Williams v. State

916 S.W.2d 53, 1996 Tex. App. LEXIS 97, 1996 WL 8209
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 11, 1996
Docket01-95-00529-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 916 S.W.2d 53 (Williams 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
Williams v. State, 916 S.W.2d 53, 1996 Tex. App. LEXIS 97, 1996 WL 8209 (Tex. Ct. App. 1996).

Opinion

OPINION

TAFT, Justice.

A jury found appellant, Kenneth Ray Williams, guilty of aggravated robbery and assessed punishment at 35-years confinement and a $4,000 fine. Appellant challenges the admission of a confession letter and the prosecutor’s jury argument regarding parole and actual time served. We affirm.

Facts

Charles Orsak was an 82-year-old life-long resident of Snook, Texas. On November 11, 1994, Mr. Orsak was driving his pickup truck when he encountered appellant walking down the road. Appellant flagged down Mr. Or-sak, lured him from his truck, and then beat Mr. Orsak severely with a stick. Appellant took Mr. Orsak’s wallet and pickup truck; the truck contained a 20 gauge shotgun and a drink carrier. Appellant was observed, by a nearby resident, to be in the area just prior to the robbery.

Mr. Orsak crawled to a nearby house and called 911. The next day the pickup, without the shotgun and the drink carrier, was found abandoned in Snook. That same day appellant was arrested, next to a public pay phone, after appellant called the sheriffs department. A beer can recovered near the pickup was submitted to the Texas Department of *55 Public Safety latent fingerprint laboratory which identified a print from the beer can as appellant’s.

After his arrest and receiving his warnings, appellant gave a detailed written statement incriminating himself, and led deputies to the stolen shotgun and drink carrier.

Admission of Confession Letter

In his first point of error, appellant contends that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting into evidence an incriminating letter purportedly written by appellant. Appellant argues that the State did not prove the authenticity of the confession letter by showing that appellant wrote it.

During appellant’s stay in the Burleson County jail, a letter admitting his guilt to the crime and signed “Kenneth Ray Williams” was sent to the district attorney. At a pretrial hearing on appellant’s motion to suppress the confession letter, appellant testified that he had another inmate write and sign the letter, but appellant denied knowledge of the letter’s contents. The State then agreed to offer the letter for the limited purpose that appellant asked another inmate to send the letter to the district attorney.

However, at trial the State offered the letter into evidence without limitation. Appellant’s attorney objected: “Your honor, we’re going to object to this. There’s no proper predicate been shown as to who wrote the statement or who signed it.” The objection was overruled, the trial court admitted the letter into evidence, and it was read to the jury.

A.Preservation of Error

The State contends that appellant failed to preserve error by not making a specific objection to the admission of the letter. Tex.R.App.P. 52(a) provides that in order to preserve error for appellate review, a party must have presented to the trial court a timely objection, stating the specific grounds for the ruling he desired the court to make, if the specific grounds were not apparent from the context. The specific grounds are required to inform the trial judge of the basis of the objection and afford him the opportunity to rule on the objection, and to afford opposing counsel an opportunity to supply other testimony. Maynard v. State, 685 S.W.2d 60, 64-65 (Tex.Crim.App.1985). Therefore, an objection is preserved for appellate review when the record adequately shows that the trial judge and opposing counsel were aware of the substance of a defendant’s objection, or where the correct ground of exclusion was obvious. Thomas v. State, 723 S.W.2d 696, 700-01 (Tex.Crim.App.1986).

Appellant objected to the admission of evidence on the basis that no proper predicate had been shown as to who wrote the statement or who signed it. This was sufficient to apprise the trial court and the State that the ground was lack of authentication of the letter. Tex.R.Crim.Evid. 901(a) requires, as a condition precedent to admissibility, sufficient evidence to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims it to be. Under these circumstances, we conclude appellant adequately preserved his first point of error for review.

B. Admission of the Confession Letter

The determination of admissibility of evidence is within the sound discretion of the trial court. Werner v. State, 711 S.W.2d 639, 643 (Tex.Crim.App.1986). A trial court’s decision will not be reversed unless there is clear abuse of discretion. Holloway v. State, 751 S.W.2d 866, 870 (Tex.Crim.App.1988). A trial court abuses its discretion when its “decision was so clearly wrong as to lie outside that zone within which reasonable persons might disagree.” Cantu v. State, 842 S.W.2d 667, 682 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).

In this ease, the record reflects that, despite appellant’s timely and proper objection, the trial court admitted the confession letter without any proof of authenticity by the State. The trial court’s decision admitting the letter and allowing it to be read to the jury was erroneous.

C. Harm Analysis

Having found error, the trial court’s judgment should be reversed, unless the appellate court is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt the error made no contribution *56 to the conviction or punishment. Tex. R.App.P. 81(b)(2). An appellate court should not determine the harmlessness of an error simply by examining whether there exists overwhelming evidence supporting a guilty verdict; rather, the appellate court should calculate as much as possible the probable impact of the error on the jury in light of the existence of the untainted evidence. Harris v. State, 790 S.W.2d 568, 587-88 (Tex.Crim.App.1989). To reach such a determination, the appellate court should first isolate the error and all of its effects. Id. at 588. Some of the effects that an appeals court should examine include: the source of the error, the nature of the error, whether or to what extent it was emphasized by the State, its probable collateral implications, consideration of how much weight a juror would probably place upon the error, and whether declaring the error harmless would encourage the State to repeat it with impunity. Id. at 587. Second, the appellate court should ask whether a rational trier of fact might have reached a different result if the error and effects had not resulted. Id. at 588. Applying these standards, the appeals court must be cognizant that overwhelming evidence can be a factor to be considered. Id.

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Bluebook (online)
916 S.W.2d 53, 1996 Tex. App. LEXIS 97, 1996 WL 8209, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-v-state-texapp-1996.