Shuffield v. State

189 S.W.3d 782, 2006 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 365, 2006 WL 335911
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 15, 2006
DocketAP-74574
StatusPublished
Cited by612 cases

This text of 189 S.W.3d 782 (Shuffield 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
Shuffield v. State, 189 S.W.3d 782, 2006 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 365, 2006 WL 335911 (Tex. 2006).

Opinions

OPINION

PRICE, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court,

in which MEYERS, WOMACK, JOHNSON, HOLCOMB, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

In February 2003, a jury convicted the appellant of a 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 the appellant to death.2 Direct appeal to this Court is automatic.3 The appellant raises seven points of error. We shall affirm.

I. Facts

The State indicted the appellant for causing the death of Lance Walker while in the course of committing or attempting to commit the offense of robbery. The appellant and his brother Billy went over to Walker’s house, where they drank beer, smoked marijuana, and played darts. At some point, the appellant picked up a shotgun and shot Walker. With his brother’s [785]*785help, the appellant then took some items from the house, including money, guns, and Walker’s truck. In a statement he later gave to police, the appellant admitted that he had told Billy on the way to Walker’s house that he had been thinking about “sticking someone up and taking their vehicle.” The appellant told police that he had planned to kill the person for the vehicle and that Billy agreed to help.

II. Jury Selection

In his fourth and fifth points of error, the appellant asserts that the trial court erred in ruling that he failed to make a prima facie showing that the State had exercised its peremptory strikes with a discriminatory purpose against four venire members.4 After an initial review of the claim, we abated this appeal for a hearing regarding the State’s use of its peremptory strikes against venire members Seymour, Drake, Nelson, and Taitón.5

A Batson challenge generally gives rise to a three-step process. First, the defendant must make a prima facie case that a venire member was peremptorily excluded on the basis of race.6 Next, the prosecution must come forward with race-neutral reasons for the peremptory strike.7 Finally, the defendant has the opportunity to rebut the State’s explanations.8 The burden of persuasion remains with the defendant to prove purposeful discrimination.9 In Burkett v. Elem, the United States Supreme Court explained that “unless a discriminatory intent is inherent in the prosecutor’s explanation, the reason offered will be deemed race neutral.” 10

At the hearing, the lead trial prosecutor explained why the State had struck each of the four complained-of venire members. The second prosecutor echoed the lead prosecutor’s reasons and added some of her own recollections. Specifically, the prosecutors gave the following reasons for striking the venire members:

Seymour — was young, had a prior conviction for driving while intoxicated (DWI) and a prior conviction for possessing marijuana, felt he had been mistreated during the DWI because his license was suspended, held a grudge against one of the officers involved in the DWI because he felt the officer did not treat him right, was single, had no children, and vacillated regarding his personal feelings regarding the death penalty. The prosecutor explained that he had a practice of not allowing persons with convictions to sit on his juries, and the State was looking for parents because the victim was an adult child with “special problems” who was living alone. Co-counsel added that she was not sure that he was being completely honest about his criminal background.
Drake — did not believe in the death penalty but could assess it in the proper case, could not think of anything he thought was mitigating except possibly drug and alcohol abuse, appeared predisposed towards a life sentence if he thought the victim had any responsibili[786]*786ty in the altercation. The prosecutor explained that he thought part of the defense theory was that the appellant was a drug addict who was high at the time of the offense. Co-counsel remembered that Drake talked about needing to find premeditation before he could find someone guilty of capital murder. Nelson—her son was sent to prison for three years eight days before trial, circled two answers on her questionnaire regarding her beliefs generally opposing the death penalty, worked in the pharmacy of the Telford Unit and knew many of the inmates in the maximum security unit but did not believe that most of them would be future dangers, and constantly commented that she would need proof “beyond a shadow of a doubt” in order to find a person guilty of capital murder. Co-counsel remembered that Nelson had commented that evidence regarding sexual abuse of the defendant would have weighed heavily in mitigation, and co-counsel was certain that the appellant intended to raise such evidence.
Taitón—generally stated that he did not believe in and would not assess the death penalty, but equivocated and vacillated enough to defeat a challenge for cause.

None of the prosecutors’ explanations reflect an inherently discriminatory intent. The appellant attempted to rebut the State’s reasons with statistical calculations and a comparison with other jurors. In his comparative analyses, the appellant discussed the allegedly disparate treatment of venire members who shared only one isolated issue or view in common with a struck venire member. The appellant did not raise or discuss any disparate treatment of any venire member who shared a combination of reasons. The trial court found that the State’s explanations were race neutral and not pretexts for racial strikes. The trial court’s findings are supported by the record and are not clearly erroneous. Points of error four and five are overruled.

In his sixth point of error, the appellant claims that the trial court erred in releasing members based upon unsworn excuses. He asserts that Texas Government Code Section 62.110 allows a trial court to release venire members based upon a reasonable sworn excuse. In his brief, the appellant complains only about the excusing of venire member McElroy. Because the record shows that the appellant expressly stated that he had no objection to the court’s excusing McElroy, he has waived any error on this point.11 Point of error six is overruled.

II. Evidentiary Issues

In his first point of error, the appellant claims that the trial court erred in admitting gruesome, close-up photographs of the victim’s corpse because the photographs were “irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial in light of the defense’s decision not to refute the victim’s cause of death.”12 The appellant asserts that the photographs were rendered unnecessary because the issue of the cause of the victim’s death was presented by other evidence and was not in dispute. The appellant specifically complains about State’s Exhibits 19-22, 24-25, 27-29, and 66-68.

The admissibility of a photograph is within the sound discretion of the trial judge.13 Texas Rule of Evidence 401 de[787]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
189 S.W.3d 782, 2006 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 365, 2006 WL 335911, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/shuffield-v-state-texcrimapp-2006.