Johnathan Eugene Cooper v. State

Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided November 21, 2012·No. 02-11-00537-CR·Published

Opinion

COURT OF APPEALS

SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS

FORT WORTH

NO. 02-11-00537-CR

Johnathan Eugene Cooper § From the 43rd District Court § of Parker County (CR09-0661)

v. § November 21, 2012 § Per Curiam

The State of Texas § (nfp)

JUDGMENT

This court has considered the record on appeal in this case and holds that there was no error in the trial court’s judgment. It is ordered that the judgment of the trial court is affirmed.

SECOND DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

PER CURIAM

COURT OF APPEALS

SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS

FORT WORTH

NO. 02-11-00537-CR

NO. 02-11-00538-CR

JOHNATHAN EUGENE COOPER APPELLANT V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE

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FROM THE 43RD DISTRICT COURT OF PARKER COUNTY ----------

MEMORANDUM OPINION1

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In four points, appellant Johnathan Eugene Cooper appeals his convictions for online solicitation of a minor, which is a second-degree felony under the

1 See Tex. R. App. P. 47.4.

circumstances of this case, and aggravated sexual assault of a child, which is a first-degree felony.2 We affirm.3 Background Facts

Kori4 was thirteen years old when she contacted appellant through the internet. Appellant told her that he was a doctor. Kori invited appellant to her house, and appellant picked her up in his car one early morning in October 2008, when appellant was twenty-two years old. While knowing that Kori was thirteen years old, appellant had sex with her, and although Kori asked him to stop, he did not. Appellant did not wear a condom while having sex with Kori, and he told her that he was ―going to make [her] have a baby.‖ Kori got dressed, and appellant drove her home. Appellant later told Kori that he had once had sex with an eleven-year-old child and that he wanted Kori to bring a six-year-old girl to have sex with him. Kori told her mother and the police about what had occurred. The police received the pajama pants that Kori had worn on the night

2 See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.021(a)(1)(B)(i), (2)(B), (e) (West Supp. 2012), § 33.021(c), (f) (West 2011).

3 In October 2012, appellant sent this court a letter in which he expressed his belief that he had no chance to succeed in these appeals and seemed to state his desire to dismiss them. The letter, however, did not comply with the requirements for a motion to dismiss a criminal appeal. See Tex. R. App. P. 42.2(a). Thus, assuming that appellant intended for his letter to serve as a motion to dismiss, we deny the motion.

4 To protect the identity of the people associated with appellant’s acts described in this opinion, we will refer to them through pseudonyms.

that she had sex with appellant. A forensic examination of those pants revealed the presence of appellant’s semen.

A grand jury indicted appellant for online solicitation of a minor and for aggravated sexual assault of a child younger than fourteen years old by penetrating her sexual organ. Appellant retained counsel and filed pretrial motions, including a request for notice of the State’s intention to use evidence of extraneous offenses at trial and a written objection to the admissibility of extraneous offenses. The trial court consolidated appellant’s cases for a single trial. Appellant received written and oral admonishments about the effects of pleading guilty, waived his constitutional and statutory rights, judicially confessed to both offenses, and entered open guilty pleas to both of them. The trial court accepted appellant’s pleas, ordered the completion of a presentence investigation report, and appointed a licensed sex offender treatment provider to evaluate appellant.

After recessing appellant’s cases awhile, the trial court heard evidence from a forensic computer examiner, Russell Stephens, about images and information that Stephens had found on computers and an external hard drive. Stephens testified that he found pictures associated with Kori’s MySpace account and pictures depicting bestiality. The trial court recessed appellant’s cases for two more weeks, and then the trial court held a hearing on, among other matters, the possible withdrawal of appellant’s guilty pleas. At that hearing, however, the following exchange occurred:

[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Well, I want to state something for the record, that as a result of some conversations I had with [appellant], I began to question whether or not he was intending on withdrawing his plea on both cases.

Now that we’ve had time to visit here today, and we’ve been in the courtroom, it’s my understanding, from [appellant], that he wishes to go forward with the guilty plea on both cases. . . .

....

. . . [A]t this point, . . . you are not asking this Court to allow you to withdraw your plea on both of these cases?

THE DEFENDANT: Yes.

[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: And you’re going to continue with your plea of guilty to both cases?

THE DEFENDANT: Yes.

....

THE COURT: And the next question is: Are you going to continue, not only with your plea of guilty, but to permit the Court to sentence you after finishing the hearing?

THE DEFENDANT: Yes.

Based upon appellant’s statements and upon findings that appellant had been properly admonished, that his pleas were voluntary, and that the trial court had already taken appellant’s cases under advisement,5 the trial court denied any attempt by appellant to withdraw his pleas.

5 See Mendez v. State, 138 S.W.3d 334, 345 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004)

(―[W]hen trial by jury has been waived, the defendant may change the plea from guilty to not guilty until the court pronounces judgment or takes the case under advisement.‖).

After again recessing appellant’s cases, the trial court heard more evidence about acts that appellant had committed. For example, Kori testified that after appellant was indicted for soliciting and sexually assaulting her, he communicated with her on the internet while using a different name, and because she believed that he was someone else, she sent him a photograph in which she was holding her breasts. Two other women testified that they each became acquainted with appellant on the internet, that they each had sex with him, and that he asked each of them if they could arrange for him to have sex with an underage girl.

Another witness, Brianna, testified that in 2009, when she was fourteen years old, she began communicating with appellant, who said that he was seventeen years old, on the internet.6 Brianna said that she sent appellant nude pictures of herself. According to Brianna, appellant asked to meet her in person to have sex, said that he was going to rape her, and told her that he preferred to have sex with young girls. Brianna testified that she sneaked out of her house to meet appellant in person one early morning in July 2009. After she got in his car and followed his command to pull her shorts and underwear down, he had sex with her. Later, appellant told Brianna that he wanted to have sex with her younger sister. Brianna testified that a couple of days after she and appellant had sex the first time, they had sex again. Brianna eventually told the police

6 Appellant was born in July 1986, so he was approximately twenty-three years old in 2009.

about her relationship with appellant. Johnson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Brian Peterson investigated Brianna’s allegations. When officers executed a search warrant at appellant’s house, they knocked at the house for several minutes without a response before forcing entry into the home. Upon entry, the officers located appellant and found wet cell phones, which led Detective Peterson to believe that appellant was trying to prevent officers from retrieving evidence from the phones. The officers also found the computers that Stephens later analyzed. Appellant’s criminal case concerning Brianna was still pending at the time of the trial of Kori’s case.

Another witness, Heather, told the trial court that when she was approximately fourteen years old and was living in Florida, appellant offered to pay her money or with cigarettes for sex. Appellant was approximately twenty years old when he asked Heather for sex. They eventually had sex.

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