Court Opinion

ID: 9678957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:37:22.305353+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:09.113232
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
I would hold that the erroneous contemporaneous limiting instruction regarding the prior statements of witness Katrina Smith was harmful and remand this case for a new trial; I therefore dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the error was harmless.
Rule 105(a) of the Texas Rules of Evidence provides that “[w]hen evidence ... admissible for one purpose but not ... for another purpose is admitted, the [trial] court, upon request, shall restrict the evidence to its proper scope and instruct the jury accordingly.” 1 Restrict is defined as “[t]o restrain within bounds; to limit; to confine”2 and “to set bounds or limits to.”3 Further, as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals explained in Rankin,
The language of Rule 105(a) does not address the temporal aspect of when limiting instructions should be given, but, rather, sets out the circumstances under which an instruction must be given. However, ... we assume that the spirit of the rule and the contemplation of the rule-makers includes two separate notions: First, that limiting instructions actually curb the improper use of evidence and, second, that the rule should act in a way that not only “restrict[s] the evidence to its proper scope,” but does so as effectively as possible. Working under these notions, logic demands that *855the instruction be given at the first opportunity. If limiting instructions impede the improper use of evidence, then an instruction given when the evidence is admitted limits that evidence to its proper scope immediately. An instruction given for the first time during the jury charge necessarily leaves a window of time in which the jury can contemplate the evidence in an inappropriate manner. For example, ... if the State offered evidence to show that a defendant accused of child molestation had previously molested two other young girls, then that evidence may properly be considered to show intent to molest the complainant. However, jurors may also improperly use that evidence to form a negative opinion of the defendant prior to receiving limiting instructions from the judge. Jurors cannot be expected to know exactly how to use the evidence unless we tell them, nor can we guarantee that they will “remain open-minded until the presentation of all of the evidence and instructions.... ” Additionally, we cannot tell how jurors have used the admitted evidence. Thus, the possibility exists that, unless we instruct the jury on evidence concurrently with its admittance, jurors may, unbeknownst to us, use that evidence improperly by forming an indelible perception of the defendant that will work unfairly to his inevitable detriment.
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Limiting instructions given for the first time during the jury charge thus do not constitute an efficacious application of Rule 105(a) since it allows for the possibility that evidence will be used improperly in clear contravention to the purpose of the rule. Since limiting instructions operate most effectively when given simultaneously with the relevant evidence, it would not do to grant trial courts “discretion” to deliver those instructions, after they had been properly requested, at a less opportune time.4
In Hammock, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reiterated,
Passage of time and accumulation of other evidence make[s] it hard to accomplish the intended purpose (of a limited instruction) at the end of the case. If the jury is required to consider evidence in a limited manner, then it must do so from the moment the evidence is admitted. Allowing the jury to consider evidence for all purposes and then telling them to consider that same evidence for a limited purpose only is asking a jury to do the impossible. If a limited instruction is to be given, it must be when the evidence is admitted to be effective.5
The record shows that the trial court’s contemporaneous instruction informed the jury that they could consider the prior evidence in assessing Katrina’s credibility but did not communicate to them the limits or bounds of their consideration; that is, the contemporaneous instruction did not inform the jury members of what they could not do — treat the evidence as substantive evidence of Appellant’s guilt.
After the trial court gave the erroneous contemporaneous instruction, Katrina answered in response to the State’s questions about her conversations with Appellant on the morning of the offense that she did not recall telling Detective Jamison that Appellant had indicated that the police were outside his house, that she did not remember Appellant saying that he was going to jail, that she did not recall Appellant saying that he knew he was going to jail *856because the police were outside, that she did not recall Appellant saying that he did not know why the police were out there, and that she did not remember calling Appellant three or four times or telling the prosecutor that she had tried to call Appellant back about four times after the telephone went dead during their conversation. In response to the State’s question, “Do you recall speaking to [Appellant] and him indicating he wished he would die?”, Katrina answered, “I recall that.” She also confirmed that Appellant had told her that he was not going to see her anymore and that she had taken him seriously.
