Joshua Jacob Patterson v. State

496 S.W.3d 919, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 8888, 2016 WL 4371211
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided August 16, 2016·No. NO. 01-15-00167-CR·Published·Cited by 14 cases

Opinion

*923 OPINION ON REHEARING *

Rebeca Huddle, Justice

A jury found Joshua Jacob Patterson guilty of murder and assessed punishment at 50 years’ confinement and a $1,000 fine. In nine issues, Patterson contends that his conviction should be reversed because:

(1) under the doctrine of in pari mate-ria, he should have been indicted for engaging in organized criminal activity rather than murder;
(2) the trial court erroneously admitted evidence of an extraneous aggravated robbery;
(3) he was not given all of the custodial warnings required by Section 3(a)(2) of Article 38.22 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and his interrogation was therefore wrongly admitted into evidence; and
(4) his trial counsel was ineffective.

We affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Background

A grand jury indicted Patterson for the murder of Kristian Sullivan, who died of multiple gunshot wounds in the front yard of his grandmother’s house. Patterson filed a pre-trial motion to suppress any statement he had made to law enforcement officers. In this motion, he asserted several bases for suppression, including that his statements “were taken without the safeguards required by and in violation of Article 38.22 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.” But Patterson did not secure a ruling on the motion before or during trial.

Patterson also filed a pretrial motion requesting notice of any other crimes or wrongs that the State intended to introduce under Rule 404(b) of the Texas Rules of Evidence. The State responded by disclosing an aggravated robbery of a Houston-area EZ Money Loan Service that postdated the charged offense. The trial court later granted Patterson’s motion in limine regarding the “commission of any extraneous or unadjudicated criminal acts or bad acts,” excepting marijuana use. The record makes clear the trial court made this ruling after the issue was discussed off the record in chambers.

The State’s theory of the case was that Patterson and other members of the criminal street gang “100 Click” planned and carried out the murder of Sullivan, a member of the rival gang “F.A.B.,” in retaliation for an earlier gang-related shooting. The defense disputed that Patterson was an active member of 100 Click and claimed that he did not know that the gang intended to kill Sullivan. The defense’s theory was that Patterson drove Sterlyn Edwards and Antonnyer Morrison, one or both of whom shot Sullivan, to and from the murder scene without knowing they planned to shoot Sullivan. According to defense counsel, Patterson mistakenly believed he was driving the group to Sullivan’s house to buy marijuana. Counsel told the jury that the evidence would show that Patterson had dissociated from the gang and that he was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.” Defense counsel also requested that jurors keep in mind several questions as they heard the evidence, including whether there was “any documentation other than *924 law enforcement speculation” regarding Patterson’s alleged gang membership. Counsel argued that, if jurors answered this question in the negative, they would “have a reasonable doubt” and should render a verdict of “not guilty.”

Multiple law enforcement officers testified for the State, including K. Tullos, a peace officer with the Missouri City Police Department who was assigned to investigate gang-related crimes and who investigated Sullivan’s murder. Tullos testified about 100 Click and F.A.B, 1 and about the violent rivalry between these two gangs. In particular, he stated that a FAB. member allegedly shot a member of 100 Click a couple of weeks before Sullivan’s murder. Tullos testified that Sullivan was a member of F.A.B. and that the men Patterson drove to and from Sullivan’s house — Edwards and Morrison — were members of 100 Click or an affiliated gang known as the ‘Young Ones.”

Tullos discussed the criteria that the State uses to classify someone as a gang member. He testified that he classified Patterson as a member of 100 Click based on social media postings in which Patterson associated with known gang members and displayed a hand sign associated with the gang. Tullos also relied on interviews with Edwards and others in identifying Patterson as a member of 100 Click. Tullos conceded on cross-examination that he had discretion to decide whether Patterson met the criteria, and that he had not encountered Patterson engaging in any gang-related activity before Sullivan’s murder. Tullos also conceded that none of the photographs of Patterson that law enforcement obtained from social media depicted criminal activity and that Tullos did not know when these photographs had been taken. Defense counsel revisited several of the State’s criteria for documenting a person as a gang member and Tullos agreed that Patterson did not satisfy some of them. Specifically, Tullos acknowledged that Patterson had not admitted gang membership, did not have any gang-related tattoos, had not visited any incarcerated gang members, and had not previously been seen in a gang-related location.

After Tullos’s cross-examination, the State argued that by raising lack of evidence of Patterson’s gang involvement as a defense, the defense had opened the door to proof of the EZ Money aggravated robbery, which Patterson and Edwards allegedly committed together two to three months after Sullivan’s murder. The defense objected that it had not opened the door and that the danger of unfair prejudice associated with this evidence substantially outweighed its probative value. The trial court overruled Patterson’s objections to the admission of this extraneous aggravated robbery. Tullos then testified on redirect that committing a crime with a known gang member is a criterion used by law enforcement authorities when assessing gang membership. He stated that he assisted in the investigation of the EZ Money aggravated robbery, in which law enforcement officers identified Edwards as one of the robbers based on fingerprint evidence. Tullos identified Patterson as the other robber based on still photographs taken from video surveillance footage. The State introduced these photos into evidence without objection.

R. Ramirez, a patrol sergeant with the City of Sugar Land Police Department, *925 also testified for the State. At the time of the murder investigation, Ramirez was a supervisor of a special crimes unit that was comprised of law enforcement authorities in Sugar Land, Stafford, -and Missouri City. The unit’s purpose was to investigate gang crimes and street-level narcotics. Ramirez testified about the history of violence between 100 Click and F.A.B., noting that a person associated with 100 Click had been shot a couple, of weeks before Sullivan’s murder.

Ramirez also testified that he conducted a videotaped interview of Patterson, which the trial court admitted over a hearsay objection. During the interview, Patterson initially denied any involvement in Sullivan’s murder, but eventually admitted' that he drove Edwards and Morrison 'to and from the murder scene.

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Joshua Jacob Patterson v. State, 496 S.W.3d 919, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 8888, 2016 WL 4371211 (Tex. Ct. App. 2016).

496 S.W.3d 919 (Joshua Jacob Patterson v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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