Roderick Dennis v. the State of Texas

Opinion

In the

Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth

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No. 02-25-00413-CR

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RODERICK DENNIS, Appellant V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 2 Tarrant County, Texas

Trial Court No. 1891751

Before Birdwell, Bassel, and Wallach, JJ.

Memorandum Opinion by Justice Wallach

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appellant Roderick Dennis appeals from his conviction for two counts of aggravated robbery, for which a jury sentenced him to fifty years’ confinement each after finding his habitual-offender notice true. See Tex. Penal Code § 12.42(d), 29.03. The trial court set his sentences to run concurrently.

In his sole point, Dennis argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction because there was no evidence that he used or exhibited a firearm or used another object as a threat to facilitate aggravated robbery and that his judgments should be reformed to robbery and the case remanded for new sentencing. We will affirm.

Trial Evidence

Ujjal Sapkota testified first for the State. On April 26, 2024, he was working at a Texaco with his coworker, Nayan Paudel. 1 When a man walked in with his face painted white, Sapkota knew they were being robbed. Sapkota recognized the man, who he identified as the defendant, as someone who “c[a]me[ in] every day watching . . . when we put the money.” Appellant took around $2,500–3,000 in the robbery.

1 Sapkota and Paudel were the complainants listed in Dennis’s two-count indictment. English did not appear to be Sapkota’s first language. Paudel did not testify; Sapkota explained to the jury that Paudel did not speak much English.

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State’s Exhibit 1, a recording of Sapkota’s 911 call, was admitted and published to the jury at the start of Sapkota’s testimony. In the call, Sapkota can be heard telling the dispatcher that he had been robbed and that the perpetrator had a gun in his pocket. He further stated that the perpetrator had left in a white car, but he could not provide a license plate number because, since the perpetrator had a gun, he had stayed inside when the perpetrator left.

In his trial testimony, Sapkota was asked about what he had seen Appellant holding during the robbery. He explained that Appellant had his hand on something “in his waist area.” Sapkota said that he “recognized [it as] a gun,” and he feared that Appellant would shoot them. However, he never saw Appellant pull the object out from his waistband area. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that he had previously described the object to prosecutors as looking like a knife. But he then said that he thought it was more likely a gun and that he had not been definite with prosecutors that it was a knife. He said, “I don’t say exactly like a knife, but I thought it looked like a knife or something. . . . Knife also, but it looked like a gun also. . . . I s[aw] what looked like a knife[,] but I don’t think so it was not a knife. . . .” He further stated, “I don’t know like what is that, but that is like a knife or that is also a gun also. I[ ] said it most probably looked like a gun.”

The State next called Fort Worth Police Detective Jacob Brannan, who had investigated the offense. Brannan testified that he had spoken to the complainants and collected video from the store’s surveillance cameras. Some of the video was

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admitted at trial and published for the jury. The video captured the area behind the register counter, and for most of the robbery, only Appellant’s right side can be seen. Appellant appeared to be wearing disposable gloves, and as Sapkota testified, he had white makeup or powder or a mask on his face. Appellant seemed to be holding something in a front pocket or the waistband of his pants, but his hand obscured most of the object from the camera, so only a small part of it could be seen in the video, and it could only be seen briefly because of Appellant’s movements. Appellant’s hand appeared to be gripping the object by a handle or edge, and the small part that could be seen appeared to be shiny or silver in appearance. Appellant never took his hand off the object or took the object out of his pocket or waistband. Appellant could be heard telling the complainants something like, “Open up the cash registers before I pop you.”

Brannan testified that Appellant’s saying “Do something or I’ll pop you” could refer to hitting someone but could also refer to shooting someone. Regarding the object that Appellant had, Brannan testified that in the surveillance video, “[i]t appear[ed] that there is something in [Appellant’s] pocket” or waistband.

From witness interviews, Brannan obtained a description of the car in which Appellant left the store. The car was registered to “the father of an associate of [Appellant],” and further investigation led Brannan to consider Appellant as a suspect. Based on Brannan’s investigation, on the day after the offense, he obtained a search

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warrant for a room at a motel. Other officers conducted the search and found a gun “with other items from the robbery.”

Officers conducted a traffic stop of Appellant’s vehicle, and he was arrested and interviewed by Brannan. The interview was published to the jury. Appellant admitted in the interview that he had robbed the store, but he denied having a firearm and claimed “[his] hand was just there” at his waistband.

