Vazquez, Juan Jose v. State

Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided October 14, 2013·No. 05-12-00548-CR·Published

Opinion

AFFIRMED; and Opinion Filed October 14, 2013.

S In The

Court of Appeals

Fifth District of Texas at Dallas

No. 05-12-00548-CR

No. 05-12-00549-CR

JUAN JOSE VAZQUEZ, Appellant V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

On Appeal from the 219th Judicial District Court Collin County, Texas

Trial Court Cause Nos. 219-82231-2011 and 219-82232-2011

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Before Justices O’Neill, Lang-Miers, and Evans Opinion by Justice Lang-Miers The State filed two indictments against appellant Juan Jose Vazquez, each alleging

multiple counts and degrees of sexual assault of a child, and each requiring the State to prove the victim was either under age fourteen or under age seventeen. Appellant pleaded not guilty, and all charges were tried together to a jury. The jury found appellant guilty of continuous sexual abuse of a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child, sexual assault of a child, and two counts of indecency with a child. The jury acquitted appellant of one count of sexual assault of a child. The jury assessed punishment at life imprisonment for each of the offenses of continuous sexual abuse of a child and aggravated sexual assault of a child, and twenty years in prison for each of the offenses of sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child. The trial court sentenced appellant according to the jury’s verdicts and rendered four judgments in the two cases.

In six issues on appeal, appellant argues that the evidence is insufficient to support the convictions for continuous sexual abuse of a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child, and one count of indecency with a child; double jeopardy bars some of the convictions; and the trial court abused its discretion by admitting certain evidence. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court’s judgments.

I. BACKGROUND

I.V. was sixteen years old when she testified that appellant, her father, sexually abused her from the time she was seven or eight years old until she was about fourteen years old. She said the abuse started when the family lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Plano, Texas, and that “the first time . . . stuck with [her].” She said her mother was at work and her younger sister was watching television. Appellant asked I.V. to follow him into the bedroom. He took her shirt off and asked her in Spanish if she “wanted to see his bird.” She said yes because she did not know appellant was referring to his “private area.” She said appellant made her “touch his private area and he touched [her]” on her shoulders and rubbed her breast. She said appellant grabbed her hand and made her touch his “private thing.”

I.V. testified that the family moved into a house in Allen before she started third grade, which would have been around 2003 or 2004. The house in Allen had two living areas; appellant kept his clothes in one of the living areas because he slept there if he and I.V.’s mother were having an argument. The house also had three bedrooms—a master and a bedroom each for I.V. and her sister. I.V. testified that appellant’s sexual abuse occurred more often after they moved to the house in Allen, she thought because her mother and appellant had more arguments and her mother was not around as often. I.V. said appellant would make sure her sister was occupied and her mother was gone or in the shower and then would ask I.V. “to go either to my room in my closet or my mom’s closet or in the living room where he kept all his clothes.” She said

appellant “asked me to masturbate him, for him while he was touching me. And at that time, yeah, something would come out of him. It was sperm.” She said she was old enough at that time to know what sperm was and described it as “a creamy white color . . . slimy and sticky.”

She said at times appellant touched her “with his hand, touching [her] skin and [her]

breast or he was massaging [her] on [her] shoulders or he would touch [her] butt.” She said appellant also touched her “front part of the front section,” which she said was her “genital area,” with his hand on “many occasions.” When appellant made her touch his penis, she said “something [would] come out of his penis” and this happened “on many occasions” in her bedroom closet. She said the semen “would fall on [her] skin or on [her] carpet” “[l]ike on [her] breasts . . . [h]e would make it fall there or on [her] belly.”

I.V. said appellant would also “put his penis between [her] legs and then he told [her] to masturbate it until sperm [came] out and it would fall on the carpet in [her] mom’s closet.” She said “[i]t happened a lot in – it was more often where his clothes were in the living room.” She said the floor in the living room had been carpeted at one time but then the carpet was removed. She said “there was a time when he forced [her] to put [her] mouth on his penis.” Appellant “grabbed [her] head and basically shoved his penis in [her] mouth.” I.V. could not remember how old she was then, but she remembered that it happened in the living room. She also said appellant touched her “[i]n [her] girl section,” in her “genital area,” on her “butt” and “his penis would touch [her] area in [her] buttocks or anus . . . as well as [her] genital area” on “many occasions.”

I.V. said sometimes she and appellant faced each other and other times she faced away from appellant while the abuse occurred. She testified that when she and appellant were facing each other, appellant’s penis would touch her “[o]n like the line, under me,” which she agreed was “the line of [her] female sexual organ,” her “genital area.” I.V. testified that appellant

“would put his penis between [her] legs” from both in front of her and from behind her, and “stuff [would] come out of his penis on those occasions.” She also said when appellant had her masturbate him or when his penis was between her legs, his “breathing got – you know when you run a lot and you start to breath harder, that was the way he would breathe.”

I.V. testified that she did not remember “every single time [appellant] did something,”

but she did remember “it happening a lot” and more often after the family moved to Allen, which was before she began third grade. I.V. testified that she turned fourteen in September 2009 and that “many of these things happened when [she was] under” fourteen years old and in the seventh and part of the eighth grades. She said she “started fighting back” when she was fourteen years old because appellant “was trying to put his penis inside me, penetrate me and [she] pushed him and after that [she] pushed back.” I.V. testified that the last time appellant “did something” she was in ninth grade, or school year 2010 to 2011.

I.V. explained to the jury how she came to tell her mother about the abuse. She testified that when she was a freshman in high school, appellant came home drunk, and he and her mother got into an argument “like usual.” She heard her mother scream, so she went into the living room and saw appellant beating her mother. I.V. pushed appellant off her mother. Appellant fell, got mad, and knocked I.V. down. I.V. told her mother that she did not “have to put up with [appellant]. He has been abusing me for too long of a time.” Appellant said “it wasn’t true” and asked I.V.’s mother not to call the police because she “didn’t know what he was capable of doing[.]” I.V.’s mother told appellant to leave, and he did; it was November 11, 2010.

I.V. testified that she knew appellant had tried “to run away with some chick,” because he told I.V. and her sister that he did not want to leave without telling them goodbye. But I.V.’s sister told their mother, and their mother confronted appellant and the other woman. When appellant’s plan to leave with the other woman did not work out, “that’s when he approached

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