Oscar Pereacruz v. the State of Texas

Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided June 18, 2021·No. 05-18-01122-CR·Published

Opinion

Affirm and Opinion Filed June 18, 2021

In The

Court of Appeals

Fifth District of Texas at Dallas No. 05-18-01121-CR

No. 05-18-01122-CR

OSCAR PEREACRUZ, Appellant V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

On Appeal from the 282nd Judicial District Court Dallas County, Texas

Trial Court Cause Nos. F18-00275-S and F18-00276-S

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Before Justices Pedersen, III, Reichek, and Garcia1 Opinion by Justice Pedersen, III A jury found appellant Oscar Pereacruz guilty of aggravated sexual assault of

a child and indecency with a child by sexual contact. The jury assessed his punishment at fifty years’ confinement in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for the assault case and ten years’ confinement for the indecency case; the trial court ordered the sentences to run consecutively. On

1 The Honorable Justice Dennise Garcia succeeded the Honorable Bill Whitehill, a member of the original panel. Justice Garcia has reviewed the briefs and the record before the Court.

appeal, appellant contends that (1) the evidence is insufficient to support the jury’s verdicts on both offenses, (2) his case was transferred between district courts in violation of his right to due process, and (3) the trial court’s charge erroneously permitted the jury to convict him of both offenses without unanimity. We affirm the trial court’s judgments.

Background

At the time of trial, E.G., the complaining witness, was nine years old. Her mother (“Mother”) testified at trial that Maricela Pereacruz, appellant’s wife, used to babysit E.G. on Saturday nights while Mother worked.2 The Garcia and Pereacruz families lived in the same apartment complex during this time period. Mother testified that E.G. stayed overnight at the Pereacruz apartment on the nights when Maricela babysat her and that the arrangement went on for more than a year. Mother related that when E.G. was almost six years old, she told Mother that she didn’t want to stay at Maricela’s anymore because Oscar had touched her. Mother told Maricela what E.G. had said, but Mother did not notify the police.

Approximately two years later, Child Protective Services (“CPS”) received an anonymous report that E.G. was being sexually abused. Katressa Molett, an investigator for CPS, interviewed Mother and E.G. The child told Molett that

2 After identifying members of families who share a last name, we refer to them by their first names to avoid confusion.

appellant had touched her when she was six. Molett referred the case to the Dallas Police Department, and the police arranged for E.G. to be forensically interviewed.

Following the child’s forensic interview, the police arrested appellant, and he agreed to speak to Detective Jose Ortiz, of the DPD Child Exploitation Unit. Ortiz testified that appellant acknowledged he knew E.G. and Mother from the apartment complex. He admitted that his wife had babysat E.G. and that the child had stayed overnight at his family’s apartment. However, he denied that he had ever touched E.G.

At trial, E.G. testified that when she stayed overnight at the Pereacruz apartment she slept on the top bunk bed with appellant’s daughter. E.G. stated that appellant woke her by turning on a light in the bathroom or closet and then pulling her by her hand into the closet. She testified that on one occasion, when she was wearing tights, appellant “had his penis out and he put it like under my clothes.” She said appellant positioned her on her hands and knees and held her from behind, and his penis touched her “butt” through her tights. She testified that appellant’s penis felt “like a stick” and that when he finished she felt liquid on her tights. E.G. testified that, on another occasion, her tights and underwear were pulled down and that appellant again had her on her hands and knees, but that time he put his penis inside her “butt,” and it felt slippery afterwards. E.G. also testified that appellant had

touched her vagina with his hand.3 When asked what she could see in the closet, E.G. answered that she saw a girl’s dresses, a red camera, and “maybe a gun.”

Appellant testified on his own behalf. He denied that his wife had ever babysat E.G. or any other children in their apartment. He further denied that he had ever seen E.G. in his apartment. He testified that at the time of the alleged conduct, he was working as a machine operator for a company that made carpet padding. He generally worked from three o’clock in the morning to three o’clock in the afternoon. He woke up around two o’clock in the morning to get ready for work, got home around four o’clock, and went to bed between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. In addition, at night he took medicine for his epilepsy and, because of the medicine, did not wake up during the night. Appellant testified that he put a camera and his BB gun in the closet in the master bedroom.

Appellant called four other witnesses: his wife, Maricela; his nephew, Jose;

Jose’s sister, Denis; and Maricela’s niece, Sara.4 Their testimony was consistent concerning the living arrangements in the two-bedroom Pereacruz apartment: Sara and appellant’s daughter and older son slept on the bunk beds in the master bedroom with the pet dog; appellant’s brother, Jose, Denis, and a second daughter slept in the second bedroom; appellant, Maricela, and their younger son slept in the living room.

3 E.G. was not asked and did not say whether the vaginal contact was part of one of the other incidents she described.

4 Jose and Denis and their sister moved to Dallas with their father, Jose Lopez, to live with appellant and Maricela when Lopez and his wife divorced.

All of appellant’s witnesses testified that Maricela did not babysit, although Maricela conceded that CPS had once cited her for providing child care without a permit. Appellant’s witnesses testified that E.G. was never in the apartment, and—given the sleep schedules to which they testified—someone would always have been awake in the apartment.5 The jury found appellant guilty of both charges, assessing punishment at ten years for the indecency charge and fifty years for the assault charge. This appeal followed.

Sufficiency of the Evidence In his first two issues, appellant contends that the evidence is insufficient to support the jury’s guilty verdicts on both charges. We review a sufficiency challenge by examining the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979). The jury is the exclusive judge of the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony. Wise v. State, 364 S.W.3d 900, 903 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012). “When the record supports conflicting inferences, we presume that the factfinder resolved the conflicts in favor of the verdict, and we defer to that

5 Sara testified that she returned from her job between midnight and one o’clock in the morning and then stayed up until three or four o’clock in the morning on her phone, either in bed or in the closet; Jose testified that he does not “tend to sleep.”

determination.” Murray v. State, 457 S.W.3d 446, 448–49 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) (citing Hooper v. State, 214 S.W.3d 9, 12 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007)). “A jury may accept one version of the facts and reject another, and it may reject any part of a witness’s testimony.” Febus v. State, 542 S.W.3d 568, 572 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018). The uncorroborated testimony of a child victim is sufficient to support a conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 38.07.

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