The jury demonstrated its confusion regarding the erroneous contemporaneous instruction on the same day that they received it. At a break, one of the jurors gave the bailiff a note for the judge that said, “Judge, could you please explain impeachment of a witness. We are not sure what you meant.”
Like the jury, the State demonstrated its confusion concerning any limitations regarding the use of Katrina’s testimony when the prosecutor argued to the court, “We submit that this was a suicide by cop and that he was not coming out and he is calling and saying his good-byes. So this goes to his mental state.” Additionally, in the State’s final closing argument, the prosecutor argued, “This man [Appellant] is responsible for what happened that day. He decided it was suicide by cop. That’s how he was going to go out, shooting it out with the police.” The State, then, used Katrina’s testimony as evidence of guilt, not as evidence of her credibility or lack thereof, in arguing both to the trial court and to the jury.
Appellant’s defense at trial was that he did not know that the person or persons inside his apartment were police officers until after the complainant Deputy Tatsch had already been shot. The deputies serving the warrant testified at trial. The State went to great lengths to attempt to prove to the jury that all the deputies who were part of the group serving the warrant that day wore uniforms and badges and that they identified themselves and knocked loudly for a long period of time, yelling and banging on the door for forty-five minutes to an hour, before asking the apartment complex for a key. There was no suggestion in the record that anyone complained or even noticed any noise. Deputy Hernandez admitted on cross-examination that a person in an adjacent apartment was still asleep after the shooting was over and that it took awhile to wake him up.
The apartment complex’s maintenance worker, Jess Cross, who arrived to give the deputies a key to the apartment, confirmed that from his vantage point — the ground below the patio side of the apartment — he heard the deputies knocking loudly on the front door, loudly enough that it shook the patio glass window, before they forced their way into the apartment by using the battering ram to break the door and also confirmed that he heard them speak. But, contrary to Sergeant White’s testimony, Cross testified that they knocked only twice after he arrived.
The State also solicited testimony about where the deputies parked their marked cars in relation to the apartment. Deputy Johnson testified that he parked in front of the building that the apartment was in but that he did not believe that he had parked directly in front of the apartment. He did not remember where the other deputies had parked. Deputy Hernandez testified that the deputies had parked their cars in a secured location to the left of the building. He also testified that they all initially parked away from the building but that Deputy Pickle moved his car before the officers entered the apartment to the patio *857side of the apartment, “right outside the window.” Deputy Pickle testified that the deputies “parked, I believe it was two— just to the north, away from the apartment” and “down a ways a little bit and walked back up to the apartment” so that they could “be undetected coming up.” He also testified that he moved his vehicle closer to the apartment, “right in front of’ it, and ten feet away when they were trying to contact maintenance. He testified that he parked catty-cornered or at an angle and could later see “that parking lot” through the window of the apartment when he was inside the apartment. Sergeant White testified that he “parked up against the — I think there’s a covered parkway opposite another patrol unit that was parked in front of [the] apartment.” Detective Brian Jamison, who investigated the shooting, testified that two sheriffs department vehicles were fairly close to the front of the apartment when he arrived at the scene after the shooting.
Deputy Tatsch testified that the deputies parked “a little bit away,” maybe forty yards, from the apartment for “officer safety issues”; “nobody wants to get shot trying to walk up to an apartment or tip off that we’re even there.” He also testified that they did not move their vehicles and did not park in front of the apartment. The maintenance worker, who was on the patio side during the shooting, testified that he saw no sheriffs department units in the parking lot nearest the apartment’s front door and did not testify that he saw any sheriffs department vehicles from his location.
The jury also heard evidence about blinds in the apartment. According to Deputy Tatsch’s testimony, before the entry, Deputy Pickle, stationed on the patio side of the apartment, indicated that someone was looking out the blinds. Deputy Pickle testified that he saw the vertical blinds on the patio door “move like somebody had walked passed them, wind blown” and that about ten minutes later he saw someone looking at the deputies from the window to the right of the patio door; that window was the bedroom window. Deputy Pickle later clarified that he had not actually been able to make out a person looking out the windows but instead had seen movement, too high to be an animal, that suggested someone was looking out the window or as if someone were looking out the window. Unlike the patio door, the window to the right of the patio, the bedroom window, had horizontal blinds. He did not remember whether he saw movement in the blinds on the living room windows located to the left of the patio.
