Laci Rena Wright v. State

494 S.W.3d 352, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 9745, 2015 WL 5602578
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided September 17, 2015·No. 11-13-00061-CR·Published·Cited by 6 cases

Opinion

OPINION

JOHN M. BAILEY, JUSTICE

Laci Rena Wright appeals her jury convictions for two counts of injury to a child by omission. The trial court assessed Appellant’s punishment on each conviction at confinement for a term of five years in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, with the sentences to be served concurrently. However, the trial court suspended the imposition of the confinement portion of Appellant’s sentences and placed her on community supervision for a term of eight years. In two issues on appeal, Appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support her convictions. We reverse and render judgments of acquittal.

Background Facts

. Appellant’s boyfriend, Daniel Crippen, sexually assaulted Appellant’s four-year-old daughter, B.R., in the early morning hours of November 11, 2009. Appellant’s convictions arise from her conduct in response to the sexual assault. In her written statement to the police, Appellant stated that Crippen awoke her at approximately 2:00 a.m. to report that he had just come home from work and that he had found B.R. sitting on her bed screaming and crying. According to Appellant, Crip-pen told her that “all [B.R.] would say was, ‘He poked me.’ ” Appellant’s account of her- response to Crippen’s report is as follows:

. I went into [B.R.’s] bedroom and she was sitting on the middle of her bed holding her crotch. I didn’t even ask [B.R.] what happened before she started telling me that a man poked her. .[B.R.] said the man had his hand on her mouth and she was crying. She said he came in her bedroom and held her down so she couldn’t move her arms and he had his hand on her mouth. [B.R.] said she tried to ask him to please stop but he wouldn’t move his hand. [B.R.] said the man said, “No, I ain’t gonna stop.” [B.R.] then started describing the man without me ever asking her to. [B.R.] said the man’s hand was dirty and it smelled nasty. She also described his hand as being hairy. She described him as having a deep voice. [B.R.] said he stuck his hand inside her panties and twisted it. She pointed her index finger and made a twisting motion with her hand as she was describing this. [B.R.] said the man snuck out of the house and ran home because he knew [Crippen] and I were there. I started questioning [B.R.] more about the man’s description and she said that the man had long hair. She said she felt his leg on her leg and he had long pants on. [B.R.] also described the man as wearing a white hat with a giraffe on it. [B.R.] also said that the man had long finger nails.
I asked [B.R.] to let me see her bottom where the man had poked her. [B.R.] ■ lifted her nightgown (which is *357 actually a white slip) and I saw the blood on her crotch on the outside of her panties. I had her lay back and I looked inside her panties and saw the blood. I asked [Crippen] if he had .done this to her and he said no. I asked [Crippen] if he had seen anyone leaving the house and he said no. .[Crippen] said he made a bacon sandwich out of the leftover bacon I had made the previous night (before I went to bed) when he heard [B.R.] crying.
I went and got some toilet paper to remove the blood so I could see better. I then saw that [B.R.’s] skin under her vagina was a puxple red color and there was a chunk of skin missing. She said it hurt her when I touched her there to clean the area. I went to my bedroom to get my phone, my camera, and my cigarettes. That’s when I saw that it was 2:15 A.M. I then went back into [B.R.’s] room because she was yelling for me. [B.R.] said her bottom was hurting so I told her to let me look so I could take pictures. As I was looking at it, I touched it so I could see better. [B.R.] said it hurt when I touched her and she asked me to be. careful. I photographed [B.R.’s] vaginal area, her panties, and the sheets where there were a few small marks of blood. I also used the video camera feature on niy digital camera to video [B.R.] telling what had happened. No one told [B.R.] what to say before I videotaped her. [B.R.] asked me to get some medicine and put it on her like what I put'on myself when I hurt down there. ' [B.R.] had seen me put medicine on myself before and she had asked what it was. I told her it was big girl medicine that big girls use when it hurts down there. I went and got my Vagisil and put some on her after she. asked me to. I also put different panties on [B.R.]. 1

" Despite her four-year-old daughter’s alleged report of being sexually assaulted in her bedroom by a stranger, Appellant did not call the police and she did not transport her daughter to the hospital to be examined and treated for her injuries. After conducting her own examination of her daughter’s injuries and taking photographs of them, Appellant put B.R. back to bed and “went to the living room and smoked a cigarette.”

Appellant then went back to bed until 6:45 a.m. when she received a call from her mother “to make sure I was up so I could get the boys ready for school.” Appellant did not report the incident involving B.R., to her mother during the phone call. While taking B.R.’s two brothers to school, Appellant texted an Abilene police officer that she had dated in high school and asked him, “How do I go about making a report about suspected child molestation?” Appellant indicated that the officer responded, “Need 2 go 2 hospital.” Appellant did not follow the officer’s advice. Instead, she took B.R. to daycare after first going to the Eskimo Hut to get a drink.

Candice South worked at the daycare that B.R. attended. She was in charge of B.R.’s class. On the morning of November 11, Appellant brought B.R. to the daycare. South testified that Appellant seemed to be “very distraught and upset.” In South’s presence, Appellant told B.R. hot to “talk about it” and that Appellant was going to tell “Ms. Candice what hap-péned.” South then stated that Appellant told her as follows:

[Appellant] told me that the day before had been the day from hell and that *358 one of her boys was sick to his stomach and that the other one — she had been having trouble getting him to sleep at night, so she was up trying to get him to sleep. And when she finally got one of them to sleep, she checked on the other two and they were asleep, and that she had gone to bed. Then she said about 2:30 her boyfriend woke her up and said that [B.R.] was hysterical and crying and upset and he couldn’t get her to calm down.
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That she got up out of bed and went into [B.R.’s] room and that there was blood on [B.R.’s] underwear, her night gown and on her sheets. And she asked [B.R.] what happened and [B.R.] had told her that a man had come in with a mask on his face and put his hands in her underwear and hurt her.

Appellant also advised South that was she was going to try to make a doctor’s appointment for B.R.

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Laci Rena Wright v. State, 494 S.W.3d 352, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 9745, 2015 WL 5602578 (Tex. Ct. App. 2015).

494 S.W.3d 352 (Laci Rena Wright v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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