Hose Lenard Singleton v. State

CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 28, 2020
Docket09-18-00381-CR
StatusPublished

This text of Hose Lenard Singleton v. State (Hose Lenard Singleton 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
Hose Lenard Singleton v. State, (Tex. Ct. App. 2020).

Opinion

In The

Court of Appeals

Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont

__________________

NO. 09-18-00381-CR __________________

HOSE LENARD SINGLETON, Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

__________________________________________________________________

On Appeal from the 221st District Court Montgomery County, Texas Trial Cause No. 18-01-01010-CR __________________________________________________________________

MEMORANDUM OPINION

A jury found Hose Lenard Singleton guilty of engaging in organized criminal

activity and assessed his punishment at 38 years in prison.1 In three appellate issues,

Singleton challenges his conviction and argues (1) the evidence is insufficient to

support the jury’s finding of guilt, (2) the trial court erred by failing, in open court,

1 Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 71.02. 1 to conduct the proceedings required to answer questions the jury asked while

deliberating on its verdict, and (3) the trial court erred by allowing the jury to

consider testimony that described several of Singleton’s prior arrests. We conclude

that Singleton either failed to preserve his issues for our review or that they lack

merit. For the reasons explained below, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Background

In April 2018, a grand jury indicted Singleton for engaging in organized

criminal activity.2 The indictment alleges that, on or about January 23, 2018,

Singleton, as a member of a criminal street gang, appropriated between $2,500 and

$30,000 in cash from the Houston Police Department. The indictment contains two

paragraphs, which the State included to enhance the punishment range that applied

to Singleton’s sentence. These paragraphs allege Singleton had previously been

convicted of committing two felony offenses, one in 2004 and the other in 2015.

Singleton’s indictment resulted from an undercover investigation of “bank

jugging,” a crime that involves a suspect following the customer of a bank and when

an opportunity arises, taking the customer’s money. The investigation in Singleton’s

case focused on a bank in north Houston. The Houston Police Department opened

2 See id. 2 the investigation after the bank and its customers began complaining about

customers of the bank being robbed after leaving the bank.

During the investigation, a plainclothes officer, employed by the Houston

Police Department, went to the bank with a bank money bag in her hand. When the

officer returned to her SUV, she attached the money bag, which had money inside,

to a steel cable. The other end of the cable was attached to the SUV’s backseat. As

the officer drove away, she noticed another SUV following her, an SUV she had

noticed earlier at the bank.

The officer drove to a location that she knew other police officers had under

surveillance. In view of the other officers, the plainclothes officer parked and locked

her SUV, leaving the money bag on the backseat. When the officer went into a

nearby store, the SUV that had followed the officer into the parking lot pulled up to

the officer’s SUV. A surveillance video recording, admitted into evidence, shows a

man getting out of the rear passenger seat in the SUV, after parking next to the

officer’s SUV. After the man breaks the passenger window on the officer’s SUV, he

reaches in and tries to take the money bag. But the cable prevented the man from

retrieving the money bag from inside the officer’s SUV. After a short chase, several

officers involved in the surveillance operation stopped the SUV as it drove away

3 from the parking lot. After stopping the SUV, the police discovered two men inside:

Charles Price, the driver, and Singleton, the passenger in the backseat.

Several police officers testified in Singleton’s trial. One explained that he has

experience working on cases for the Houston Police Department that involve

investigating gang-related crimes. According to the officer, who participated in the

investigation that led to Singleton’s arrest, Singleton “is a member of a criminal

street gang named Hustle Under Pressure[,]” and he is also affiliated with a gang

named 5400 Rand Street Soldiers. The officer also testified that, on previous

occasions, police had arrested Singleton with other members of Hustling Under

Pressure and 5400 Rand Street Soldiers gangs. According to the officer, street gangs

engage in the crime of “bank jugging” because it allows members involved in the

thefts to conceal their involvement from the police. We note during his trial,

Singleton never disputed the State’s claim that he is the person seen in the

surveillance video breaking into the plainclothes officer’s SUV. Instead, in final

argument, Singleton’s attorney argued that “[y]ou did not hear any evidence that

anything [Singleton did] benefited any gang.”

By its verdict, the jury rejected Singleton’s argument claiming that he did not

break into the plainclothes officer’s SUV to take the money bag while a member of

4 a criminal street gang. After finding Singleton guilty of engaging in organized

criminal activity, the jury found Singleton should serve a thirty-eight-year sentence.3

Sufficiency of the Evidence

In issue one, Singleton argues the evidence is insufficient to support the jury’s

finding that he engaged in organized criminal activity. According to Singleton, the

evidence does not support the jury’s conclusions that Hustling Under Pressure and

5400 Rand Street Soldiers are criminal street gangs or that he committed the theft

while a member of one of those gangs.

A person commits the offense of engaging in organized criminal activity if,

“as a member of a criminal street gang, the person commits or conspires to commit”

one or more of the enumerated list of offenses, a list that includes theft.4 Under the

Penal Code, the term criminal street gang is defined as “three or more persons

having a common identifying sign or symbol or an identifiable leadership who

continuously or regularly associate in the commission of criminal activities.”5

When evaluating a defendant’s claim that the evidence is insufficient to

support his conviction, we review all the evidence admitted in the trial in the light

3 Based on the evidence showing that Singleton had committed two prior felonies, the trial court instructed the jury to consider punishing him in the range of at least twenty-five to ninety-nine years or life. 4 Id. § 71.02(a)(1) (listing theft as one of the enumerated offenses). 5 Id. § 71.01(d). 5 that favors the jury’s verdict.6 Reviewing the evidence in that light, we then decide

whether the evidence allowed the jury to find the defendant committed the elements

of the crime at issue based on a standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. 7 The jury is

the ultimate authority on the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be given to

their testimony. 8 A reviewing court must give full deference to the jury’s

responsibility to fairly resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and

to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts.9 When a record

contains conflicting inferences, we must presume that the jury resolved the facts in

a manner that favors its verdict and defer to that resolution.10 In our review, we

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