Fort Worth Police Officer Susan Shore testified after Brannan. Shore works in the crime scene search unit, and as part of that team, she participated in the search of the motel room the day after the robbery. Like Brannan, she stated that the officers found a handgun in the motel room. From pictures taken of the gun that were admitted at trial, it appeared to have a silver barrel and grip.

Standard of Review

In our evidentiary-sufficiency review, we view all the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational factfinder could have found the crime’s essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2789 (1979); Baltimore v. State, 689 S.W.3d 331, 341 (Tex. Crim. App. 2024). This standard gives full play to the factfinder’s responsibility to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S. Ct. at 2789; Baltimore, 689 S.W.3d at 341.

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Analysis

Appellant argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he used a gun in this case because, if Appellant had a gun during the robbery, it was not seen or referred to. We disagree; the jury had sufficient evidence to find that Appellant used or exhibited a firearm during the robbery. “A person uses or exhibits a deadly weapon under the aggravated robbery statute if [the person] employs the weapon in any manner that facilitates the robbery.” Hernandez v. State, 501 S.W.3d 264, 268 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2016, pet. ref’d) (citing McCain v. State, 22 S.W.3d 497, 502 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000)). The State may prove use of a deadly weapon by circumstantial evidence. See Garcia v. State, No. 14-19-00975-CR, 2021 WL 3576372, at *2 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] Aug. 12, 2021, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for publication) (stating that the fact that no witness, including the complainant, saw a knife in the defendant’s hands is not determinative of whether the defendant used or exhibited a knife); see also Tex. Penal Code § 1.07(a)(17)(A) (defining deadly weapon as a firearm “or anything manifestly designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of inflicting death or serious bodily injury”).

Here, Sapkota testified that he could not say for sure whether Appellant had either a knife or a gun, but he thought it was probably a gun. Moreover, whatever Sapkota remembered about the event later, immediately after the robbery, he told the 911 operator unequivocally that Appellant had a gun. See Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393, 399–400, 134 S. Ct. 1683, 1689 (2014) (noting that the law generally

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treats statements about an event made soon after perceiving it as “especially trustworthy because substantial contemporaneity of event and statement negate the likelihood of deliberate or conscious misrepresentation” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).

Further, the jury could find from the surveillance video that Appellant had an object in his waistband or pocket. The object could not be identified from the video because Appellant kept his hand on the object the entire time, and his hand blocked most of it from the camera’s view. But the small part of the object that could be seen looked shiny or silver, as did the gun found the day after the robbery in the motel room connected to Appellant. Moreover, throughout the robbery, Appellant kept his hand at his waistband, resting on or gripping the object, and the way that he held his hand was consistent with holding an object like a gun in his waistband or pocket. Although Appellant stated in his police interview that he did not have a weapon and that he had just had his hand at his waistband, the jury did not have to believe that statement. See Baltimore, 689 S.W.3d at 341–42 (noting jury’s role to evaluate credibility and weight of evidence and resolve conflict in evidence).

Further, the jury could interpret his threat to “pop” the complainants as a threat to shoot. See Cummings v. State, No. 05-11-00149-CR, 2012 WL 5350967, at *2 & n.2 (Tex. App.—Dallas Oct. 31, 2012, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication). The fact that Appellant never took the object out from his waistband area would not have prevented Sapkota from perceiving that Appellant was holding

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something at his waistband or understanding Appellant’s threat, and it did not prevent the jury from finding that Appellant used a gun during the robbery. Cf. Schneider v. State, 440 S.W.3d 839, 843 (Tex. App.—Austin 2013, pet. ref’d) (noting that it is not necessary for a witness to see a weapon in order to prove its existence and holding jury had sufficient evidence to infer defendant had and used or exhibited a gun during robbery when he kept his left hand at his waistband “and kept it there in such a manner as to give [the complainant] the fear and belief that [the defendant] had a weapon there as he claimed”).

The circumstantial evidence was sufficient for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Appellant used a firearm when committing the robbery. See Hernandez, 501 S.W.3d at 266 (holding circumstantial evidence sufficient to establish defendant had putty knife and used it in robbery); Arceneaux v. State, 177 S.W.3d 928, 931 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2005, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for publication) (holding sufficient evidence of gun use during robbery when defendant told complainant that he had a gun and kept his hand under his shirt as if to conceal a gun). We overrule Appellant’s sole point.

Conclusion

Having overruled Appellant’s sole point, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.

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/s/ Mike Wallach

Mike Wallach

Justice

Do Not Publish Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)

Delivered: August 27, 2026