Joe Dale Johnson v. State

449 S.W.3d 240, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 11251, 2014 WL 5583345
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided October 9, 2014·No. 02-11-00253-CR·Published·Cited by 7 cases

Opinions

OPINION ON EN BANC RECONSIDERATION

LEE GABRIEL, Justice.

We grant the State’s motion for en banc reconsideration, withdraw and vacate our February 14, 2013 memorandum opinion and judgment, and substitute the following. See Tex.R.App. P. 49.7.

Appellant Joe Dale Johnson appeals from his convictions for two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child. For the following reasons, we affirm Johnson’s two convictions for aggravated sexual assault [242] of a child but reverse the trial court’s judgment of conviction for indecency with a child and enter a judgment of acquittal on that count.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Facts

It is undisputed that H.H. was troubled. In the fall of 2007 when he was thirteen, H.H. was suffering from depression, was bullied at school, was interested in pornography, had been ' caught shoplifting, and had a “strained” relationship with his mother. Indeed, H.H.’s father and mother had placed him in counseling to address these issues.

Johnson, who was in his fifties, was a lay leader at the church that H.H. and his family began attending in 2005. Johnson and H.H. began spending time together, and H.H. began mowing Johnson’s lawn for extra money when he was twelve. In the spring of 2007, shortly before H.H. turned thirteen and when he was alone with Johnson at Johnson’s house, Johnson asked to see H.H.’s penis. H.H. complied because he felt indebted to Johnson for all the time Johnson spent with him. Johnson then showed H.H. “some pornography that he had downloaded to his computer.” H.H. admitted this was not the first time he had seen pornography. Johnson persuaded H.H. to allow Johnson to fellate H.H. while H.H. watched the pornography. Johnson fellated H.H. until H.H. ejaculated. Johnson then told H.H. to fellate him, which H.H. did “for five seconds” but stopped “because [H.H.] didn’t like it.” Johnson and H.H. then left the house and mowed Johnson’s lawn. Johnson paid H.H. $50 that day. Johnson took H.H. to Wal-Mart, and H.H. “spent just about every bit of cash that [Johnson] gave [H.H.] that day for mowing his lawn and doing the sexual [acts].”

In August 2007, Johnson gave a Nintendo DS gaming system to the youth group at the church. Johnson previously had told H.H. that he would get H.H. a Nintendo DS if H.H. did “something else” to “earn the DS.” H.H. then wrote Johnson a note, which he never delivered to Johnson, stating that the “something else” was H.H. keeping secrets, “lying to [his] parents, and [his] friendship” with Johnson. It appears that Johnson gave the Nintendo DS to H.H. at church but told H.H. to say that Johnson had donated it to the youth group. The church decided not to allow the youth group to use the Nintendo DS.

H.H. “was at first pretty angry that [he] didn’t get the DS like [he] wanted” but then thanked the youth-group leader for not allowing the group to use the DS. When the youth-group leader asked why H.H. was so thankful, H.H. said, “[W]ell, let’s just say I can’t tell you.” The youth-group leader pressed H.H., and H.H. told “everything” that had happened between himself and Johnson. H.H. stated that he “felt better, like a weight off [his] shoulders.” The youth-group leader told H.H.’s parents about H.H.’s outcry, and H.H.’s parents reported it to the police. Johnson was arrested on December 6, 2007.

B. Procedure

1. Pretrial

On October 7, 2009, Johnson was indicted for (1) aggravated sexual assault of a child by causing H.H.’s sexual organ to contact Johnson’s mouth; (2) aggravated sexual assault of a child by causing the penetration of H.H.’s mouth by Johnson’s sexual organ; and (3) indecency with a child by touching H.H.’s genitals. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 21.11(a) (West 2011), § 22.021(a) (West Supp.2014). The indictment contained an enhancement paragraph alleging that Johnson had been previously convicted in 1980 of aggravated [243] sodomy in Kansas. See id. § 12.42 (West Supp. 2014).

Before trial, the State gave notice that it intended to introduce evidence that Johnson had been convicted of (1) aggravated sodomy of G.M. in 1980 in Kansas; (2) aggravated sodomy of B.B. in 1982 in Kansas; and (3) indecent liberties with a child in 1982 in Kansas. The State also notified Johnson that it intended to call G.M. as a witness. Johnson filed a motion to suppress the admission of these convictions, and the trial court deferred its ruling until the convictions were offered at trial.

Also before trial, Johnson asserted that a recently-discovered juvenile adjudication against H.H. was admissible as impeachment evidence. The State agreed to produce “any convictions admissible for impeachment purposes as to [its] witnesses that is within the knowledge of the [State].” At the time of the pretrial hearing, the State did not have any specific information regarding H.H.’s juvenile adjudication but knew that it was a sexual offense and that the adjudication occurred “months or almost a year” after H.H.’s outcry against Johnson. The trial court deferred a final ruling on the adjudication’s admissibility until trial.

2. Trial

During opening arguments to the jury, defense counsel asserted that H.H. had fabricated the allegations against Johnson:

And I will submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, this witness [H.H.] has admitted that he lies on occasion. You’re going to hear that this witness has been addicted to porn since he was ten years old in Delaware.
You’re going to see that this witness, this 13, almost 14-year-old witness, is not your regular, normal 13, almost 14-year-old boy. And the D.A. is going to want y’all to base y’all’s decision on this witness and potentially send my client to prison for the rest of his life.
Ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to hear that this witness wanted a ... Nintendo DS. He was so upset about it that he wrote a note and then seven months later, he makes up this story that something happened seven months earlier.

The State first called H.H.’s father (Father) as a witness. Father testified to the relationship between H.H. and Johnson and that Father had stopped it in June 2007. He also testified that he was aware that H.H. “had looked at pornography in the past.” On cross-examination, Johnson’s counsel, after gaining the trial court’s permission, asked Father if H.H. was in counseling in November 2007 at the time of H.H.’s outcry. Father confirmed that he and H.H.’s mother put H.H. in counseling because H.H. was depressed, had issues at school, and was viewing pornography. Defense counsel also elicited from Father that H.H. had “gotten in trouble” for shoplifting around the time of the outcry. On redirect examination, the State briefly clarified with Father that he and H.H.’s mother had “initiated” the counseling.

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Joe Dale Johnson v. State, 449 S.W.3d 240, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 11251, 2014 WL 5583345 (Tex. Ct. App. 2014).

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