Mills v. State

742 S.W.2d 831, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 9214, 1987 WL 34858
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided December 18, 1987·No. 05-86-01138-CR·Published·Cited by 51 cases

Opinion

HECHT, Justice.

A jury convicted Robert Allen Mills of reckless injury to a child and assessed punishment at ten years’ imprisonment. We affirm the judgment of the district court.

I

Mills complains in his first point of error that the evidence is insufficient for conviction. This is a circumstantial evidence case. As a rule, evidence suffices for conviction if a rational trier of fact, taking the evidence most favorable to the prosecution, could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789 n. 12, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Additionally, circumstantial evidence is sufficient for conviction if it excludes every reasonable hypothesis except guilt of the defendant. Moore v. State, 640 S.W.2d 300, 302 (Tex.Crim.App.1982).

In a circumstantial evidence case, the State need not present evidence excluding every conceivable hypothesis except that of defendant’s guilt, it need only present evidence excluding every reasonable hypothesis....
Each fact need not point directly and independently to the guilt of the accused, as the cumulative effect of all the incriminating facts may be sufficient to support the conviction.... Furthermore, every circumstantial evidence case must necessarily be tested by its own facts to determine the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction....

Hooker v. State, 621 S.W.2d 597 (Tex.Crim.App.1980) (citations omitted). With these principles in mind, we turn to the evidence.

P_ R_ met Mills and about a month later, moved into his apartment with her 15-month-old daughter, C_ R_ While P_ R_ worked, Mills would stay with the baby. P_R_noticed that her daughter seemed to be bruising easily and asked Mills about it, but Mills gave explanations of the bruises, and P_ R_• believed him. At one point P_ R_ noticed a cigarette burn on her daughter’s buttocks. Mills’ explanation was that she had sat on an ashtray.

One afternoon about three months after P_ R_ moved in with Mills, Mills called his mother when she arrived home from work and asked her to look at C_ R_The child was obviously badly burned, and Mills’ mother insisted that they take her to the hospital immediately. Mills then telephoned P_R_at work to tell her that her daughter had been burned and that they were taking her to the hospital. A short time later Mills and his mother admitted the child to the hospital with life-threatening second and third degree burns over 20-30% of her body, specifically, her lower trunk, legs and feet.

Meanwhile, P_ R_ left work and went to Mills’ apartment. Finding no one there, she returned to work where she re *833 mained until Mills’ mother picked her up and took her to the hospital. When they arrived, C_R_was being wrapped in ice packs. P_ R_ stated that the child seemed burned from the waist down, and her skin looked like “raw hamburger meat with blisters.”

C_ R_ remained in the hospital three weeks, two of which she was in intensive care. She underwent extensive surgery and skin grafts. Her injuries and scars are permanent.

One physician, the director of the hospital burn unit, testified for the State that without any doubt C_ R_’s burns were caused by forced, not accidental, immersion in hot liquid, such as hot water in a bathtub. He based his opinion on the distinct margin between the burned and unburned areas on C_R.’s body, the absence of splash marks which would result from falling suddenly and unintentionally into a hot liquid, and the absence of burns on her buttocks indicating that she had been held down against a surface which was not as hot as the liquid it contained, such as the bottom of a bathtub. A second physician called by the State, who treated C_ R_ when she was first brought into the hospital, agreed and added that C_R_appeared to be afraid of men. A third physician, however, the head of the hospital burn unit, testified for the defense that although C___ R__⅛ injuries could have been intentionally inflicted, they were probably accidental.

Mills testified at trial and gave the following explanation of how C_ R_ was burned. Early in the afternoon, Mills said, he gave the child a bath in approximately three inches of warm water. After drying her off, he took her into the living room and laid her on the couch, and then decided that he would take a bath too. He turned on the hot water and left it running while he got clothes for the baby from the closet. Mills became concerned about the child and returned to the living room only to find that she was no longer on the couch. He found the child, he said, in the tub, kicking and splashing around, trying to get out of the steaming water. Mills testified that C_R_never cried out. Mills said he took the baby out of the tub, wrapped her in a sheet, and waited for his mother, who lived in the same apartment complex, to arrive home from work.

Mills was charged with “intentionally and knowingly engaging] in conduct that caused serious bodily injury and disfigurement to [C_ R_], a child younger than fourteen (14) years of age, by immersing [her] into a hot liquid”. Mills was convicted, however, not of acting intentionally and knowingly, but of acting recklessly, that is, with a lesser culpable mental state. “Culpable mental states are classified according to relative degrees, from highest to lowest, as follows: (1) intentional; (2) knowing; (3) reckless; (4) criminal negligence.” Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 6.02(d) (Vernon 1974). Reckless injury to a child is a lesser included offense in relation to intentional or knowing injury to a child. See Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 37.09(3) (Vernon 1981).

Mills argues that although the evidence was sufficient to convict him of acting intentionally, knowingly or negligently, it was insufficient to convict him of acting recklessly. In other words, Mills argues that the State either proved too much or too little, but not just enough. Interesting as this argument is, it is flawed both legally and logically.

Legally, “[p]roof of a higher degree of culpability than that charged constitutes proof of the culpability charged.” Tex.Penal Code Ann. § 6.02(e) (Vernon 1974). By this rule, had Mills been charged with acting recklessly, evidence which Mills admits is sufficient to prove that he acted intentionally and knowingly would prove he acted recklessly. Although he was charged with the more culpable mental states here, proof of those states is sufficient to prove the lesser state of recklessness.

Logically, the evidence that Mills acted intentionally or knowingly is not inconsistent with a finding that he acted recklessly.

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Mills v. State, 742 S.W.2d 831, 1987 Tex. App. LEXIS 9214, 1987 WL 34858 (Tex. Ct. App. 1987).

742 S.W.2d 831 (Mills v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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