COURT OF APPEALS

SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS

FORT WORTH

NO. 02-18-00151-CR

LANE HUGH BROWN APPELLANT

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE

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FROM CRIMINAL DISTRICT COURT NO. 2 OF TARRANT COUNTY

TRIAL COURT NO. 1440468D

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MEMORANDUM OPINION1

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I. INTRODUCTION

Appellant Lane Hugh Brown pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and a jury 

assessed punishment of ten years’ confinement. In two issues, Brown argues 

that the trial court erred by excluding punishment evidence (1) of the victim’s 

postmortem toxicology report and (2) that the victim had been seen in 

 

1See Tex. R. App. P. 47.4.
2

possession of a marijuana pipe on the night before her death. Brown argues that 

both items of evidence were relevant to Brown’s motive for engaging in the 

behavior that led to the victim’s death. We will affirm.

II. BACKGROUND

On June 13, 2015, Brown was driving a motorcycle on U.S. Highway 81 in 

Wise County. The victim, Meagan Hays, was riding on the back of the 

motorcycle. A Department of Public Safety trooper observed Brown speeding

and pulled him over.

In the video from the trooper’s dashboard camera, as soon as Brown

brought the motorcycle to a stop, Hays appears to unbuckle her helmet and start 

to remove it. But just a few seconds after stopping, Brown sped back into traffic. 

In the video, Brown’s sudden action appears to surprise Hays, who releases her 

grip on the helmet and grabs Brown’s shoulder to maintain her balance.

A high-speed pursuit ensued. Brown left the highway for a two-lane road, 

ran a red light, and reached speeds that DPS troopers estimated to be in excess 

of 100 miles per hour. Brown then crashed into the back of a car that had pulled 

to the shoulder to yield to the sirens and lights of the trooper’s approaching patrol 

car.

The collision threw Hays ninety-six feet, and she died at the scene. Brown

sustained severe injuries. He testified that he had no memory of the accident 

and the events leading up to it. At the time of the accident, Hays was wearing a 

backpack containing Brown’s high-school diploma and birth certificate, two cell 
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phones (one of which belonged to Hays), a bag of what appeared to be 

marijuana, and a pink pipe containing what appeared to be marijuana residue.

A grand jury indicted Brown for murder; the indictment included a deadlyweapon notice. Brown entered an open plea of guilty to manslaughter and a 

deadly-weapon finding.

At the jury trial on punishment, the State’s theory was that Hays was an 

unwilling participant in Brown’s flight from police. The State presented evidence 

that Hays did not like motorcycles, did not like going fast, and was not a thrill 

seeker. Two DPS troopers opined that Hays did not expect Brown to flee from 

the initial traffic stop because the dashcam video appears to show her beginning 

to remove her helmet as soon as the motorcycle came to a stop.

Brown’s theory was that the marijuana and pipe belonged to Hays and that 

Hays urged him to flee from the initial traffic stop. Brown presented evidence 

that he and Hays attended a party at Brown’s residence the night before the 

crash. Hays declined another guest’s offer of a ride home, choosing instead to 

let Brown drive her home on his motorcycle.

Brown offered a postmortem toxicology report showing marijuana in Hays’s 

system and testimony that Hays was seen at the party with the marijuana pipe. 

The State objected, and the trial court excluded the evidence as irrelevant.

The jury assessed punishment at ten years’ confinement. The trial court 

rendered judgment accordingly, and this appeal followed.
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III. DISCUSSION

In two issues, Brown argues the trial court erred by excluding his proffered 

evidence about the toxicology report and Hays’s possessing the marijuana pipe 

at the party the night before the crash. Because Brown’s issues rely on similar 

facts and identical law, we will address them together.

A. Preservation of Error

The State argues that Brown failed to preserve his complaint for review 

because his argument on appeal as to why the evidence is admissible does not 

comport with his argument in the trial court. We disagree.

A complaint on appeal must comport with the complaint made in the trial 

court or the error is forfeited. Pena v. State, 285 S.W.3d 459, 464 (Tex. Crim.

App. 2009). In the trial court, Brown argued that the evidence about the pipe and 

the marijuana in Hays’s system was relevant because it tended to show that she 

owned the pipe and the marijuana and therefore not only knew that Brown was 

attempting to evade apprehension but encouraged the attempt. On appeal, 

Brown argues that “[i]f the jurors had known that the marijuana and the marijuana 

pipe in the backpack probably belonged to [Hays], they would have viewed 

[Brown’s] motive and actions more leniently” and that “evidence tending to show 

that [Hays] had her own motive for avoiding an encounter with police was 

certainly relevant to the jury’s assessment of [Brown’s] degree of culpability for 

her death.” The gist of Brown’s argument both at trial and on appeal is that the 

evidence is relevant as to why Brown acted the way he did. Therefore, his 
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argument on appeal comports with his argument at trial. See id. We hold that 

Brown preserved his complaint for our review. See Tex. R. App. P. 33.1(a)(1).

B. Standard of Review

We review a trial court’s evidentiary rulings under an abuse-of-discretion

standard. See Jenkins v. State, 493 S.W.3d 583, 607 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016). A 

trial judge's decision is an abuse of discretion only when it falls outside the zone 

of reasonable disagreement. Winegarner v. State, 235 S.W.3d 787, 790 (Tex. 

Crim. App. 2007). An evidentiary ruling will be upheld if it is correct on any 

theory of law applicable to the case. Gonzalez v. State, 195 S.W.3d 114, 126 

(Tex. Crim. App.), cert. denied, 549 U.S. 1024 (2006).

C. The Trial Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion

Evidence is relevant if it has “any tendency to make the existence of any 

fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or 

less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Montgomery v. State, 810 

S.W.2d 372, 386 (Tex. Crim. App. 1991) (op. on reh’g) (citing Tex. R. Evid. 401).