Sergeant White testified that he was briefed that “an individual had looked out the window several times through the blinds [and] that someone had peeked out through the blinds”; he claimed that the deputies had told him that that person was Appellant. Corporal Varnon, the crime scene technician, testified that he did not dust the blinds for fingerprints, nor did he have any knowledge that anyone had dusted them for prints. The maintenance worker testified that he did not see any movement or anyone looking out the windows on the patio side of the apartment and that if the air conditioner or fan was on, the vertical blinds would move.
The jury also heard evidence about how the shooting started. The deputies’ testimony indicates that after they forcibly entered the apartment, Deputy Tatsch announced again that they were deputies there to serve a felony warrant and kicked a closed bedroom door. Deputy Johnston testified that the door flew open, he saw someone crouching or kneeling near the bed in the dark bedroom, and he heard gunfire that to his knowledge did not come *858from his gun or the gun of Deputy Tatsch. He did not know if the door opened first or he heard the gunfire first. At almost the same time as he heard the gunfire, Deputy Johnston testified, he saw that the person in the bedroom had a gun in his hands. He did not know if he heard the gunfire first or saw the gun first. He believed that the gunfire he heard came from the bedroom and the vicinity of the gun he saw. Johnston did not know if the bedroom door stayed open or closed.
Deputy Hernandez testified that Deputy Tatsch kicked the door open, but “it came back closed somehow” and stayed closed until Appellant came out. Deputy Hernandez did not see anything during the brief period that the door was opened. After the door closed, he heard gunfire and paint from the bedroom door falling off. He believed that whoever was inside the room shot first and that he and Deputies Tatsch and Johnston returned fire.
Sergeant White testified that the instant that Deputy Tatsch kicked the bedroom door, “shots rang out from inside the bedroom” and that “[y]ou could see the splinters coming out through the wall, the door.”
The maintenance worker who witnessed the shooting from outside the apartment testified that the muzzle flash from the first shot came from the living room, where the officers were.
After Deputy Tatsch was shot, the deputies returned fire through the bedroom door. According to forensic evidence, seven shots went through the door itself, from the living room into the bedroom. At some point soon after Deputy Tatsch announced that he had been hit, Appellant came out of the bedroom holding a gun. Appellant surprised and shocked Deputy Johnston by heading toward the front door. Appellant moved within feet of Deputy Johnston, they saw each other, and Deputy Johnston was afraid that Appellant would shoot him. But Deputy Johnston testified that he did not see Appellant point a gun at any of the officers after leaving the bedroom.
Deputy Hernandez testified that after he heard Deputy Tatsch announce that he had been shot, he stepped back to the doorway of the apartment to tell Deputy Pickle. When Deputy Hernandez turned back to the apartment, Appellant was coming toward him, still carrying his gun, and Deputy Hernandez shot him. Deputy Hernandez testified that Appellant did not shoot anyone after exiting the bedroom but did point the gun, held in his right hand, at Deputy Hernandez. Deputy Hernandez also seemed to admit, however, that Appellant could have just been holding it that way naturally as he was attempting to walk or run out of the apartment. Deputy Hernandez’s statement taken near the time of the incident may have provided that Appellant had held the gun in his left hand, not his right.
Sergeant White testified that Appellant came out of the bedroom firing his gun, that he pointed his gun at the deputies, and that he continued firing until he was disabled.
According to the forensic testimony, however, all three of the shell casings matching Appellant’s gun were found in the same area in the bedroom, one of the bullets was in the door facing, and one went through the door facing to lodge in the couch, indicating that Appellant was standing in the bedroom when he fired all three shots.
Joyce Williams Walker, Appellant’s wife at the time of trial and girlfriend at the time of the offense, testified that she spoke with Appellant the morning of the shooting and that he told her that someone was at the door of the apartment at which he was *859staying. The apartment was leased by Joyce’s brother’s girlfriend, Crystal. Appellant had his own house. Joyce told Appellant that she would call Crystal because it was Crystal’s apartment. Instead, she spoke with her brother, who took her to the scene of the shooting.
Detective Loughman of the Fort Worth Police Department testified over defense objection that Joyce told him that Appellant had called her that morning and had told her that the police were knocking at the door, that she reported that she had told Appellant that he did not need to answer the door because the apartment was not his residence, that she told the detective that in a later phone conversation Appellant had told her that the police had just shot the lock off of the door, that she told the detective that she had advised Appellant to shoot at the police to protect himself, and that she then told the detective that she had in fact not so advised Appellant.
Joyce denied telling the police that Appellant had called her the morning of the shooting and had told her that the police were at the door and denied telling the detective that she had told Appellant that if the police came in, he should shoot them or anything to that effect.
