Terrell v. State

228 S.W.3d 343, 2007 Tex. App. LEXIS 4142, 2007 WL 1517476
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 23, 2007
Docket10-05-00151-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 228 S.W.3d 343 (Terrell 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
Terrell v. State, 228 S.W.3d 343, 2007 Tex. App. LEXIS 4142, 2007 WL 1517476 (Tex. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinions

OPINION

BILL VANCE, Justice.

Don Terrell was convicted of indecency with a child and was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He appeals, asserting two issues. We will affirm.

Missing Evidence

Terrell’s first issue contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss because the State’s failure to preserve the audiotape and videotape of Terrell’s police interview and the audiotape of the victim’s police interview violated his due course of law rights under the Texas Constitution. See Tex. Const, art. I, § 19.

We recently held that the Texas Constitution’s due course of law provision provides a greater level of protection than the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that, under it, “the State has a duty to preserve material evidence which has apparent exculpatory value, encompassing both exculpatory evidence and evidence that is potentially useful to the defense.” Pena v. State, 226 S.W.3d 634, 651 (Tex.App.-Waco 2007, no pet. h.). We adopted the following approach as the standard for a due course of law claim:

the following three factors should be weighed to decide whether a defendant’s state constitutional due process rights have been violated by the State’s failure to preserve potentially exculpatory evidence:
(1) would the evidence have been subject to discovery or disclosure;
(2) if so, did the state have a duty to preserve the evidence; and
(3)if there was a duty to preserve, was that duty breached, and what consequences should flow from the breach.

Id. at 651 (citing Deberry v. State, 457 A.2d 744, 750 (Del.1983)).

With regard to the third factor of this analysis, ...:

[W]e draw a balance between the nature of the State’s conduct and the degree of prejudice to the accused. The State must justify the conduct of the police or prosecutor, and the defendant must show how his defense was impaired by loss of the evidence. In general terms, the court should consider “(1) the degree of negligence or bad faith involved, (2) the importance of the lost evidence, and (3) the sufficiency of the other evidence adduced at the trial to sustain the conviction.” United States v. Loud Hawk, 628 F.2d 1139, 1152 (9th Cir.1979) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Higginbotham, 539 F.2d 17, 21 (9th Cir.1976)).

Id. at 651 (quoting Deberry, 457 A.2d at 752).

N.M., the fourteen-year-old victim, testified that she was standing alone on the street corner near her home in Bryan around 8:00 a.m., waiting on the school bus. A black four-door car drove up right next to her and stopped; it had driven by a minute before and the driver, a black male, had looked at her. When the car stopped, N.M. felt uncomfortable, and when she looked to see why the car was not driving off, she saw that the driver’s pants were unzipped, his penis was exposed, and he was masturbating while looking at her. She could not get to her house because of where the car was stopped, so she looked away. A couple of minutes later, her sister came out and [346]*346yelled “hi,” but N.M. was too afraid to scream. As the car left, N.M. got its license plate number and went home, called 9-1-1, and told the operator the license plate number. Kelly Davis, a police officer, came to N.M.’s home and took a report, and N.M. provided a written statement. Davis described N.M. as visibly shaken and scared. N.M.’s sister described her after the incident as “really shaking” with watery eyes, as if N.M. had been crying or was about to cry.

Davis learned that the car, a black Cadillac, was registered to Terrell’s mother-in-law and that it was being driven by her daughter (Terrell’s wife). Davis then went to Terrell’s house and located the car; its hood was warm to the touch. Davis knocked on the door, but no one answered. She returned to the station to have a photo lineup created, and while she was writing her report, Terrell showed up. Detective Neveu interviewed Terrell; the interview was audiotaped and videotaped. Davis watched and listened to the interview by way of a television monitor; Terrell did not know that he was being recorded or that Davis was watching and listening. Davis could not locate either tape, and she did not know what happened to them. Later that day, Davis and Neveu took a tape-recorded statement from N.M. during which she identified Terrell as the driver from a photo lineup. Davis could not locate that audiotape either.

We will apply Pena to Terrell’s claim that the State’s failure to preserve these three tapes violated his due course of law rights. The first two Pena factors are not in dispute; the tapes were subject to disclosure and the State failed to preserve them. We thus turn to the third factor and what consequences should flow from the State’s failure to preserve the tapes.

Because Davis was not the detective who interviewed Terrell, she did not personally retrieve the tapes from the recorders and “property-index” them. Davis testified that the audiotape and videotape of Terrell’s interview were not property-indexed under the correct case number, and though she went back and made a log of all tapes that were property-indexed from that date to the current date, she could not locate the tapes of Neveu’s interview of Terrell. Davis testified to what occurred in the interview (she had made notes of the entire interview and had included them in her report), including the following:

• Terrell had heard about the allegations from his mother-in-law and had come to the station to clear his name.
• Terrell admitted that he had driven the Cadillac that morning.
• He claimed that he had been on the way to a tire shop but changed his mind and decided to go to the car wash. On the way to the car wash, the fuel light came on, so he decided to go home.
• Terrell admitted being in the general vicinity of the alleged offense and to seeing children waiting for the school bus.
• He said that he did see a young, fair-complected female standing alone by a stop sign. (This statement was unusual because Davis and Neveu had never said anything to Terrell about the victim.). Neveu did not ask Terrell why he focused on the girl or where she was standing.
• He denied exposing himself.
• Terrell did not request an attorney ■ during the interview.

As for the tape-recorded statement of N.M., Davis said that N.M. immediately identified Terrell as the driver from a photo lineup. Because her identification was so fast, Davis had her look again, and she selected Terrell again.

[347]*347 Degree of Negligence or Bad Faith

The record reveals that Terrell’s motion to dismiss was not made until both sides had rested and closed. The State thus had no reason to have called Detective Neveu as a witness to provide testimony about the missing tapes.

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Bluebook (online)
228 S.W.3d 343, 2007 Tex. App. LEXIS 4142, 2007 WL 1517476, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/terrell-v-state-texapp-2007.