Pope v. State

756 S.W.2d 401, 1988 Tex. App. LEXIS 2417, 1988 WL 92665
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedAugust 4, 1988
Docket05-86-00235-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 756 S.W.2d 401 (Pope 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
Pope v. State, 756 S.W.2d 401, 1988 Tex. App. LEXIS 2417, 1988 WL 92665 (Tex. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinions

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

JAMES, Justice.

We grant the State’s motion for rehearing and withdraw our prior opinion. The following is now the opinion of the court.

A jury convicted David Shawn Pope of aggravated sexual assault and assessed punishment at forty-five years’ imprisonment. On appeal, he complains that the trial court reversibly erred: 1) by admitting spectrographic evidence; and 2) by giving unconstitutional jury instructions regarding parole and good time. We overrule appellant’s points of error, and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The record shows that at approximately 10:15 p.m. on July 24, 1985, a man came to the front door of S_L_’s apartment and asked, “Is Pat there?” When S_ L_, the complainant, replied that no one named Pat lived at that apartment, the man left.

At approximately 6:00 a.m. on July 25, S_L_awoke to find a man standing over her, holding a steak knife. He raped her. After the assault, S_L_got up from her bed, followed appellant toward the patio doors and stood next to him. Subsequently, the man placed S_!_L_ in a closet, warned her, “Now don’t come out for a long time and don’t scream and don’t tell anybody, because remember I know where you live,” and fled. She waited a short time in the closet and then called the police.

Complainant described her rapist to the police as a young white male, around 5' 8" tall, 140 pounds, blond, slim, very tan, and wearing beige pants and no shirt. She reported that the steak knife the man held matched a set of four that she owned. After the perpetrator left her apartment, S_L_found only three from the set. While the police were at her apartment on July 25, the complainant received a telephone call from a man she referred to as “the rapist.” Complainant recognized the voice and handed the phone to a police officer.

On July 27 complainant again received a call from the rapist. Complainant was away from her home, and her answering machine recorded the call. She turned this tape over to police, and the tape was admitted into evidence and played for the jury.

Complainant was called again on July 29. The caller said that on the night of the rape he had knocked on her door and asked for Pat. This call went unrecorded because complainant answered the telephone. S_L_’s answering machine only recorded calls if she did not pick up the telephone receiver. Complainant bought a machine to record calls as she talked.

On August 2, she received a fourth call from the perpetrator. The call lasted approximately ten minutes and the perpetrator called back a short time later. At police request, the complainant engaged in an extended conversation with him. The tape of these conversations was admitted into evidence as well. The complainant identified the appellant in open court as the man who raped her. She also testified that because she recognized his voice from the assault, appellant was the telephone caller. Although complainant was unable to pick out the appellant in a photographic lineup, [403]*403she did identify appellant in a live lineup on August 28.

The State next called William David Thurman, a Garland police officer who arrested appellant on August 28, 1985, at 6:30 a.m. on the premises of the Eastgate Apartment complex where the complainant lived. Officer Dennis Wheatley testified that he found a OVfe" knife with the tip broken off and a pair of white pants in the trunk of appellant's car.

Officer Wheatley further testified that he had arranged for appellant voluntarily to make a “control” recording of his voice, reading parts of the taped transcripts using complainant’s recording equipment. Officer C.G. Young testified that he was present with appellant when the recording was made and that the appellant was informed that the police wanted to compare his voice sample to the voice on the complainant’s recordings.

Larry Howe Williams, a Houston police officer, testified that he was a voice identification examiner and had taken around 1,000 spectrograms. Williams, testifying as an expert spectrograph examiner, stated that voice print identification is a process by which a spectrogram is produced by passing sound waves through a spectrograph such that known and unknown voices can be compared.

The State next called Dr. Henry Truby as an expert in the science of spectrogra-phy and bio-acoustics, holding a Ph.D. in Acoustic Phonetics and having worked in the field for 40 years. Dr. Truby, after explaining how spectrography works, testified that he had compared spectrograms of the appellant’s voice on the control tape to spectrograms of the voice on the complainant’s answering machine tapes and, in his expert opinion, both tapes recorded the same voice — that of appellant.

The defense called Stuart R. Ritterman, a Professor of Communicology at the University of South Florida, as an expert to dispute the scientific validity of spectrogra-phy. The defense also called Craig Furche, a friend of appellant, who testified that appellant stayed and worked with him on and off during July and August 1985, and that he could not remember appellant not riding to work with him at around 6:30 a.m. the morning of the rape.

The appellant testified on his own behalf that he had lived at the Eastgate Apartments until June 1985 when he was evicted. The appellant denied committing the rape, insisting that at the time he must have been either asleep or on his way to work because that was what he usually did at 6:00 a.m. on weekdays. On cross-examination, appellant testified that he had lived out of his car on the Eastgate grounds on and off during July. Appellant testified that he made the control voice tape to prove his innocence and that he was aware of the intended voice comparison.

In rebuttal, the State called police officer Larry Wilson who testified that on October 30, 1985, appellant told Wilson that he had probably been sleeping in his car on the night of the rape and did not mention his friend Craig Furches. The State also called Linda Gilíes, an assistant manager of the Eastgate Apartments, who testified that appellant was evicted in June 1985 and created a problem by continuing to show up on the Eastgate grounds. Gilíes further testified that the appellant had a bad reputation for truthfulness in her opinion.

The jury found appellant guilty of aggravated sexual assault. At punishment, the appellant testified on his own behalf, continuing to assert his innocence. The jury assessed punishment at 45 years’ confinement in the Texas Department of Corrections.

Appellant complains that the trial court erred in admitting the spectrographic evidence against him. We believe this question on the admissibility of “voice-print” evidence to be of first impression in Texas. We need not, however, address this issue because the overwhelming evidence against appellant renders this error, if any, harmless. In determining whether there was harmful error in admitting evidence that we assume but do not decide was improper, the facts and circumstances of the individual case must be considered. [404]*404Bass v. State, 622 S.W.2d 101, 104 (Tex.Crim.App.1981).

The complainant had the opportunity clearly to view her attacker. She testified that she stood right next to him near her patio doors after the rape. S_ L_ identified the appellant as the rapist in a live lineup as well as in open court.

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Pope v. State
756 S.W.2d 401 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1988)

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Bluebook (online)
756 S.W.2d 401, 1988 Tex. App. LEXIS 2417, 1988 WL 92665, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pope-v-state-texapp-1988.