COURT OF APPEALS

SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS

FORT WORTH

NO. 02-10-00172-CR

JOHN DEWAYNE FRANKLIN APPELLANT

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE

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FROM THE 297TH DISTRICT COURT OF TARRANT COUNTY

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MEMORANDUM OPINION1

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Appellant John Dewayne Franklin appeals his conviction for capital 

murder. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 19.03(a)(2) (Vernon Supp. 2010). We will 

affirm.

On October 14, 2007, Franklin and Sammie Lee Hicks Jr. were driving in 

Franklin’s blue Cadillac when they noticed a white Suburban that looked like it 

was being driven by a drunk driver. Franklin and Hicks decided to follow the 

 

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

Suburban and rob the individuals who were inside—Pedro Mendoza and 

Anastacio Zavala. Once the Suburban parked at the apartment complex where 

Mendoza lived, Franklin and Hicks, who were carrying loaded guns, approached 

the vehicle and robbed Mendoza and Zavala. During the course of the robbery, 

Franklin shot Mendoza twice, killing him. A jury convicted Franklin of capital 

murder, and the trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole.2

Hicks entered into a plea agreement with the State and testified against Franklin

at his trial.

3

In a single point, Franklin argues that the State did not present sufficient 

evidence to corroborate Hicks’s accomplice-witness testimony.4 He contends 

that the State’s case against Franklin ―indispensably rests on‖ Hicks’s testimony, 

which ―establishes only that the offense occurred‖ and that Franklin ―might have 

been present at the scene.‖

Code of criminal procedure article 38.14 provides that a defendant cannot 

be convicted of an offense upon the testimony of an accomplice without other 

corroborating evidence ―tending to connect‖ the defendant to the offense. Tex. 

 

2

The State did not seek the death penalty.

3Under the plea agreement, the State agreed to recommend a term of 

imprisonment for Hicks of thirty-five years.

4

There is no dispute that Hicks was an accomplice. See Medina v. State, 

7 S.W.3d 633, 641 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999), cert. denied, 529 U.S. 1102 (2000) 

(defining accomplice as a person who participates before, during, or after the 

commission of the crime and can be prosecuted for the same offense as the 

defendant or for a lesser-included offense).
3

Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.14 (Vernon 2005); see Simmons v. State, 282 

S.W.3d 504, 505 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009). The accomplice-witness rule is a 

statutorily imposed sufficiency review and is not derived from federal or state 

constitutional principles that define the legal and factual sufficiency standards. 

Cathey v. State, 992 S.W.2d 460, 462–63 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999), cert. denied, 

528 U.S. 1082 (2000). When evaluating the sufficiency of corroboration 

evidence under the accomplice-witness rule, we ―eliminate the accomplice 

testimony from consideration and then examine the remaining portions of the 

record to see if there is any evidence that tends to connect the accused with the 

commission of the crime.‖ Clark v. State, 324 S.W.3d 620, 629 (Tex. App.—Fort 

Worth 2010, pet. ref’d) (quoting Solomon v. State, 49 S.W.3d 356, 361 (Tex. 

Crim. App. 2001)). The corroborating evidence need not prove the defendant’s 

guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by itself. Id. Nor is it necessary for the 

corroborating evidence to directly link the accused to the commission of the 

offense. Id. Rather, the evidence must simply link the accused in some way to 

the commission of the crime and show that rational jurors could conclude that 

this evidence sufficiently tended to connect the accused to the offense. 

Simmons, 282 S.W.3d at 508; see Malone v. State, 253 S.W.3d 253, 257 (Tex. 

Crim. App. 2008) (stating that while mere presence at the scene of a crime is 

insufficient to corroborate accomplice testimony, ―[p]roof that the accused was at 

or near the scene of the crime at or about the time of its commission, when 

coupled with other suspicious circumstances, may tend to connect the accused 
4

to the crime so as to furnish sufficient corroboration to support a conviction‖). We 

review the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict. Brown v. 

State, 270 S.W.3d 564, 567 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 2075 

(2009).