Appellant testified that he did not know what time he woke up on the morning of the offense, but that he was awakened by something that sounded like it was brushing up against the outside wall of the apartment. He testified that he got up and looked out the bedroom window and that he could only recall looking out once. He did not see any police cars or sheriffs cars or any person. He testified that he did not tell Joyce that the police were at the door, that he did not know the police were at the door, that he did not know that sheriffs deputies were at the door, and that he did not recall telling her that the police had shot the lock off the door.
He admitted that he had left a phone message for Katrina asking if she had sent the police, but he stated that he left it three or four days after the shooting while he was still a patient at John Peter Smith Hospital. He admitted telling Katrina that he was not going to see her anymore but denied saying that it was because he was planning to kill himself and denied telling her that he wanted to die. Instead, he testified that he had stopped wanting to be with her because she had indicated that she was going to terminate her pregnancy.
Appellant testified that after his second conversation with Joyce that morning, he heard what sounded to him like a very loud gunshot. He thought that “somebody had shot a gun, they came in and shot a gun and they were firing in the house.” He thought that the person might have been someone that he and Joyce had had prior altercations with or “a number of people.” He did not believe that the person or persons he heard were sheriffs deputies.
Appellant testified that after hearing what he thought was a shot, he dropped the phone, grabbed a pistol, and fired from his bedroom. He shot in the direction of his closed bedroom door; he never saw it come open. He believed that there was nowhere to run and that he had no alternative. He could see return fire coming through the walls; “[t]hey were shooting through the walls, through the walls in the door.”
Appellant testified that he never heard anyone pound on the door and say sheriffs office, arrest warrant, or anything similar, and that he never knew that sheriffs deputies were outside his apartment until after the shooting. Specifically, he testified that after the shooting, it got totally quiet. He testified that he opened his bedroom door *860and went out, thinking that whoever had come in the apartment had gone. He testified that he was running toward the front door when he saw the two sheriffs deputies in the kitchen and that he did not point his gun at any of the deputies or try to shoot them. He further testified that he was not willing to commit a capital murder to avoid a six-year sentence.
The issue of whether Appellant knew beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers were officers before he shot was heavily litigated by both parties throughout the trial. Some testimonial, physical, and forensic evidence before the jury supports Appellant’s version of the events: all three casings from the bullets shot from Appellant’s gun were in the bedroom, bullet holes in the bedroom door and frame showed that at least eight bullets shot into the bedroom and from the bedroom into the living room were shot through a closed door, and the maintenance man testified that the first shot was fired from the living room, not from the bedroom. The evidence to the contrary was not overwhelming.
In deciding that the erroneous contemporaneous instruction was harmless, the majority relies on, among other things, the limiting instruction in the jury charge, contending that it “would have ... corrected” any “misconceptions the jury may have had” from the erroneous contemporaneous instruction. Yet the prosecutor’s reliance on Katrina’s testimony in the closing argument, after the prosecutor had already seen the jury charge and after the trial judge had already read the jury charge aloud in open court, belies the majority’s contention and reaffirms the conclusion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that “[ajllowing the jury to consider evidence for all purposes and then telling them to consider that same evidence for a limited purpose only is asking a jury to do the impossible.”6
Given the state of the evidence, Appellant’s theory of the case, and the State’s emphasis on the challenged testimony in furthering its “suicide by cop” theory, I believe that, in the context of the entire case against Appellant, the trial court’s error in refusing to contemporaneously instruct the jury that evidence of Katrina Smith’s prior statements was not admissible as substantive evidence to establish the truth of the matter asserted and that they could not consider it as evidence of Appellant’s guilt had a significant or injurious effect on the jury’s verdict such that Appellant’s substantial rights were affected.7
I would therefore sustain Appellant’s fourth point, not reach his remaining points, reverse the trial court’s judgment, and remand this case for a new trial. Because the majority does not, I respectfully dissent.

. Tex.R. Evid. 105(a).

. Black's Law Dictionary 1315 (6th ed. 1990).

. Webster’s Third New Int'l Dictionary 1937 (2002).

. Rankin v. State, 974 S.W.2d 707, 712 (Tex.Crim.App.1996) (citations omitted).

. Hammock v. State, 46 S.W.3d 889, 894 (Tex.Crim.App.2001) (citations omitted).

. Id.

. See McMurrough v. State, 995 S.W.2d 944, 948 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1999, no pet.).