Stewart v. State

995 S.W.2d 251, 1999 Tex. App. LEXIS 4180, 1999 WL 351286
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 3, 1999
Docket14-97-00568-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 995 S.W.2d 251 (Stewart 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
Stewart v. State, 995 S.W.2d 251, 1999 Tex. App. LEXIS 4180, 1999 WL 351286 (Tex. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

OPINION

MAURICE E. AMIDEI, Justice.

Jamie L. Stewart appeals his conviction for attempted capital murder. The jury assessed his punishment at 50 years imprisonment and a $10,000.00 fine, to run concurrently with appellant’s conviction in cause number 12006 for aggravated robbery. In seven issues, appellant contends the trial court erred in: (1) refusing to charge the jury on the lesser included offense of aggravated assault; (2) overruling appellant’s objection to improper pros-ecutorial argument on facts not in evidence; (3) admitting into evidence song lyrics written in appellant’s handwriting; (4) admitting into evidence photographs of appellant’s tattoos and opinion testimony interpreting the tattoos as signifying gang membership; (5) admitting evidence of appellant’s cousin’s gang affiliation; (6) overruling appellant’s objection to expert testimony regarding gang membership; and (7) denying appellant’s claim of double jeopardy under the Texas Constitution. We affirm.

On March 9, 1995, Sadie Emery (Emery) was visiting friends on the Blinn College campus. At about 9:00 p.m., she was walking to her van in the parking lot, and was attacked by appellant. Appellant forced her into her van, and told her not to look at him or he would kill her. Appellant drove Emery’s van a short distance, stopped, then ordered Emery to get out. When Emery got out of the van, she noticed appellant had a knife and a small, rectangular gun. Appellant then ordered Emery to lie face down on the ground. Appellant then attempted to shoot her with his .25 caliber pistol, but the gun would not fire. Emery testified she heard clicking sounds, and she assumed appellant was attempting to fire his gun. Emery then said, “You’re going to kill me,” and appellant said, “I’m not going to kill you.” Appellant then stabbed Emery three times in the back of the neck with a large butcher knife. Appellant then left in Emery’s van. Emery started calling for help, and saw lights in houses across the street. She could not walk, because her right leg would not move at all. The police arrived, and Emery gave the officers the license plate number of her van. She described her attacker as a black man in his early twenties wearing a blue plaid shirt and black knit cap.

After leaving Emery, appellant drove her van to Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he was stopped by police for speeding. Appellant told the officers his aunt owned the van, and that he was traveling from Houston. The officers checked the license plate on the van which revealed the van was stolen out of Brenham, and then arrested appellant. The van contained a jammed .25 caliber pistol, a bloody knife, rubber gloves, a black knit cap and various articles of appellant’s clothing including a blue plaid shirt and a black jacket. The holster for the pistol was clipped to appellant’s pants. Appellant said Curtis Winters did the stabbing. Winters testified at the trial that he did not know appellant, and had nothing to do with the offense. His mother stated that Winters was in *254 Houston the night of the attack. Emery observed Winters in court, and stated that he was not her attacker. Appellant testified that he took Emery’s van after Winters stabbed her because he wanted to get to his mother’s house in Jackson, Mississippi. Appellant acknowledged: (1) that he had been wearing a blue plaid shirt that night, (2) that he was the individual identified by other witnesses seen hiding behind a planter at Blinn earlier that night; and (3) that he had previously been in possession of both the knife and the gun used to attack Emery.

Dr. James Rose, a neurosurgeon, treated Emery at the hospital, and testified that Emery’s spinal cord had been cut or lacerated. Dr. Rose testified that the knife wound that cut Emery’s spinal cord was six to seven inches deep. After several months of rehabilitation treatment, Emery was capable of getting around -with a leg brace on her right leg, but still had no feeling on her left side. Dr. Rose stated her condition is permanent and described it as “hemiparesis,” or a weakness on the right side of her body, and loss of pain and temperature on the left side.

In issue one, appellant contends that the trial court erred when it denied his request for a lesser included instruction of aggravated assault in the jury charge on guilt or innocence. The State contends there is no error because there is no evidence raising the issue of a lesser included offense.

Before a charge on a lesser included offense is warranted, (1) the offense must be included within the proof necessary to establish the offense charged, and (2) some evidence must exist in the record that would permit a jury to rationally find that if the defendant is guilty, he is guilty only of the lesser offense. Bignall v. State, 887 S.W.2d 21, 23 (Tex.Crim.App.1994); Rousseau v. State, 855 S.W.2d 666, 672 (Tex.Crim.App.1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 919, 114 S.Ct. 313, 126 L.Ed.2d 260 (1993). In making this assessment, we are cognizant that if evidence from any source raises the issue of a lesser included offense, a charge on that offense must be included in the court’s charge. Saunders v. State, 840 S.W.2d 390, 391 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).

In this case, appellant denied any part of the attack on Ms. Emery, and testified that Curtis Winters stabbed her with the knife. He stated he witnessed the attack on Ms. Emery, became scared, and took Emery’s van to go to his mother’s home in Jackson, Mississippi. “By his own testimony, the appellant was either guilty of attempted capital murder or guilty of no offense at all.” Wallace v. State, 679 S.W.2d 1, 3 (Tex.Crim.App.1983) (appellant not entitled to jury charge on lesser offense of aggravated assault because he contended he did not point or fire a gun at a police officer). We find the trial court properly refused to charge the jury on aggravated assault because appellant contended he did not have any part of the attack on Ms. Emery. Id. We overrule appellant’s contention in issue one.

In issue two, appellant contends the trial court erred in denying appellant’s motion for a mistrial because the prosecutor argued to the jury that Ms. Emery was precluded from making an in-court identification of appellant because she was only able to identify one of two photographs in the hospital as resembling her attacker. Appellant’s counsel objected on the grounds that the prosecutor was not precluded from asking Ms. Emery to identify appellant, and this was a misstatement of the law. Appellant’s counsel further contended that Ms. Emery could not identify appellant, and asked the court to instruct the jury to disregard these comments. The trial court overruled appellant’s objection and denied a mistrial. Appellant argues that by arguing to the jury that Ms. Emery could have identified appellant except for the fact that the court somehow precluded her from doing so, the State inserted new and harmful facts into the case that were not supported by the evidence at trial.

*255 The State’s argument and the exchange complained of is as follows, in pertinent part:

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
995 S.W.2d 251, 1999 Tex. App. LEXIS 4180, 1999 WL 351286, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stewart-v-state-texapp-1999.