At the punishment phase of trial, “evidence may be offered by the state and the 

defendant as to any matter the court deems relevant to sentencing.” Tex. Code 

Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 37.07, § 3(a)(1) (West Supp. 2017).

The court of criminal appeals has noted that “admissibility of evidence at 

the punishment phase of a non-capital felony offense is a function of policy rather 

than relevance.” Rodriguez v. State, 203 S.W.3d 837, 842 (Tex. Crim. App. 

2006) (citing Murphy v. State, 777 S.W.2d 44, 63 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988) 
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(plurality op. on reh’g)). This is true because “by and large there are no discreet 

factual issues at the punishment stage. There are simply no distinct ‘facts . . . of 

consequence’ that proffered evidence can be said to make more or less likely to 

exist.” Id. (quoting Miller-El v. State, 782 S.W.2d 892, 896 (Tex. Crim. App. 

1990)).

Apart from Article 37.07, § 3(a), “the Legislature has not set a coherent 

policy to guide courts in discerning what evidence is appropriate to the 

punishment deliberation.” Miller-El, 782 S.W.2d at 896. Moving to fill that policy 

void, the court of criminal appeals has declared that “subject to limitations 

imposed by [art. 37.07, § 3(a)], evidence of ‘the circumstances of the offense 

itself or . . . the defendant himself’ will be admissible at the punishment phase.”

Id. (quoting Murphy, 777 S.W.2d at 63). Thus, determining what is relevant at 

the punishment phase of a non-capital felony offense is “a question of what is 

helpful to the jury in determining the appropriate sentence for a particular 

defendant in a particular case.” Rodriguez, 203 S.W.3d at 842 (Tex. Crim. App. 

2006) (citing Rogers v. State, 991 S.W.2d 263, 265 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999)).

Brown argues that the excluded evidence was relevant to show that Hays, 

not Brown, owned the marijuana and the pipe. Brown further argues that the 

excluded evidence suggests that his attempt to evade apprehension “may have 

been motivated by the more chivalrous—though admittedly misguided—notion of 

trying to protect [Hays] rather than merely himself.” Brown speculates that Hays 

might have said something to him about the marijuana and pipe, which prompted 
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Brown’s attempt to flee. Finally, Brown suggests that the excluded evidence 

shows that Hays had a motive for evading police and therefore shared culpability 

for her own death:

[E]vidence tending to show that [Hays] had her own motive for 

avoiding an encounter with police was certainly relevant to the jury’s 

assessment of [Brown’s] degree of culpability for her death—

especially in light of the State’s contention that [Hays] was entirely 

innocent of any wrongdoing and therefore that the whole weight of 

responsibility for her death must fall on [Brown].

We disagree with Brown’s relevancy arguments for three reasons. First,

and most importantly, Brown’s entire argument hinges on the premise that he 

fled police to avoid discovery of the marijuana and pipe. But nothing in the 

record supports this premise. There is no evidence that Brown knew the 

contraband was in the backpack. Assuming for the sake of argument that he did 

know, there is no evidence that he fled to prevent police from discovering the 

marijuana and pipe. Brown might have fled for some completely unrelated 

reason. The only person who knew Brown’s motive—Brown himself—cannot 

remember fleeing from the police, much less his motive for doing so. Thus, 

whether the marijuana and pipe had anything to do with Brown’s flight and 

Hays’s death is nothing more than speculation.

Second, even assuming for the sake of argument that a reasonable juror 

could conclude that Brown’s motive for fleeing from police was to prevent the 

marijuana’s discovery, whether Brown or Hays owned the marijuana is irrelevant.
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Brown’s motive and his culpability remain the same regardless of who actually 

owned the marijuana and pipe.

Third, even if Hays did own the marijuana and pipe, her ownership does 

not shift culpability for the high-speed flight and Hays’s death from Brown to 

Hays. Brown was in sole control of the motorcycle. Brown chose to lead police 

on a high-speed pursuit. And Brown crashed the motorcycle, killing Hays.

Brown speculates that Hays might have communicated to him her desire to 

evade police, but nothing in the record supports this speculation. Thus, we 

disagree with Brown’s assertion that “evidence tending to show that [Hays] had 

her own motive for avoiding an encounter with police was certainly relevant to the 

jury’s assessment of [Brown’s] degree of culpability for her death.” There is no 

evidence Hays communicated any such motive to Brown or that he was acting on 

Hays’s supposed motive when he fled from police.

In summary, Brown’s attempt to show that the excluded evidence would be 

helpful to the jury in assessing punishment is based on nothing more than 

speculation—speculation that Brown knew the marijuana and pipe were in the 

backpack, speculation that Brown fled from police because he knew the 

marijuana and pipe were in the backpack, and speculation that Hays 

communicated to Brown a desire to flee from police because of the marijuana

and pipe in the backpack. We cannot say that the trial court’s decision to 

exclude Hays’s toxicology report and testimony that Hays was seen with the 

marijuana pipe falls outside the zone of reasonable disagreement. See 
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Winegarner, 235 S.W.3d at 790. We therefore hold that the trial court did not 

abuse its discretion by excluding the evidence. See Jenkins, 493 S.W.3d at 607. 

We overrule both of Brown’s issues.

IV. CONCLUSION

Having overruled both of Brown’s issues, we affirm the trial court’s 

judgment. See Tex. R. App. P. 43.2(a).

/s/ Bill Meier

BILL MEIER

JUSTICE

PANEL: MEIER, KERR, and BIRDWELL, JJ.

DO NOT PUBLISH

Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)

DELIVERED: June 7, 2018