Ramirez v. State

976 S.W.2d 219, 1998 WL 197641
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided September 30, 1998·No. 08-96-00409-CR·Published·Cited by 90 cases

Opinions

OPINION

BARAJAS, Chief Justice.

Jose Manuel Ramirez appeals his conviction for murder. The jury found him guilty and assessed punishment at eighty (80) years’ incarceration in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a fine of $9,000.

I. SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE

On April 29, 1995, Veronica Cera held a birthday party for her cousin at 772 Lico Lane in El Paso. In attendance at the birthday party were members of the Moon City and Barrio Nuevo gangs. As the party was ending, a car driven by Victor Aguirre, the father of Veronica’s three-month-old child, approached. Prom the passenger’s side of the car, Ramirez, Appellant, leaned out of the window and shot at the party with a rifle. The car then sped away from the house. Rodrigo Ramirez, Veronica Cera’s brother, lay on the ground with a gunshot wound to the neck. Rodrigo Ramirez later died from the gunshot wound.

The police were promptly notified. While Deputy Conner of the El Paso Sheriffs Department was responding to the call, he saw a grey car matching the description of the car involved in the shooting. As he began to follow the car, it sped up. During the ensuing chase, a rifle was thrown out of the ear from the passenger’s window. When the car was finally stopped, Appellant was removed from the passenger’s seat and handcuffed. Appellant was later charged with and convicted of murder. This appeal follows.

II. DISCUSSION

In Point of Error No. One, Appellant contends that the trial court erred in charging the jury with an overly broad definition of intent. In the present case, Appellant was charged with intentional murder. The definitional section of the jury charge reads as follows:

A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.

A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to circumstances surrounding his conduct when he is aware of the nature of his conduct or that the circumstances exist. A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to a result of his conduct when he is aware that his conduct is reasonably certain to cause the result.

Murder is a result oriented offense. Cook v. State, 884 S.W.2d 485, 490 (Tex.Crim.App.1994). When a defendant is charged with a result oriented crime, as in the instant case, he is entitled on request to have the abstract definitions of “intentionally and knowingly” limited to the result only language. Barcenes v. State, 940 S.W.2d 739, 743-44 (Tex.App.—San Antonio 1997, pet. ref'd). Any instructional language relating to conduct is inconsequential. Id. Since Appellant was charged with a “result of conduct” offense, the trial judge erred in not limiting the culpable mental states to the result of Appellant’s conduct. Cook, 884 S.W.2d at 490. We must conduct a harm analysis to determine if this error requires reversal of Appellant’s conviction. In assessing harm from the inclusion of improper elements in the definitions of culpable mental states, we “may consider the degree, if any, to which the culpable mental states were limited by the application portions of the jury charge.” Id.

In this case, the application paragraph specified that Appellant did intentionally and knowingly “cause” the death of an individual or “intend to cause serious bodily injury to an individual, RODRIGO RAMIREZ, intentionally or knowingly committing an act clearly dangerous to human life, to-wit: by shooting RODRIGO RAMIREZ with a firearm, thereby causing the death of [223] said RODRIGO RAMIREZ.” In Hughes v. State, 897 S.W.2d 285, 296 (Tex.Crim.App. 1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1112, 115 S.Ct. 1967, 131 L.Ed.2d 857 (1995), the Court of Criminal Appeals noted that although the definitions of “intentionally” and “knowingly” set forth three alternative elements of conduct, when viewed in their factual context it was apparent which conduct element applied to the offense. Id. The court concluded:

[B]ecause the facts, as applied to the law in the application paragraph, pointed the jury to the appropriate portion of the definitions, no harm resulted from the court’s failure to limit the definitions of culpable mental states....

Id; see also Patrick v. State, 906 S.W.2d 481, 491-93 (Tex.Crim.App.1995), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1106, 116 S.Ct. 1323, 134 L.Ed.2d 475 (1996). The same can be said of the facts in this case. Thus, the facts, as applied to the law in the application paragraph, pointed the jury to the proper result oriented culpable mental state portion of the definitions. Consequently, no harm resulted from the court’s failure to limit the definitions of “intentionally” and “knowingly” to the result of Appellant’s conduct. Appellant’s Point of Error No. One is overruled.

A. Impeachment of State’s Witness

Appellant also contends that the trial court erred in not permitting him to impeach the State’s witness with the fact that the charges brought against the witness were originally dismissed. It is Appellant’s belief that the trial comí violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses who testify against him by restricting Appellant’s ability to cross-examine Eric Ortiz, a witness for the State. The trial court disallowed the jury from healing testimony that the original charges against Eric Ortiz were dismissed.

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Ramirez v. State, 976 S.W.2d 219, 1998 WL 197641 (Tex. Ct. App. 1998).

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