wearing a white long-sleeve shirt. Nash testified that she knew Hooper, and neither of the men in the store was Hooper; she did not see Hooper at all that day. She knew Hooper because he had worked on the remodeling of some of Cash 2 U’s stores.

While she was talking to the two men and after turning her back to them to receive a fax, Nash turned back around, and Austin had a gun pointed at her stomach and demanded money. Nash testified that she told him that the store didn’t have any money. Austin took Nash to the back of the store and tied her hands and feet with duct tape. Nash said that Nicholson was in the front of the store and kept yelling to Austin to hurry, and then Austin told Nicholson that if he couldn’t find anything, then they would take Nash’s personal things. Austin took Nash’s driver’s license, cell phone, jewelry and $60 in cash. After gagging her, the two men left. Nash said the entire incident took no more than ten minutes.

Nash said that she was able to free her hands and feet from the duct tape, and she ran to the front of the store, just as a customer was walking in. Nash told him to call the police and that she had just been robbed. She asked him if he had seen anyone coming out of the store, and he said that he had not. The police soon arrived, and Nash gave a statement.

Betty Williams testified that on March 17, 2004, as she was pulling into a parking space in the Brookshires parking lot in Woodville (across Highway 69 from Cash 2 U, and not even a block away), a red car almost collided with her. She described the car as a red, four-door Dodge Shadow. As Williams’s daughter opened her car door, a man with his shirt rolled up ran by her car, almost hitting the open car door. Williams described the man as wearing a red and black jersey and black shorts. He [739]*739got in the back seat of the red car and laid down, and the car sped out of the parking lot. Williams did not see which direction the red car went as it left the Brookshires parking lot.

Williams could not identify the driver of the red car, and she said that she saw only one man running to the car. Williams testified that she had never seen Hooper before and did not recognize him in court. Williams’s testimony about how many people were in the red car was somewhat unclear, but from our review of the record,1 it appears that she saw only two men — the man who was running and got into the car, and the driver.

Williams then saw police going to Cash 2 U and went over to ask if there had been a robbery. When told that there had been a robbery, Williams gave the police descriptions of the red car and the man who was running and his clothing.

Deputy Lawrence Hicks of the Tyler County Sheriffs Department responded to the call of a robbery at the Cash 2 U. He obtained a description of the suspects from Nash and then went to his patrol car to use his radio to broadcast their description. Hicks testified that Williams came up to him in the parking lot of Cash 2 U and told him that she had just seen two black males get into a red Dodge Shadow at Brookshires. On cross-examination, Hicks testified that he later obtained a written statement from Williams and that the statement indicated that she saw only one man running to the car.

Hicks then broadcast a description of the suspects’ car over his radio. He soon got a radio report from Game Warden ■Trey Shewmake that he had located the red car. Hicks also determined Shew-make’s location. During Shewmake’s radio report, Hicks heard gunfire over the radio, so he drove immediately to Shew-make’s location. When Hicks arrived, Shewmake and the red Dodge Shadow were there. Hooper was sitting in the front passenger seat of Shewmake’s truck with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Shewmake, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and a certified peace officer, testified that on the afternoon of March 17, he was driving south on Highway 69 toward Woodville from Lufkin. He heard a radio dispatch of an armed robbery in Woodville involving two suspects — two black males — possibly in a red Dodge Shadow, with one suspect wearing a red jersey. Just after he had crossed the Neches River — -the county line between Tyler County and Angelina County — Shewmake said that a small red car traveling north on Highway 69 in the opposite direction passed him. Shewmake saw only one person in the car — the driver— and he was not sure if the car was a Dodge Shadow. He thus turned his game warden patrol truck around to follow the red car and get a better look at the car. He described his truck as having a large game warden decal on both doors and red and blue lights on both the front of the truck and on the headache rack along the top of the cab.

Shewmake testified that, after turning around to catch up to the red car, he had [740]*740to drive over 100 m.p.h. because the red car appeared to accelerate. It took him a few minutes to catch up, and then he followed the red car for about four or five miles while going between 60 and 70 m.p.h. Shewmake did not activate his lights or siren, as he said he was just trying to get a better look at the car to see if it was the suspect ear. Shewmake was able to see that one person was in the car, and that was the driver, a black male. Shewmake was able to read the license plate number, which he radioed to the dispatcher. At the same time, the red car began to slow down to 40 to 50 m.p.h. and moved over to the right with the two right tires over the shoulder, similar to a driver moving over to let a car pass. Shewmake testified that the red car’s actions were strange and erratic and that he thus began to think that this might be the suspect car.

As the red car continued to slow down to about 25 m.p.h., Shewmake received radio confirmation that the car was in fact a Dodge. At that point, the red car completely pulled over and stopped quickly, and as it pulled over, Shewmake activated his red and blue lights. Shewmake testified that almost immediately, the heads of two other persons popped up and he realized that they had been lying down in the car and that he had a “situation.” He radioed to his dispatcher that he was going to be out of his truck with a car.

Shewmake testified that at the same time as he was getting out of his truck, the two passengers in the red car opened their doors almost simultaneously, with the rear passenger getting out a split second before the front passenger.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
170 S.W.3d 736, 2005 Tex. App. LEXIS 5565, 2005 WL 1654745, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hooper-v-state-texapp-2005.