Hicks testified that on October 14, 2007, he and Franklin hung out at 

Hicks’s apartment for a while before leaving in Franklin’s blue Cadillac. They

came across a white Suburban that looked like it was being driven by a drunk 

driver and decided to follow it and rob its passengers. According to Hicks, 

Franklin told him, ―Those are the kind of people I rob.‖ Hicks testified that once 

the Suburban parked at an apartment complex, he and Franklin ―[g]ot [their] guns 

ready‖ before exiting the Cadillac; Franklin had a .357 revolver that he kept in a 

white work glove in the pocket behind the passenger’s seat and Hicks had a twoshot Derringer. Hicks approached the passenger side of the Suburban and 

Franklin approached the driver’s side, and Hicks noticed that both Mendoza and 

Zavala were asleep.5 Hicks testified that he reached into Zavala’s pocket 

through the open window and that he heard a gunshot after Franklin opened the 

driver’s side door and struck Mendoza with the gun. Franklin then came around 

to the passenger side of the vehicle, struck Zavala with the gun, and went 

 

5Mendoza and Zavala may have been passed out—Zavala told a police 

officer that he and Mendoza had been at a bar earlier in the night. Officer Matt 

Johnson testified that Zavala’s breath smelled of alcohol, and Dr. Marc Krouse 

testified that Mendoza’s blood alcohol figure was .324, approximately four times 

the legal limit for driving.
5

through his pockets. As Hicks returned to the Cadillac, he saw Franklin move 

back around to the other side of the Suburban, stand over Mendoza, and shoot 

him in the head. Later that night, Hicks told Princess Harris, the mother of his 

two children, some of the details about the incident.

Eliminating Hicks’s accomplice testimony from consideration, the record 

contains ample evidence to meet article 38.14’s corroboration requirement. 

Specifically, Officer Matt Johnson testified that he interviewed Maria 

Monegecarmona on October 14, 2007. Monegecarmona, a resident of the 

apartment complex where the murder occurred, told Johnson that she had 

observed a disturbance involving two black males who were driving a black 

Cadillac or Impala sedan.

6

 Authorities later located and seized a blue Cadillac 

sedan that was parked in the parking lot of the business where Franklin worked. 

Inside of the vehicle, investigators discovered a driver’s license and a Social 

Security card belonging to Franklin, a .357 revolver inside of a white glove in the 

pocket behind the passenger’s seat, and a partial cigar attached to a plastic tip in 

the ashtray.

Jamie Becker, a firearm and tool mark examiner for the Tarrant County 

Medical Examiner’s office, testified that she examined the .357 found in 

Franklin’s Cadillac and the bullets recovered during Mendoza’s autopsy. Based 

 

6Monegecarmona observed the vehicle at nighttime.
6

on her test results, Becker opined that the .357 fired the bullets that were 

retrieved from Mendoza’s body.

Investigators discovered a white work or garden glove lying on the ground 

near the Suburban. Carolyn Van Winkle, an employee of the DNA Section of the 

crime laboratory of the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office, testified that 

she compared a DNA sample belonging to Franklin with a DNA sample that had 

been collected from the white glove that was found on the ground near the crime 

scene and that the probability that the DNA from the glove belonged to someone 

other than Franklin was one in eleven quadrillion (11,000,000,000,000,000).7

Moreover, the glove looked similar to the glove that concealed the .357 inside of 

Franklin’s Cadillac.

Investigators also discovered a small cigar attached to a plastic tip on the 

ground near the crime scene. Visually, the cigar appears to be similar to the 

partial cigar discovered in Franklin’s Cadillac.

Harris testified that Franklin came over to the apartment that she shared

with Hicks on October 14, 2007; that Franklin and Hicks later left the apartment in 

Franklin’s blue Cadillac; and that Hicks was crying, shaking, and nervous after he 

returned a few hours later. She also testified that Franklin kept two guns in his 

car (a revolver and an automatic) and that Hicks had told her that he and Franklin 

had robbed two Hispanic men and that Franklin had shot one of them in the 

 

7Van Winkle testified that there are only between six and seven billion 

people on earth, a significantly smaller figure than eleven quadrillion.
7

head. Marc Krouse, the chief deputy medical examiner for Tarrant County, 

testified that the secondary cause of Mendoza’s death was a gunshot wound to 

the face.

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we hold that 

a rational factfinder could have concluded that the evidence detailed above 

sufficiently tended to connect Franklin to Mendoza’s murder. See Tex. Code 

Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.14; Simmons, 282 S.W.3d at 508–09; Cathey, 992 

S.W.2d at 462–63. Accordingly, Hicks’s accomplice testimony was sufficiently 

corroborated under the requirement of article 38.14. We overrule Franklin’s only 

point and affirm the trial court’s judgment.

BILL MEIER

JUSTICE

PANEL: DAUPHINOT, GARDNER, and MEIER, JJ.

DO NOT PUBLISH

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

DELIVERED: April 21, 2011