Sells v. State

121 S.W.3d 748, 2003 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 63, 2003 WL 1055328
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 12, 2003
Docket73993
StatusPublished
Cited by458 cases

This text of 121 S.W.3d 748 (Sells v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sells v. State, 121 S.W.3d 748, 2003 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 63, 2003 WL 1055328 (Tex. 2003).

Opinions

OPINION

KELLER, P.J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court in which WOMACK,

KEASLER, HERVEY, HOLCOMB, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

In September 2000, a jury convicted appellant of capital murder.1 Pursuant to the jury’s answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071, §§ 2(b) and 2(e), the trial judge sentenced appellant to death.2 Direct appeal to this Court is automatic.3 Appellant raises thirty-six points of error. We will affirm.

I. SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE

A. Background

On the evening of December 30, 1999, appellant was at a convenience store when Terry Harris drove up and spoke to him. [753]*753Harris said that, when he returned from Kansas, he would repay the $5,000 drug debt he owed appellant. Later that evening, appellant went to a bar where he stayed until closing time. A waitress there, Noell Houchin, confirmed that appellant arrived around 10:00 p.m. and stayed for four hours. During that time he drank four beers and seemed obsessed with having sex with her. Houchin told the jury that appellant repeatedly asked to have sex with her, even offering to pay for it, despite her refusing repeatedly and telling him that she had a boyfriend. Houch-in also testified that appellant did not seem intoxicated when he left around 2:15 a.m.

After leaving the bar, appellant went to a flea market and drank more beer. After a while, appellant started thinking that Harris “had been fucking with” him about paying the debt, and he decided “to do something about it.” Appellant thereafter retrieved more beer and a knife from his house and drove over to Harris’s house. Appellant parked down the street from Harris’s home, which was located in a somewhat remote area. When appellant entered the backyard, the dog, who was in the front yard, began to bark. Appellant walked to the front yard and petted the dog. Because appellant had previously befriended the Harris’s dog, the dog stopped barking. After trying unsuccessfully to break in through the back door and a locked window, appellant found an open window and entered the residence. After looking in various rooms, appellant went into a room where two young girls were sleeping on bunk beds. Appellant laid on the bottom bunk with thirteen-year-old Kaylene Harris and cut off her panties with his knife. After appellant inserted his finger into Kaylene’s vagina, she jumped out of bed. Appellant, however, blocked the door and stabbed Kaylene as she tried to escape. Appellant then cut Kaylene’s throat several more times and went over to her eleven-year-old companion, Krystal Surles, who was still on the top bunk, and cut her throat.

Appellant left the trailer, wiped his fingerprints off a doorknob, and took two window screens with him because they had his fingerprints on them. Appellant disposed of the screens and his knife on the way to his home.

Krystal survived the attack and walked about a quarter of a mile to a neighbor’s house to get help. She later supplied a description of the man who had attacked her, and appellant was subsequently identified and arrested. When Harris returned home, he found the telephone line had been cut. He told the authorities that appellant had been to his home on several occasions and had learned where the telephone line was the day appellant helped Harris fix a leaking pipe at the house.

Scientific tests conducted on the clothes recovered from appellant and testimony from the medical examiner regarding Kay-lene’s wounds corroborated statements appellant gave to the police concerning the incident. However, appellant claimed that he had no specific intent to commit sexual assault when he broke into the Harris home. Rather, everything happened spontaneously.

B. Analysis

In point of error twenty-six, appellant asserts that the evidence is legally insufficient to prove capital murder because he did not specifically intend to commit aggravated sexual assault when he broke into the Harris trailer. In point of error twenty-seven, he asserts that the evidence is factually insufficient for the same reason.

In reviewing the legal sufficiency of the evidence, this Court looks at all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential [754]*754elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.4 The indictment in the instant case alleged that appellant intentionally caused the death of Kaylene Harris while in the course of “committing burglary of a habitation with intent to commit aggravated sexual assault.”5 The State’s evidence included appellant’s own statements that he broke into the Harris trailer without consent and sexually assaulted a young girl at knifepoint. His statements also indicated that he prepared to encounter persons in the home by securing a knife before arriving at the residence. Other evidence showed that appellant knew the Harris family and the layout of their home, knew that Terry Harris would be out-of-town, and knew the location of the phone line. Finally, the jury could have rationally inferred appellant’s intent to commit aggravated sexual assault from his obsession with sex at the bar earlier in the evening and from the fact that he secured a weapon before he went to the Harris home.

Looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we hold that the jury could have rationally determined that appellant murdered Kaylene Harris while in the course of committing burglary with the intent to commit aggravated sexual assault. Point of error twenty-six is overruled.

In a factual sufficiency review, this Court views all the evidence without the prism of “in the light most favorable to the prosecution” and sets aside the verdict only if the evidence supporting the verdict is so weak or so against the great weight and preponderance of contrary evidence as to render the verdict clearly wrong and manifestly unjust.6 A clearly wrong and unjust verdict occurs where the jury’s finding is “manifestly unjust,” “shocks the conscience,” or “clearly demonstrates bias.”7

In conducting such a review, we consider all of the evidence weighed by the jury, comparing the evidence which tends to prove the existence of the elemental fact in dispute to the evidence which tends to disprove it.8 We are authorized to disagree with the jury’s determination even if probative evidence exists which supports the verdict, but we must avoid substituting our judgment for that of the fact-finder.9

The evidence that appellant asserts weighs against a finding that he broke into the Harris home with a specific intent was his own statement that he had no such intent. This does not render the evidence factually insufficient. Point of error twenty-seven is overruled.

II. VOIR DIRE

A. Parole questions

1. Background

In points of error six through nineteen, appellant contends that the trial court violated Article I, section 10 of the Texas Constitution and the Due Process Clause [755]

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Bluebook (online)
121 S.W.3d 748, 2003 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 63, 2003 WL 1055328, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sells-v-state-texcrimapp-2003.