Jonathan Price Larsen, II v. State

CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 26, 2008
Docket02-07-00109-CR
StatusPublished

This text of Jonathan Price Larsen, II v. State (Jonathan Price Larsen, II 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
Jonathan Price Larsen, II v. State, (Tex. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

COURT OF APPEALS

SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS

FORT WORTH

NOS.  2-07-108-CR

       2-07-109-CR

        2-07-110-CR

JONATHAN PRICE LARSEN, II APPELLANT

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS       STATE

------------

FROM THE 415TH DISTRICT COURT OF PARKER COUNTY

MEMORANDUM OPINION (footnote: 1)

In three points, Jonathan Price Larsen, II appeals his convictions and sentences for intoxication assault, for failure to stop and render aid, and for evading arrest or detention with a vehicle.  We affirm.   

I. Factual and Procedural Background

On March 16, 2006, Larsen had a dispute over a movie ticket with the assistant manager of a movie theater in Hudson Oaks, Texas.  The assistant manager called the Hudson Oaks Police Department (HOPD), and, according to her testimony, when HOPD officers approached Larsen’s vehicle, Larsen “pulled out and took off.” (footnote: 2)

The HOPD officers activated their vehicles’ lights and sirens and chased Larsen’s vehicle as he traveled on I-20 toward Weatherford at around 100 miles per hour.  Still following Larsen, the HOPD officers exited I-20 but then lost sight of Larsen’s vehicle.  When they reached the intersection of Bankhead Road and U.S. Highway 180, they found a severely damaged Weatherford police vehicle and Larsen’s smoking vehicle.

Weatherford Police Officer Gregory Stewart had been dispatched to lay down “spike strips” in an attempt to end the car chase, and Larsen’s vehicle, a heavy pickup truck, had collided with Officer Stewart’s vehicle in the intersection, slamming into the driver’s side door.  Officer Stewart suffered two pelvic fractures, a bruised spinal cord, a severe concussion, and nerve damage, as well as cuts, scrapes, and pieces of glass embedded in his scalp, all resulting in a permanent impairment rating of twenty-five percent.

Before the HOPD officers arrived, Larsen fled the scene on foot without giving aid to Officer Stewart.  Shortly thereafter, Weatherford police located Larsen, who was hiding in the back of a pickup truck at a local car dealership, and arrested him.  Lab analyses of two blood samples taken from Larsen that night revealed blood alcohol concentrations of .10 and .11. (footnote: 3)

Larsen was indicted for intoxication assault, failure to stop and render aid (FSRA), and evading arrest or detention with a vehicle.  On January 25, 2007, he pleaded guilty to all three offenses and elected to have a jury assess punishment.

The trial court set the jury trial for February 26, 2007.  Larsen filed motions for continuance in all three causes on February 22, urging two grounds: (1) he needed additional time to have a second meeting with his retained mitigation expert before the expert testified at trial, and (2) he needed additional time to prepare for some of the State’s witnesses, identified “within the last week that it intends to call to testify at the trial in this matter.”  The trial court denied Larsen’s motions after a hearing on February 23.  Voir dire began on February 26, and Larsen’s punishment trial began on February 27.

During the punishment trial, Officer Stewart and others testified about the events of March 16, 2006, and the State presented evidence of Larsen’s criminal history, extraneous offenses, and other bad acts. (footnote: 4)  Larsen, testifying on his own behalf, admitted that on the day that his vehicle collided with Officer Stewart’s vehicle, he had consumed “five or six [c]rown and cokes” and a six-pack of beer on the way home from work.  When asked by the State whether he was “taking responsibility for the evading and failure to stop and render aid and getting drunk and nearly killing the officer,” Larsen replied, “Yes, sir, that is correct.”

During his direct testimony, Larsen admitted to his criminal history, extraneous offenses, and other bad acts, and offered as explanations his unstable family life, including watching his mother die in a car accident and an uncle who sexually abused him, and alcohol abuse.  He called several friends and family members as character witnesses and Dr. Emily A. Fallis, a forensic evaluation psychologist, as his mitigation expert.

On March 2, before jury deliberations began, Larsen filed motions for a mistrial in all three causes due to juror misconduct and requested permission to take juror Catherine Boyd on voir dire to clarify a note that she had sent to the trial court.  The trial court denied Larsen’s voir dire request and Larsen’s motions for mistrial, but it allowed Larsen to read the questions he would have asked Boyd into the record and included the juror questionnaires in the record.

The jury assessed Larsen’s punishment at five years’ confinement and a $5,000 fine each for the intoxication assault and FSRA convictions, and two years’ confinement and a $500 fine in the evading arrest or detention with a vehicle conviction.  The jury returned affirmative findings on the use or exhibition of a deadly weapon in the intoxication assault and evading arrest convictions, and the trial court entered judgment on the verdicts.  Larsen now appeals, complaining that he was entitled to a mistrial because of juror misconduct, that he suffered Double Jeopardy violations because of multiple punishments, and that his motions for continuance should have been granted.

II. Jury Misconduct

In his third point, Larsen claims that the trial court erred by denying his motions for mistrial because of jury misconduct.

A. Standard of Review

We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion for mistrial using an abuse-of-discretion standard of review, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling and upholding that ruling if it was within the zone of reasonable disagreement.   Webb v. State , 232 S.W.3d 109, 112 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007).  A trial court abuses its discretion in denying a motion for mistrial only when no reasonable view of the record could support the trial court’s ruling.   See id .

To obtain a mistrial for juror misconduct, the defendant must show that the juror withheld material information during voir dire despite due diligence exercised by the defendant.   Franklin v. State , 138 S.W.3d 351, 355ཤྭ56 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004).  With respect to oral questions asked during voir dire, error occurs when “a prejudiced or biased juror is selected without fault or lack of diligence on the part of defense counsel , such counsel acting in good faith on the juror’s responses and having no knowledge of their inaccuracy.”   Gonzales v. State , 3 S.W.3d 915, 916ཤྭ17 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999).  

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