Jabari v. State

273 S.W.3d 745, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 8814, 2008 WL 4965325
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedNovember 20, 2008
Docket01-07-00922-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by70 cases

This text of 273 S.W.3d 745 (Jabari 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
Jabari v. State, 273 S.W.3d 745, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 8814, 2008 WL 4965325 (Tex. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

OPINION

JANE BLAND, Justice.

A jury convicted Faruq Kwame Jabari, also known as Howard or Harry Johnson, of aggravated sexual assault, and sentenced him to confinement for life in prison. Jabari appeals his conviction, contending in five issues that: (1) the trial court abused its discretion by allowing evidence of extraneous offenses during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial; (2) he was denied his due process right to a fair and impartial jury and his right to confront the witnesses against him when the jury witnessed an outburst in Spanish by the complaining witness; (3) he was denied due process because the prosecution withheld material and exculpatory evidence from defense counsel in violation of the duty owed under Brady v. Maryland 1 ; (4) the cumulative effect of the DNA evidence against him did not cure the harm caused by the trial court’s errors and the denials of his constitutional rights; and (5) the trial court abused its discretion by not conducting a hearing on his motion for new trial.

Background

Beatrice Conde, a seventeen-year-old recent immigrant from Mexico, testified that, on February 16, 2006, she lived in the predominantly Hispanic Villa de Matel apartment complex in south Houston with her boyfriend Enrique Lopez. Conde had been living in the apartment for about three weeks, having previously lived with her father. At about 1:30 that afternoon, Conde was home alone in the apartment while Lopez was at work. Something on the stove began to burn, and Conde opened the door of the apartment to let out the smoke. At this time, an unfamiliar black man wearing a visor and glasses, walked by the open apartment door and attempted to begin a conversation with Conde. He asked if she spoke English, and spoke to her in English and broken Spanish. The man asked if she would make him something to eat, and she agreed to make him a sandwich. The man left, saying he would return in a few minutes, and Conde partially closed the door and went to make the sandwich. About five minutes later, the man returned, and Conde told him the sandwich was ready. He came inside Conde’s apartment without being invited and closed the door behind him. He sat down and took a bite of the sandwich, and Conde went to open the door again. When she got to the door, the man grabbed her by the hair, pulled out a small, squared-off, silver firearm, and took her to the bedroom. Conde began to scream, and the man threw her on the bed and put a pillow over her face. Conde stopped screaming, and the man removed the pillow and told her to take off her pants. He pulled down his own pants, put on two condoms, held the pistol to Conde’s temple and raped her. He pulled up his pants, leaving the two condoms on, and told her not to either leave the bedroom *749 until he left or tell anyone about the rape, or he would come back and kill her. He then left the apartment.

As soon as the man left, Conde locked the door and called Lopez on his cell phone at work. Lopez reported the rape to the apartment manager. The apartment manager called the police. Conde told the investigating officer that she had been raped.

At trial, the prosecutor asked Conde if she saw her attacker in the courtroom. Conde initially said no. The prosecutor continued questioning Conde until she noticed that Conde kept looking at someone in the courtroom and asked her who she was looking at. Conde began to cry and said she was looking at a man who looked like her attacker, and she thought that it was him. She began to describe the clothes that he was wearing, and said he was wearing a white shut. Then she began screaming and crying and said things in Spanish that were not translated or recorded. The bailiff removed the jury from the courtroom until Conde calmed down. Jabari’s counsel moved for a mistrial on the basis that Conde’s untranslated Spanish statements were not testimony but were said in open court in front of the jury and were prejudicial. The trial court denied the motion for mistrial but instructed the jurors to disregard anything that they had heard that was not in direct response to a question asked. The prosecutor continued her direct examination of Conde. Conde said that when first asked to identify her attacker, she did not see him in the courtroom because he was obscured from her view. She testified that when she saw him, it startled her. She identified Jabari as her attacker.

Officer F. Salazar of the Houston Police Department arrived at Beatrice Conde’s apartment complex in response to a call from the apartment manager. He met the manager at the door to Conde’s apartment, and the manager took him back to the bedroom, where he saw Conde lying on the bed in a fetal position. Conde told Officer Salazar what had happened, and he collected evidence from the apartment, including the sandwich from which Conde’s attacker had taken a bite. He submitted the sandwich for DNA testing. Salazar testified that he did not collect a glass from the table where the sandwich had been. The DNA profile from the sandwich matched the DNA profile later taken from Jabari after his arrest.

The State sought to introduce evidence of extraneous offenses to prove identity. The trial court allowed the admission of two such offenses. Maria Pena testified that she lived in an apartment complex in south Houston. At around noon on February 23, 2006, a week after Conde’s rape, Pena was home alone with her baby when she heard a knock. Pena answered the door, thinking it was her sister, but instead it was a black man wearing glasses, whom she had never seen before. The man asked her in broken Spanish if he could borrow a pen, and she pretended not to understand him. She tried to close the door, but he pushed it open and came inside. The “man pulled out a chrome firearm, grabbed her by the neck, and held the gun to her head. He pushed Pena into the walk-in closet where her baby was sleeping in her crib, and Pena fell to the floor. Pena pleaded with him not to hurt her or her baby, and he pointed the firearm at the baby, so she decided to cooperate. He removed her pants and her panties, put a towel on the floor, and put on a condom. The man told her not to look at him, and he raped her. When he was finished, the man got up and told Pena not to leave the closet for fifteen minutes. After the man left, Pena went to her sister’s apartment, and her sister called the police. Pena identified Jabari as the man who raped her and identified the firearm Jabari *750 had in his possession when he was arrested as the firearm with which she was attacked.

Gemina Guadarrama testified that on January 12, 2007, she was home with her young son at the primarily Hispanic Cedar Glen apartment complex in southwest Houston. At about 9:00 a.m., she was getting ready to walk to the supermarket and had put her son in his stroller when there was a knock on the door. Guadarra-ma opened the door, and a black man, wearing a hat and glasses, stood outside and asked her in broken Spanish for someone named Carlos. Guadarrama had a hard time understanding his Spanish, so the man asked if anyone was home who spoke English. Guadarrama told him there was no one else, and the man said he would come back later with someone who could speak Spanish and left. As Guadar-rama was leaving her apartment for the supermarket, the man returned and asked her if she had a pencil and paper.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
273 S.W.3d 745, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 8814, 2008 WL 4965325, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jabari-v-state-texapp-2008.