Juan Rios v. State

Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided November 17, 2005·No. 01-04-00795-CR·Published

Opinion

Opinion to: SJR TGT SN TJ EVK ERA GCH LCH JB

Opinion Issued November 17, 2005



In The

Court of Appeals

For The

First District of Texas


NO. 01-04-00795-CR


JUAN RIOS, Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee


On Appeal from the 182nd District Court

Harris County, Texas

Trial Court Cause No. 948133


O P I N I O N

          Appellant Juan Rios pleaded not guilty to the charge of aggravated robbery. A jury found Rios guilty and assessed punishment at thirty years’ imprisonment and a $3,000 fine.  On appeal, Rios contends, with respect to the guilt/innocence phase of the trial, that (1) the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to sustain his conviction; (2) the trial court erred in admitting fingerprint testimony where the State failed to give adequate notice; (3) the trial court erred in admitting testimonial hearsay; and (4) the trial court erred in admitting accomplice testimony without sufficient corroboration.  Concerning the punishment phase of the trial, Rios contends that the trial court erred in (1) admitting evidence of an unreliable pretrial identification; (2) failing to require an affirmative finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on unadjudicated extraneous offenses at punishment; and (3) submitting an ambiguous parole instruction to the jury.  We affirm.

I.  FACTS

          In April 2003, Marcia Escobar and Karla Mejia picked up their aunt, Carmen Escobar, from work.  A car followed them into Carmen’s apartment complex.  When the women stopped near Carmen’s unit, the car behind them stopped as well, and three men wearing masks and bearing guns exited the car and approached the women’s vehicle.  The men began hitting the windows of the vehicle with their hands, telling the women to open the doors, and one of the men used a machete to break out the rear window.  When the women unlocked the doors, one of the men entered the car and pointed his gun at Karla while another man put his gun in Carmen’s mouth and demanded her jewelry.  When Carmen struggled, the man broke one of her teeth with the gun and yanked her earrings out of her ears.  The women’s screams appeared to make the assailants nervous, so after a few minutes, the men returned to their car and left, taking with them the earrings, a cell phone, and the keys to the women’s vehicle.

          The first officer to arrive on the scene did not speak Spanish, and the victims did not speak English, so the officer called a wrecker driver in the area whom he knew to be fluent in both languages.  With the help of the wrecker driver, the officer obtained statements from the victims.  After the victims told the officer where their assailants struck their car windows, police recovered fingerprints. Police later matched the fingerprints to Rios, Jose Matutes, and Henry Martinez.  The victims identified Matutes and Martinez in a photo array, but none of them could identify Rios.

          At trial, Matutes testified to Rios’s involvement in the robbery.  The victims testified to the details of the robbery.  Over Rios’s hearsay objection, the first officer to arrive on the scene testified to the contents of the statements made to him by the complaining witnesses, as translated by the interpreter.  Also over Rios’s objection, a fingerprint expert testified that the fingerprints found on the victims’ car matched the fingerprints of Rios, Matutes, and Martinez found in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (“AFIS”), and matched the fingerprints taken from Rios during the course of the trial.  Another officer testified that he later pulled Rios over with his two co-defendants in a vehicle containing a revolver and two ski masks.  The jury found Rios guilty of aggravated robbery.

          During the punishment phase of the trial, the State presented evidence that Rios previously had been identified from a photo array as the perpetrator of a similar robbery a few months earlier.  The trial court denied Rios’s motion to suppress the testimony, finding that it was the not the result of an overly suggestive photo array.

II.  GUILT/INNOCENCE PHASE OF TRIAL

A.  Admission of Fingerprint Expert Testimony

          In his first issue, Rios contends the trial court erred in allowing expert testimony comparing Rios’s fingerprints to those recovered from the crime scene because the State failed to give adequate notice of the content of such testimony.  During a trial recess, an expert fingerprinted Rios, and immediately after the recess Rios’s counsel objected “Judge, before they come in, just for the record, my client, Juan Rios, was just fingerprinted by Deputy Davis, which again I reurge my objection as to him having done that to him.”  Though this objection appears to renew an earlier objection, Rios does not point us to the initial objection in his brief, and we are unable to find any earlier objection in the record.  Defense counsel did not object to the admission of Exhibit 39, the latent fingerprint card that linked Rios to the scene.  The trial court overruled counsel’s objection, and the expert testified, without further objection, that the fingerprints he had just taken from Rios matched those found on the victims’ car.

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