Quinonez-Saa v. State

860 S.W.2d 704, 1993 WL 303162
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 20, 1993
Docket01-92-00976-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 860 S.W.2d 704 (Quinonez-Saa 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
Quinonez-Saa v. State, 860 S.W.2d 704, 1993 WL 303162 (Tex. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

OPINION

MIRABAL, Justice.

A jury found appellant, Victor Hugo Qui-nonez-Saa, guilty of murder and assessed punishment at 75-years confinement and a fine of $10,000.

The evidence showed that the deceased had been shot at close range in the head with a .38 caliber bullet. In his first point of error, appellant asserts that the admission into evidence of autopsy photographs was reversible error because the medical examiner who testified had not performed the autopsy or viewed the body of the deceased.

The State offered into evidence a report, numbered 915231, on an autopsy that had been conducted on the deceased by Dr. Auer-lio Espinóla, an assistant medical examiner. The report was sponsored, without objection from appellant, by Dr. Eduardo Bellas, another assistant medical examiner. The State then offered into evidence three autopsy photographs that also bore the number 915231. Appellant objected on the grounds that the testifying doctor had not seen the body or done the autopsy, and the autopsy report made no reference to photographs having been taken. The trial court overruled appellant’s objection and admitted the photographs into evidence. Appellant contends that admission of these photographs into evidence constitutes reversible error.

Appellant cites Goss v. State, 549 S.W.2d 404 (Tex.Crim.App.1978), as authority for his contention. In Goss, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that the admission into evidence of autopsy photographs was reversible error when the medical examiner who testified had not performed the autopsy or even viewed the body of the deceased, but merely stated the pictures were consistent with the autopsy report, which made no mention that *706 the photographs were taken during the autopsy. The Court stated: “The fact that certain factors depicted in the photographs were consistent with the autopsy report, standing alone, would not render the photographs admissible. The admissibility of a photograph is conditioned on its identification by a witness or person of knowledge that the photograph is a correct representation of such faets.” Goss, 549 S.W.2d at 406 (emphasis added). Furthermore, the court found that the record was “devoid of proof’ that would render the photographs admissible under the then existing business records act. Id.

It is true that the instant case is similar to Goss. The autopsy report and pictures were prepared by Dr. Espinóla, who was not present at trial, rather than by Dr. Bellas, the sponsoring witness. Similar to the testifying medical examiner in Goss, Dr. Bellas did not testify that the autopsy photographs were a true and accurate depiction of the body at the time of the autopsy. However, there are two factors that distinguish Goss from the present ease and support the trial court’s admission of the photographs into evidence: (1) the corroborative predicate evidence in the instant case is greater than the simple correlation between the autopsy report and the photographs in Goss; and (2) the record in the instant case is not “devoid of proof,” as was the case in Goss, that the photographs are admissible under the current business records exception of Tex.R.CRIM.Evid. 803(6).

Before being admitted into evidence, photographs must ordinarily be shown to be a correct representation of the subject at a given time. Huffman v. State, 746 S.W.2d 212, 222 (Tex.Crim.App.1988). However, the only identification or authentication required is that the offered evidence properly represent the person, object, or scene in question. This may be testified to not only by the photographer, but by any other witness who knows the facts, even though the witness did not take the photograph himself or see it taken. Id. at 222. A trial judge is to be accorded considerable discretion in ruling on the admission or exclusion of photographic evidence. Id.

We note that in Goss, the Court held that the consistency between the autopsy report and the photographs, “standing alone,” was not enough to render the photographs admissible. Goss, 549 S.W.2d at 406 (emphasis added). In Goss, the deceased died of severe burns suffered in a car accident; the photographs were of a charred and burned body. In the present case, the deceased died of a single, small caliber, gunshot wound to the head. The only difference between the autopsy photographs and the other photographs of the deceased’s head in the record, is that the blood was washed from the deceased’s face in the autopsy pictures, allowing a clearer view of the wound. The photographs at the scene and at the morgue, which were properly authenticated and not objected to at trial, provide additional evidence of the fairness and accuracy of the autopsy photographs in the instant case.

Dr. Bellas testified that the business records pertaining to the autopsy of the deceased included “any photographs that would have been taken during that autopsy report” and that these records were “entered by a person who has knowledge at or near the time that the events occurred.” He also testified that the records were kept under his care, custody and control and were kept as a normal course of business with the medical examiner’s office. Therefore the photographs were admissible under Texas Rule of Criminal Evidence 803(6) as part of the record of the autopsy.

The photographs in Goss were not admissible under the then existing business records act because the record was “devoid of proof’ satisfying the business records exception as it then existed. Goss, 549 S.W.2d at 406. The State in that case never established that the photographs were part of the business records created by the autopsy examination; the record established only that the photographs were consistent with the autopsy report, without establishing that the photographs were taken as part of the record generated from the autopsy. Id. at 405. In the instant ease, the testimony adduced at trial was sufficient to show that the photographs were, like the written autopsy report, entered by a person with knowledge and *707 kept as a normal course of business with the medical examiner’s office.

Appellant relies on the authority of Cole v. State, 839 S.W.2d 798 (Tex.Crim.App.1992), to assert that the photographs would be inadmissible under Tex.R.CRIM.Evid. 803(6) because evidence which is inadmissible under the public records exception of Tex.R.Crim. Evid. 803(8) cannot be “back-doored” through the business record exception. The issue in Cole was whether the trial court erred in admitting hearsay evidence concerning the results of a chemical test performed by an absent department of public safety chemist pursuant to Tex.R.CRIM.Evid. 803(6). Cole contended the admission of the testimony was prohibited by the portion of rule 803 that prohibits as hearsay “matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel.” Tex.R.Crim.Evid.

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Bluebook (online)
860 S.W.2d 704, 1993 WL 303162, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/quinonez-saa-v-state-texapp-1993.