Kuntschik v. State

636 S.W.2d 744, 1982 Tex. App. LEXIS 4664
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 10, 1982
Docket13-81-009-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 636 S.W.2d 744 (Kuntschik 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
Kuntschik v. State, 636 S.W.2d 744, 1982 Tex. App. LEXIS 4664 (Tex. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinion

OPINION

BISSETT, Justice.

On an indictment for capital murder the appellant was found guilty of murder and assessed a punishment of 15 years in the Texas Department of Corrections.

In this appeal, the appellant brings forward five grounds of error. One ground relates to the sufficiency of the evidence, two grounds relate to the charge, one ground relates to improper impeachment of a witness, and the remaining ground relates to the admissibility of evidence.

At around 4:25 P.M. on August 13, 1976, Deputy Sheriff Kincaid, of Gonzales County, Texas, received a phone call and was told that Ed Decker had been beaten to death. He immediately went to Decker’s house, arriving there around 4:30 P.M. In the living room of the house, he met appel *746 lant, Decker’s grandson. Appellant told Kincaid where the body was. He told Kin-caid that he had checked his grandfather’s pulse and that he knew how to take pulse because he had worked for Emergency Medical Services in Victoria, Texas. A representative of Emergency Medical Services testified that appellant had never been so employed.

As Deputy Kincaid entered the hallway leading to the room where the deceased lay, he observed an overturned chest of drawers. A curtain of undisturbed cobwebs extended from the wall where the chest had stood to the backside of the overturned chest. This curtain and the chest blocked the hallway in such a way that it was not possible to pass without disturbing the cobwebs. Deputy Kincaid attempted to step over the cobwebs without disturbing them but was unable to do so. A reasonable inference the jury could draw from this was that appellant did not take his grandfather’s pulse as he said. If appellant had checked his grandfather’s pulse the cobwebs would have been disturbed, there being no other way to reach the grandfather except by crossing the cobweb barrier.

Kincaid found Decker lying face down on the floor of his bedroom in a pool of blood. Decker had sustained extensive injuries to the back of his head. The body was stiff and cool to the touch. One of the pockets on Decker’s overalls was pulled out. There was no sign of a struggle in the bedroom. A drawer from the nightstand next to the bed had been removed and was lying on the bed.

On the day after the killing, Fred Halam-icek, a neighbor of Decker, found a baseball bat in a brushy area a short distance from the back of Decker’s house. On the bat he observed blood stains, hair, and human skin tissue. The blood type of the blood found on the bat was later shown to be of the same type as that of the deceased. Dr. Obert, who performed the autopsy, testified that death resulted from extensive hemorrhage inside the skull and into the brain caused by a massive trauma to the back of the deceased’s head. He stated that the bat fit his description of the kind of instrument that could have caused the injuries sustained by the deceased.

After the bat was found, it was turned over to Deputy Kincaid. He immediately took it to the home of Frances and Melvin Kuntschik, the parents of appellant. Frances Kuntschik is also the daughter of Ed Decker. The Kuntschik house was next door to the Decker house. The two houses were located in a rural area and stood about 300 feet apart.

In an effort to identify the bat, Kincaid requested members of the Kuntschik family, including appellant, to look at the bat. When the appellant looked at the bat, he had a shocked look on his face. He admitted ownership of the bat. He explained that on the day of the killing his mother left the house at 2 P.M. to take his aunt to town. After his mother left, he took his golf bag out to clean his clubs. The bat was kept in the golf bag. He removed the bat from the bag, swung it around a few times, and laid it against the carport of his mother’s house. Appellant later told Sheriff Brzozowski that at a little after 2 P.M. he telephoned Clapuca Service Station for his mother to see if she was looking for him. When asked about this call, appellant told Sheriff Brzozowski that he made it from his parent’s house. But when challenged by the Sheriff that he could not have made the call from there because his mother had been looking for him at the house, appellant then stated that he had made the call from his grandfather’s house. Dr. Obert testified that the blows which caused the death of Ed Decker occurred between ten to twenty minutes before 3 P.M. Appellant told Sheriff Brzozowski that he left his grandfather’s house a little after 3 P.M. on the day of the killing.

By his own admissions, appellant was present at the scene near the time when Ed Decker was killed. Appellant also admitted ownership of the baseball bat. These circumstances together with appellant’s false statements concerning his employment and the taking of his grandfather’s pulse and his attempted false state *747 ment concerning the place from which he called his mother around 2 P.M. on the day of the killing are sufficient to exclude any reasonable hypothesis except that of the defendant’s guilt. Ground of error one is overruled.

Omitting its formal parts the indictment alleged that the appellant “did then and there ... intentionally cause the death of Ed Henry Decker by hitting him with a baseball bat, and that the said Ricky Dale Kuntschik was then and there in the course of committing and attempting to commit robbery...”

Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.03(c) (Vernon 1974), provides that “If the jury does not find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of an offense under this section, he may be convicted of murder or any other lesser included offense.”

The trial court, in its charge, submitted an instruction on the lesser included offense of murder. That instruction authorized conviction if the jury found that the defendant, in causing the death of the deceased, acted “intentionally” or “knowingly.”

Under ground of error two, appellant argues that the form of capital murder set out in Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.03(a)(2) (Vernon 1974), has two culpable mental states, namely, “intentionally” and “knowingly”; that the State elected to allege only “intentionally”; that the State should therefore have been restricted to that mental state in the instructions submitting the lesser included offense of murder; and that by authorizing conviction for the lesser included offense of murder on a theory that the defendant acted “knowingly,” the charge authorized conviction upon a “theory not charged in the indictment.”

Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(a)(1) (Vernon 1974) provides:

“A person commits an offense if he: intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual.”

Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 19.03(a)(2) (Vernon 1974) provides:

A person commits an offense if he commits murder as defined under Section 19.-02(a)(1) of this Code and:
“the person intentionally

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Related

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834 S.W.2d 79 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1992)
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745 S.W.2d 483 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1988)
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654 S.W.2d 780 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1983)

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Bluebook (online)
636 S.W.2d 744, 1982 Tex. App. LEXIS 4664, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kuntschik-v-state-texapp-1982.