Ontiveros v. State

890 S.W.2d 919, 1994 Tex. App. LEXIS 3211, 1994 WL 712930
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 22, 1994
Docket08-92-00367-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 890 S.W.2d 919 (Ontiveros 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
Ontiveros v. State, 890 S.W.2d 919, 1994 Tex. App. LEXIS 3211, 1994 WL 712930 (Tex. Ct. App. 1994).

Opinion

SUBSTITUTED OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

KOEHLER, Justice.

The opinion dated August 31, 1994 is withdrawn and the following opinion is substituted in its place. State’s Motion for Rehearing is overruled.

Vicente Rocha Ontiveros, Appellant, appeals from convictions for the offenses of aggravated sexual assault of a child and aggravated kidnapping. Upon jury findings of guilt for each offense, the jury assessed punishment at imprisonment for terms of 25 years on the aggravated sexual assault of a child charge and 10 years on the aggravated kidnapping charge, the sentences to run concurrently. We affirm.

THE FACTS

The record reflects that on May 12, 1991, the fifteen-year-old victim was kidnapped and raped. At trial, she testified that on that night, she and her boyfriend, Robert Rosales, had parked her Oldsmobile Cutlass in a secluded area in El Paso, Texas, and were engaged in sexual intercourse when three men attacked the couple. The victim identified Vicente Ontiveros, the Appellant in this cause, and Pedro Diaz, his co-defendant, as two of the three men who attacked and raped her that night.

She described how the men entered her car and while Ontiveros and another man began beating Rosales, Diaz threw her into the backseat of her ear, hitting her and biting her breast, lip, and arm. After Rosales passed out, the men drove the victim’s car to a bridge and dumped Rosales behind a bush, while Diaz held her captive in the backseat of the car. Afterwards, the three men took the victim to a spot near Rosedale Street in El Paso and took turns raping her. The men then drove around El Paso some more before stopping in another location to assault her further. Finally the men crossed over into Juarez, Mexico, where they picked up two more of their friends before dropping the victim off at a bus stop. They kept her car. She took a bus to the bridge and crossed back into the United States, where she reported the assault to the El Paso Police and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Ontiveros and Diaz were arrested on May 19, 1991, when El Paso Police organized a stakeout of the secluded place where the victim and her boyfriend were attacked. 1 Sergeant Perez, the commanding officer at the stakeout scene, testified at the suppression hearing that the stakeout consisted of two undercover officers in a decoy vehicle, five or six other officers observing from nearby, and two officers in a marked police vehicle waiting in the general vicinity. About 12:15 a.m., the police observed four Mexican males approach the decoy vehicle via the irrigation ditch and crawl on their bellies to peer over the ditch’s embankment, as if to determine whether there was anyone in the decoy vehicle. The men retreated back down into the irrigation ditch and surfaced a sec *923 ond time approximately fifteen or twenty feet from the decoy car before another vehicle (unrelated to the stakeout) entering the secluded area scared off the four men. At that point, the men retreated down the ditch, which was muddy from a recent rain, and walked across an open field toward a 7-Eleven store located at 8701 Alameda. Perez radioed the marked unit and told the officers in that unit to stop the four men and check them for identification.

Officers Chinolla and Jimenez, the police officers in the marked unit, pulled up to the four men and ordered them to stop. Rather than obeying the police, the four men turned and darted briskly into the 7-Eleven store. Officer Chinolla followed the men, roused them out of the store, and made them kneel on the sidewalk with their hands behind their heads, where he and Officer Jimenez patted the men down for weapons. About the time the officers completed the pat-down, Francisco Alderette, the store clerk, brought out a handgun that one of the four men had concealed behind some boxes of Jello. Sergeant Perez, who had left his stakeout spot behind the bushes and beat a hasty path to the 7-Eleven, ordered the four men arrested at that point. The police officers contended that the four men were not placed under arrest until Alderette brought the weapon to the officers’ attention. At the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the trial court ruled that the confession was admissible since the arrest in connection with the weapons was legal.

MOTION TO SUPPRESS

In his first three points of error, Ontiveros contends that the trial court erred in overruling his motion to suppress illegally obtained evidence because: (1) when the police initially seized him, there were insufficient articu-lable facts to warrant a reasonable belief that he was engaged in criminal activity; (2) he was arrested without probable cause to believe he had committed a crime; and (3) he was arrested without any probable cause or suspicion particularized as to him. Ontiveros attempted to suppress his confession on the ground that the confession was the fruit of the poisonous tree, tainted by an unlawful initial stop and subsequent arrest.

The trial judge is the sole and exclusive trier of facts at a hearing on a motion to suppress. Romero v. State, 800 S.W.2d 539, 543 (Tex.Crim.App.1990); Hawkins v. State, 628 S.W.2d 71 (Tex.Crim.App.1982); Green v. State, 615 S.W.2d 700, 708 (Tex.Crim.App.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 952, 102 S.Ct. 490, 70 L.Ed.2d 258 (1981). Thus, it is for the trial judge to decide issues of fact concerning the voluntariness of a defendant’s confession. Dykes v. State, 657 S.W.2d 796 (Tex.Crim.App.1983). On appeal, the appellate court does not engage in its own factual review, but decides whether the record supports the trial judge’s fact findings. Romero, 800 S.W.2d at 543.

When a defendant seeks to suppress evidence on the basis of a Fourth Amendment violation, the burden of proof is initially on the defendant. Russell v. State, 717 S.W.2d 7, 9 (Tex.Crim.App.1986); Mattei v. State, 455 S.W.2d 761, 765-66 (Tex.Crim.App.1970); see also State v. Wood, 828 S.W.2d 471, 474 (Tex.App. — El Paso 1992, no pet.). A defendant moving to suppress evidence must produce evidence that defeats the presumption of proper police conduct and therefore shifts the burden of proof to the State. Russell, 717 S.W.2d at 9; Mattei, 455 S.W.2d at 765-66, relying upon United States v. Thompson, 421 F.2d 373, 377 (5th Cir.1970) and Rogers v. United States, 330 F.2d 535 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 916, 85 S.Ct. 265, 13 L.Ed.2d 186 (1964). Cf. United States v. Bachner, 706 F.2d 1121, 1125-26 (11th Cir.1983). Once a defendant has established (1) that a search or seizure occurred and (2) that the search or seizure occurred without a warrant or without valid consent, the burden of proof shifts to the State to produce either evidence of a warrant or to prove the reasonableness of the search or seizure pursuant to one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. Wood, 828 S.W.2d at 475. In the present cause, there is no contention that the State *924

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Bluebook (online)
890 S.W.2d 919, 1994 Tex. App. LEXIS 3211, 1994 WL 712930, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ontiveros-v-state-texapp-1994.