John Matthew Cone v. State

383 S.W.3d 627, 2012 WL 3744460, 2012 Tex. App. LEXIS 7304
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedAugust 30, 2012
Docket14-11-00530-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 383 S.W.3d 627 (John Matthew Cone 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
John Matthew Cone v. State, 383 S.W.3d 627, 2012 WL 3744460, 2012 Tex. App. LEXIS 7304 (Tex. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinions

OPINION

SHARON McCALLY, Justice.

Appellant John Matthew Cone was convicted of intoxication manslaughter and sentenced to eight years’ incarceration. Appellant argues in one issue on appeal that the trial court violated appellant’s constitutional right to confrontation by admitting, over appellant’s objection, a lab report and testimony regarding appellant’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC), which was calculated from the results of a blood test performed by an analyst who did not testify at trial. We affirm.

Background

I. The Accident

Around 9:00 p.m. on October 13, 2010, appellant was driving a Chevrolet Z71 pickup truck with a ten-inch lift kit and unusually large tires in the northbound lane of a two-lane road with shoulders on either side. Raymond Wike, the driver of a vehicle in the northbound lane behind appellant, testified that appellant slowly drifted twice toward the shoulder of that lane, once over the solid white line separating the lane from the shoulder, then again over the white line as well as the “drunk bumps” or “rumble strips” approxi[629]*629mately two feet from the edge of the pavement. Raymond slowed down to allow some space to develop between his car and appellant’s truck. Moments later, just as a Yukon SUV, a Denali SUV, and a Mitsubishi Gallant approached in the southbound lane from up ahead, appellant’s truck drifted to the left and crossed the yellow line running down the middle of the road “by a tire width.”

Appellant’s truck collided with the Yukon headlight-to-headlight, causing the wheel assembly for the Yukon’s left front tire to crumple into the vehicle and the driver to lose control. The disabled Yukon veered into the northbound lane after appellant’s truck continued past it, which forced the vehicle traveling behind appellant to swerve into the ditch beside the northbound lane to avoid a collision. The Yukon skidded back into the southbound lane and then onto the shoulder of that lane, where it came to rest.

As appellant’s truck collided with the Yukon, the driver of the Denali behind it attempted to get out of the path of appellant’s truck by braking and veering to the right. The Denali was halfway into the grass beside the shoulder of the southbound lane when appellant’s truck sideswiped it on the driver’s side less than two seconds after colliding with the Yukon. The impact caused the Denali to spin out of control and into the grass beside the shoulder of the southbound lane, where it came to rest.

Immediately after sideswiping the Denali, appellant’s truck, which was completely in the southbound lane at that point, collided head-on with the Gallant and rode up on the Gallant’s hood and windshield before recoiling backwards.1 The driver of the Gallant, Brittany Mapstone, was killed instantly from the impact.2

Police were able to retrieve data about the accident from the air bag control modules of the Yukon, the Denali, and appellant’s truck.3 Harris County Sherriffs Deputy David Pearson testified that recording devices associated with such modules “record crash data, such as change in velocity of the vehicle, or in some cases the speeds for the vehicles” during “the last ... five seconds or two and a half seconds before the signal came to deploy the airbags.” The function of the module is to “sense acceleration changes or jerks,” then analyze the sudden change, and based on certain calculations, “make[ ][a] decision very quickly as to whether or not air bags need to be deployed.” Once a “deployment event” occurs, the recording device is capable of preserving data regarding that event, as well as one additional subsequent event.

Based on the data from the air bag control module in appellant’s truck, police were able to determine that appellant was traveling above the posted speed limit of [630]*63055 miles per hour at a speed of 60 and 61 miles per hour4 before the impacts with the Yukon and the Denali, respectively, and did not touch his brakes before or after those collisions. The data also showed that appellant accelerated just pri- or to colliding with the Yukon. Because the recording device associated with the air bag control module in appellant’s truck is only capable of recording two significant events but not a third, police were unable to retrieve any information regarding the impact with the Gallant; however, Deputy Pearson estimated that appellant was traveling between 44 and 57 miles per hour when he collided with the Gallant.

II. The Issue of Appellant’s Intoxication

Firefighter paramedic Clinton Cooke arrived at the scene of the accident at 9:14 p.m. After determining that Brittany Map-stone did not survive the collision, Cooke approached appellant’s truck, where a volunteer fire fighter was keeping appellant’s head stable by holding it from behind in the back seat. Cooke confirmed that appellant was conscious with open airways, then returned to his emergency vehicle to prepare his equipment while he waited for emergency crews to extricate appellant from his truck with hydraulic rescue tools, or the Jaws of Life. Approximately ten minutes later, appellant was extricated, placed on a stretcher with a backboard, and brought over to Cooke. Cooke testified:

I heard a bunch of yelling.... I couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t appear — there was — just sounded combativeness, [sic] sounded something that was abnormal for the scene.... It was going back and forth between [appellant] and the crews that were attempting to get [appellant] secured to the board.... Once I heard the yelling, I stepped out of the medic unit to find out what was going on and why — what was prolonging the getting him secured to the board. At that time I learned that he didn’t — he didn’t want to lay down. He didn’t want to cooperate with them wanting to assist him.... At that point — he just didn’t want to be there. He wanted to leave. He didn’t need us.... [H]e was just real combative, not wanting to participate in his own care.
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I could smell what to me smelled like alcoholic beverages.... He is — literally we’re standing right next to each other. He’s on the stretcher on the board. They’re trying to get him to lay down and get him secured and he’s wanting to just pull the stuff off they’re trying to secure him with.

Cooke testified that he made the following notation in his medical report:

Patient advises he has been out drinking though he doesn’t remember how many he has [sic]. There’s a[n] obvious smell of [alcohol] when close to the patient that increases when he speaks.

Cooke explained: “My concern was a head injury.... Combativeness is a sign of a head injury.” However, when Cooke informed appellant that Brittany Mapstone did not survive the accident, Cooke testified that appellant “got real quiet.” Cooke concluded at that point that appellant’s combativeness probably was not from a head injury because “[c]ombativeness from a head injury isn’t going to change based off questioning. Your body doesn’t know what it’s doing at that point because of the [631]*631pressure of the brain. So, any kind of information that you gathered wouldn’t change your demeanor.”

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
383 S.W.3d 627, 2012 WL 3744460, 2012 Tex. App. LEXIS 7304, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/john-matthew-cone-v-state-texapp-2012.