Isaac Cardenas v. State

Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided October 30, 2019·No. 04-18-00840-CR·Published

Opinion

Fourth Court of Appeals

San Antonio, Texas

MEMORANDUM OPINION

No. 04-18-00840-CR

Isaac CARDENAS,

Appellant

v.

The STATE of Texas,

Appellee

From the 227th Judicial District Court, Bexar County, Texas Trial Court No. 2017CR10269 Honorable Philip A. Kazen, Jr., Judge Presiding

Opinion by: Sandee Bryan Marion, Chief Justice

Sitting: Sandee Bryan Marion, Chief Justice Rebeca C. Martinez, Justice Luz Elena D. Chapa, Justice

Delivered and Filed: October 30, 2019 AFFIRMED A jury convicted appellant Isaac Cardenas (“Cardenas”) of two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and the trial court sentenced him to two life sentences to run concurrently. In two issues on appeal, Cardenas argues the trial court erred in overruling his motion for directed verdict and in overruling his objection to a video and images of the victim in the hospital. We affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Background

On December 30, 2016, Cardenas invited Crystal Herrera, an acquaintance, to visit him at his grandmother’s house on Dixie Lee Road in Bexar County. Crystal brought her twenty-one- month-old daughter N.L. along with her. When she arrived at the house, Crystal put N.L. to sleep in the downstairs living area and then went upstairs with Cardenas. Crystal and Cardenas had sex and then fell asleep.

Shortly before 9 a.m. the next morning, Crystal called 911 to report that N.L. had been bitten by a dog. Paramedics dispatched to the house on Dixie Lee Road encountered several dogs in the front yard, which they described as not aggressive and ranging in size from “as small as [C]hihuahuas up to about a large Labrador.” Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Laura Mata, who arrived at Dixie Lee Road around the same time as paramedics, observed two dogs in the front yard that she described as barking and being “very aggressive.” Deputy Mata also encountered Cardenas’s grandmother, who was “very angry” because she said “there was not supposed to be anybody there.” Deputy Mata observed that N.L. appeared pale and in shock, had a large cut on her anus and wet hair full of sticker burrs, and looked like she had been “dragged through a field.”

Crystal told Deputy Mata that when her alarm woke her up at 6 a.m., Cardenas came into the bedroom and told her N.L. had gotten out of the house and had been bitten by a dog. Crystal told Deputy Mata she tried to take N.L. to the hospital, but her car got stuck in the sand, so she returned to the house and gave N.L. a bath before calling 911. Deputy Mata described Cardenas as “very anxious.” Cardenas repeatedly asked Deputy Mata if it looked like N.L. was bitten by a dog and said “over and over” that it must have been a dog bite. Deputy Mata testified that when a car pulled up in front of the house and someone inside the car asked Cardenas if everything was okay, she heard Cardenas respond: “I’m in trouble.”

Outside the house, Deputy Mata observed N.L.’s diaper and “a lot of [N.L.’s] hair . . . just everywhere.” “[T]o me it just—it just looked like that area was staged, like the diaper was taken off perfectly. It wasn’t—to me, if it would have been a dog, it would have been destroyed and the diaper was not destroyed.” Deputy Mata called her sergeant and told him “something was not right, that it didn’t look like a dog bite, and it just didn’t feel right.” With her sergeant’s permission, Deputy Mata called in detectives.

Bexar County Sheriff’s Detectives Mark Waits and Miguel Avila were dispatched to Dixie Lee Road. By the time they arrived, Crystal had gone with N.L. to the hospital, and Cardenas and his grandmother were the only people present on the scene except police. Cardenas’s grandmother’s house was “very, very cluttered,” “almost like a hoarding type house.” The front yard, like the unimproved road leading to the property, was wet and sandy. There were no dog tracks, human foot prints, or other signs of a struggle in the area of the yard where Cardenas reportedly found N.L. The detectives agreed with Deputy Mata that the diaper in the yard “look[ed] like somebody took [it] off. It did not look like that diaper was shredded or attacked by a dog.” The detectives described the dogs on the property as “all restrained or attached to either a rope or a leash,” “quiet,” “pretty docile,” “[t]he opposite of aggressive,” “pretty playful, almost scared of us,” and “very friendly.” Detective Avila testified: “[I]t struck me immediately strange that this dog—a dog would have attacked a kid.” Detective Avila also thought it was “strange” that Cardenas told a patrolman on the scene that a dog had “penetrated” N.L.

Detective Avila took Cardenas downtown for an interview while Detective Waits searched the property for sharp objects that might have been used in N.L.’s assault. Cardenas’s grandmother, who consented to a search of the property, did not appear to know what was happening. There were “thousands of objects” in the house that could have been used, so detectives collected a few that looked “out of place.” Sheriff’s officers also collected Cardenas’s cell phone at the scene.

Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Martinez assisted with collecting evidence and taking photographs at the scene. Deputy Martinez photographed the dogs on the property as they were being handled by Animal Control Services and did not observe any blood on the dogs or obvious trauma to the dogs’ teeth. Deputy Martinez walked the property looking for other dogs but did not find any. At Detective Waits’s request, Deputy Martinez checked N.L.’s clothing collected at the scene for rips and tears or anything else suggesting a dog attack, but he did not observe any. Deputy Martinez also took photographs as officers measured the house’s front door to determine whether a child N.L.’s height could reach the door knob and deadbolt lock. Officers measured thirty-eight inches from the ground to the door knob and forty-three inches to the deadbolt lock. N.L.’s medical records reflect her height on December 31, 2016 was 80 centimeters, or approximately 31 inches.

Bexar County Animal Control Officers Christie Banduch and Andrew Winter were dispatched to Dixie Lee Road to respond to a reported dog mauling. The officers did not observe evidence of a dog attack, such as blood or paw prints in the yard’s wet sand. Officer Banduch observed “several [tufts] of looked like curly brown hair, laying kind of scattered throughout the yard, which struck me as odd because I wasn’t really sure how a dog would have managed to pull out hair in that manner.” In the yard, Officer Banduch also observed a child’s pair of pants and a diaper, neither of which had tears or blood. Officer Winter testified: “The diaper was removed. It was not torn off by a dog. It was pulled off.”

The animal control officers explained that dogs that have been involved in an attack typically will be excitable and aggressive, will have self-inflicted injuries to their lips and tongues, and will be licking their paws to remove blood. Officers Banduch and Winter described the five dogs on the property, however, as “pretty calm,” not barking or excited, easy to handle without muzzles, “pretty even keel,” “well socialized,” “alert, scared, somewhat curious, very submissive,

[and] not at all aggressive.” The dogs’ paws were not muddy, there was no blood on the dogs, and the dogs had no visible injuries. The largest dog, a forty-pound hound mix, was missing all four incisors and had all four canines ground down to the gums, so “it’s really unlikely that she was able to inflict any kind of serious bite on anybody.” Officer Winter testified that while the dogs were quarantined, they did not show aggression, nor did they show evidence of rabies. The dogs’ nails were clipped, under-nail scrapings were taken and analyzed, and DNA swabs were taken from the dogs’ mouths, but subsequent testing did not reveal any evidence that any of the dogs were involved in an attack.

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