Wilson v. State

185 S.W.3d 481, 2006 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 425, 2006 WL 475431
Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas·Decided March 1, 2006·No. AP-75062·Published·Cited by 94 cases

Opinions

OPINION

HOLCOMB, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court,

in which KELLER, P.J., MEYERS, KEASLER, HERVEY, and COCHRAN, JJ. join.

On January 21, 2006, appellant filed a motion for rehearing. We overrule appellant’s request for rehearing, withdraw our initial opinion, and issue this corrected opinion in its stead.

In 1989, appellant was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. On direct appeal, a majority of this Court reversed the judgment based on an error in jury selection. Wilson v. State, 863 S.W.2d 59, 60 (Tex.Crim.App.1993). The cause was remanded to the trial court, and in 1994, appellant was again tried and convicted of capital murder. Pursuant to the second jury’s answers to the special issues, appellant was again sentenced to death. On direct appeal from the second conviction and death sentence, we affirmed the judgment of the trial court, and the United States Supreme Court denied appellant’s writ of certiorari. Wilson v. State, 522 U.S. 829, 118 S.Ct.93, 139 L.Ed.2d 49 (U.S.Tex.1997), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1186, 124 S.Ct. 1409, 158 L.Ed.2d 91 (2004). Both appellant’s state and federal writs of habeas corpus were denied. Ex parte Wilson, WR-40,438-01 (Tex.Crim.App.1999) (not designated for publication); Wilson v. Cockrell, 2003 WL 21766540 (2003), cert. denied sub nom., Wilson v. Dretke, 540 U.S. 1186, 124 S.Ct. 1409, 158 L.Ed.2d 91(2004). Appellant is before this Court now on direct appeal from the trial court’s denial of his request for post-conviction DNA testing under Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. We will affirm.

Our holding requires a thorough recitation of the facts. The victim, who we will refer to by her nickname Maggie, was a five-year-old girl. On the morning of November 30, 1988, Maggie’s body was found face-down on the side of a road in a secluded area of Grand Prairie. Her shorts had been pulled down, exposing her buttocks. It was immediately apparent that she had been run over by a car. A further examination revealed that she had been both vaginally and anally raped, strangled, and suffocated. There were tire marks on her body which reflected two distinct tire patterns. A pair of semen-stained panties were found near Maggie’s body.

Investigators discovered that Maggie, who lived in an apartment complex with her mother, brother, and a live-in baby sitter,1 had been abducted from her bed[483]*483room at night. The window in her bedroom had been broken from the outside. Several pieces of glass recovered from inside and outside Maggie’s bedroom had appellant’s fingerprints on them.

Several witnesses testified that they saw appellant driving a red spray-painted Mercury Cougar on the night of the murder, and in a statement he gave police, appellant admitted to driving the car that evening. The two types of tire tracks found on Maggie’s body were consistent with the two types of tires on the Cougar.2 Thirty-eight human hairs, which were found to be microscopically consistent with Maggie’s hair, were recovered from the undercarriage of the Cougar, and fibers mixed in with those hairs were consistent with the Cougar’s carpet fibers. Nineteen additional hairs were recovered from inside the Cougar, and they were found to be consistent with Maggie’s hair. A chest or pubic hair recovered from Maggie’s genitalia was consistent with a racial group that includes Hispanics; appellant is Hispanic.

Additional evidence in support of the State’s theory involved a similar crime committed by appellant the same evening that Maggie was murdered. Namely, an additional complainant from the same apartment complex testified that appellant broke into her apartment and sexually assaulted her as she slept on the couch. When she awoke, she ordered appellant to leave. The complainant testified that it appeared that appellant had entered through a window. He offered her drugs in exchange for sex; declining, she again ordered appellant to leave, which he did.

There was also testimony from several witnesses who saw appellant drive toward the apartment complex (instead of heading home in the other direction) just before midnight the evening of Maggie’s murder. These witnesses further testified that appellant had been drinking heavily and using cocaine before he departed. When investigators were given appellant’s name by another child living in the apartment complex, a police officer went to appellant’s residence to question him. Upon the officer’s arrival, appellant fled.

In sum, there was ample physical and circumstantial evidence tying appellant to the murder; he was placed at the scene of the murder; he confessed to driving the red spray-painted car that ran over Maggie’s body; and he committed a similar sex crime, using the same method (entering through a window), just before abducting Maggie.3

Despite the overwhelming evidence connecting appellant to the kidnapping and murder of Maggie, appellant requested that the trial court order additional testing of certain pieces of evidence, including the hair evidence, the anal swab and smear, blood, and tissue samples. The trial court denied his request, finding that “the defendant has failed to meet the requirements of Chapter 64 for forensic DNA testing.”

[484]*484Appellant appeals the trial court’s ruling to this Court and complains (1) that some of the State’s biological evidence, which it admits is still in its possession and has never been tested, would exonerate appellant, and (2) that had the more “sophisticated and discriminating” forms of DNA testing been available during appellant’s second trial, he would not have been convicted. Specifically, appellant avers that the 2003 amendments to Chapter 64 have “abrogated this Court’s more onerous construction of Article 64.03(a)(2)(A),” and if the testing were to show that “it was all the DNA of some other perpetrator, not Wilson, then it is at least more likely than not that Wilson would not have been convicted.” See Act of May 9, 2003, 78th Leg. R.S., ch. 13, § 3, 2003 Tex. Gen. Laws 16; Tex.Code CRim. PROC Ann. art. 64.03(a)(2)(A) (Vernon Supp.2005).

The State responds that appellant is not entitled to additional DNA testing because identity was not an issue in this case, and appellant would not be able to show that he would not have been convicted if the additional testing were performed. The parties agree that our review is de novo. See, e.g., Rivera v. State, 89 S.W.3d 55, 59 (Tex.Crim.App.2002). Applying a de novo standard of review, we conclude that appellant is not entitled to new testing under Chapter 64. Skinner v. State, 122 S.W.3d 808, 813 (Tex.Crim.App.2003).

To be entitled to post-conviction DNA testing under Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, appellant bears the burden of establishing, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he “would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing.” See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann.

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Wilson v. State, 185 S.W.3d 481, 2006 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 425, 2006 WL 475431 (Tex. 2006).

185 S.W.3d 481 (Wilson v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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