Orlando Sanchez v. State

CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 15, 2007
Docket13-03-00698-CR
StatusPublished

This text of Orlando Sanchez v. State (Orlando Sanchez 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.

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Orlando Sanchez v. State, (Tex. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion







NUMBER 13-03-698-CR



COURT OF APPEALS



THIRTEENTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS



CORPUS CHRISTI - EDINBURG




ORLANDO SANCHEZ, Appellant,

v.



THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee.




On appeal from the 332nd District Court of Hidalgo County, Texas.



O P I N I O N


Before Chief Justice Valdez and Justices Yañez and Baird (1)

Opinion by Justice Baird

Appellant was charged by indictment with the offense of murder. A jury convicted appellant of that offense and the trial judge assessed punishment at sixty-eight years confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Institutional Division. Appellant raises four points of error. We sustain the fourth point and reverse the judgment of the trial court.

I. Sufficiency Challenges.

The first and second points of error challenge the legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury's verdict.

A. Standards of Appellate Review.

Legal sufficiency is the constitutional minimum required by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to sustain a criminal conviction. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 315-16 (1979). The appellate standard for reviewing a legal sufficiency challenge is whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 320. The evidence is examined in the light most favorable to the fact-finder. Id. A successful legal sufficiency challenge will result in the rendition of an acquittal by the reviewing court. Tibbs v. Florida, 457 U.S. 31, 41-42 (1982).

In a factual sufficiency review, the appellate court views all of the evidence in a neutral light and ask whether a jury was rationally justified in finding guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Watson v. State, No. PD-469-05, 2006 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 2040, 2006 WL 2956272, at *7 (Tex. Crim. App. Oct. 18, 2006). To reverse a case on a factual sufficiency challenge, the court must be able to say, with some objective basis in the record, that the great weight and preponderance of evidence contradicts the jury's verdict. Id. at *8. In other words, an appellate court cannot conclude a conviction is "clearly wrong" or "manifestly unjust" simply because its judges would have voted to acquit. Id. In examining a factual sufficiency challenge, the court must defer to the fact-finder's credibility determinations. Swearingen v. State, 101 S.W.3d 89, 97 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003).

B. Factual Summary.

Appellant and the decedent had been engaged, but their engagement ended without the couple getting married. The two began seeing each other again. The decedent was telephoned by appellant, who said he needed a ride because his vehicle was not working. The decedent left her home to assist appellant.

A resident in a Weslaco motel heard a woman screaming in a nearby room. That resident contacted peace officers and informed them of the screams. Those officers entered a motel room and saw both appellant and the decedent laying on the floor. A stun gun was on the floor near appellant. The windows to the room were painted shut, there was only one door entering the room, and that door had been barricaded by a heavy piece of furniture.

The decedent was pronounced dead at the scene. Appellant was transported to a nearby hospital and arrested for the murder of the decedent a short time later.

The indictment alleged the offense of murder in four separate paragraphs that appellant: (1) intentionally or knowingly choked the decedent by hand; (2) intentionally or knowingly caused the death by manner and means unknown to the grand jury; (3) intending to cause serious bodily injury, committed an act clearly dangerous to human life, to wit: placed a stun gun to the decedent; and, (4) intending to cause serious bodily injury, committed an act clearly dangerous to human life, to wit: by manner and means unknown to the grand jury. These paragraphs allege two of the three ways of committing murder in Texas. Under the penal code, "a person commits an offense if he (1) intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual, or (2) intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual." Tex. Pen. Code Ann. § 19.02(b)(1) & (2) (Vernon 2003).

Dr. Fulgencio Salinas, the laboratory director at Edinburg Regional Medical Center, performed the autopsy of the decedent and testified in court. He described bruising, scratches and lacerations to the decedent's body. Some of those injuries were consistent with a stun gun being triggered after contact with the decedent's skin. Dr. Salinas opined that the cause of death was asphyxia, meaning a lack of oxygen to the brain. Dr. Salinas concluded that the asphyxia was caused either by choking or being stunned by the stun gun. Specifically, he stated that bruising to the decedent's neck could have been caused by either a male hand squeezing the neck or use of the stun gun. (2)

C. Argument and Analysis.

Appellant contends the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to prove (1) the specific intent to cause death; (2) the cause of death was by choking with appellant's hands; (3) the intent to cause serious bodily injury; and, (4) the stun gun was the cause of death. These arguments are directed toward the first and third paragraphs of the indictment, both of which were submitted to the jury.

When alternate theories of committing the same offense are submitted to the jury and the jury returns a general verdict, the conviction will be upheld if the evidence is sufficient to support a finding of guilt under any one of the theories submitted. Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 56-58 (1991) ("a general verdict [is] valid so long as it is legally supportable on one of the submitted grounds-even though that gives no assurance that a valid ground, rather than an invalid one, is actually the basis for the jury's action"); Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 420 (1970) ("[When] a jury returns a guilty verdict on an indictment charging several acts in the conjunctive . . . the verdict stands if the evidence is sufficient with respect to any one of the acts charged"); Rabbani v. State, 847 S.W.2d 555, 558 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992); Kitchens v.

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Related

Stromberg v. California
283 U.S. 359 (Supreme Court, 1931)
Turner v. United States
396 U.S. 398 (Supreme Court, 1970)
Jackson v. Virginia
443 U.S. 307 (Supreme Court, 1979)
Tibbs v. Florida
457 U.S. 31 (Supreme Court, 1982)
Griffin v. United States
502 U.S. 46 (Supreme Court, 1991)
Watson v. State
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Smith v. State
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Hicks v. State
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Kitchens v. State
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Castillo v. State
7 S.W.3d 253 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1999)
Payne v. State
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