Court Opinion

ID: 9764282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:18:08.888213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:55.459200
License: Public Domain

POWERS, Justice,
concurring.
Believing that appellant’s grounds of error require an analysis different from that of the majority, I offer the following.
Appellant’s custodial statement is to the effect that appellant and the victim, Carol Rosenbaum, engaged in heated oral argu*499ment in the Okey Dokey Club. According to his statement, appellant called Rosenb-aum a “whore.” The statement continues:
Thats [sic] when she took a swing at me and tried to slap me. She barely grazed my face. As I ducked I grabbed her hands, and held her. I told her just to shut up and leave me alone. She said something like, you sorry ... let me go or I’m going to knock the ... out of you. I told her just to shut up. She was continually cussing at me and kicking at me so I just wrestled her to the floor asking her to shut up and not to call me names.
I took my handcuffs out of my left rear pocket, but before I cuffed her I told her that if she didn’t shut up, I was going to shut her up. She just kept cussing and yelling at me and calling me names. So I put the handcuffs on her. I got her up off of the floor and took her out through the club and into the kitchen. Before we got into the kitchen, she broke away from me, and told me that she was going to get somebody to whip my ... or kill me or something. She said that I’ll make you sorry that you were ever born. She was running back toward the office and slipped and fell down the one step from the wooden area into the pool table area. She fell down on her face and hit her chin. She started sobbing and rolled over, but she wasn’t getting up. I went back into the kitchen and I saw the mop bucket in the mop sink, and it went thorugh [sic] my mind that I could make her say that she was sorry for all of the things that she said to me. I was in such a rage, I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I filled up the mop bucket and started out to the kitchen with it. She was just starting to get up on her knees. I came out and I told her to say that she didn’t mean any of those things, just to say that she was sorry. All she said was that I was going to pay for this and called me more names and cussed me some more. I grabbed her by the hands and the arms and told her to say that she was sorry. But she just kept on kicking at me and cussing me, and the more she did the madder I got. She was still on her knees and I began to dunk her head into the mop bucket. I held her head under then I pulled it up but she kept on screeming [sic] and cussing at me. She called me a whore, and said that I was filthy and I dunked her head again. She said that I wouldn’t get away with it and that she was going to get me. I put her head back in the mop bucket and held it there. It didn’t seem like very long, but when I picked her head back up she wasn’t cussing me any more. She was gagging and coughing. Then she just stopped, and was real still. Her eyes were open looking up at me, they were just open a little and she wasn’t saying anything. I laid her over on her back near the mop bucket and just looked at her. I remember thinking that I had gone too far and that she was dead. While I was dunking her, she was kicking and fighting and most of the water in the mop bucket got on her front down to her knees and all over the carpet. As I looked down on her after I laid her on her back I asked her just to say that she was sorry. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t move. I knew that she was dead, and I looked at her and I told her that I was sorry that she wasn’t supposed to be dead. She just made me so mad....
* * * * * *
I took the life of Carol Rosenbaum but I never intended to hurt Carol and I hope people can forgive me for what I’ve done.
(emphasis added).
The confession is crystal clear on the point that Rosenbaum’s death resulted from appellant’s voluntary acts. Appellant does not contend otherwise. The issue then reduces to the mental state with which appellant acted. Here, as in most cases, the issue is one of circumstantial evidence.
The jury found that appellant “intentionally and knowingly” caused the death of Rosenbaum “by asphyxia due to drowning *500her in a mop bucket,” as alleged by the State in its indictment. Although appellant asserts no ground of error contending otherwise, we note that the evidence is sufficient for the jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant acted with the culpable mental state required for murder. Tex.Pen.Code Ann. § 19.02(a)(1) (1974). We note particularly those portions of appellant’s confession which are to the effect that Rosenbaum was handcuffed and injured when appellant began to dunk her head in the mop bucket, that appellant was at the time “in such a rage,” that the more she kicked and “cussed” at appellant, “the madder [he] got,” that he then “put her head back in the mop bucket and held it there,” that he thought, on seeing that she was dead, that he “had gone too far,” and that he determined to use the mop bucket, in the manner described, after the first encounter with Rosenbaum, after he saw she was not getting up from her fall, after he saw the bucket in the mop sink, after he filled the bucket with water, and after he returned to the area of the club where Rosenbaum lay. See, e.g., Brown v. State, 508 S.W.2d 91 (Tex.Cr.App.1974) (evidence sufficient to sustain conviction for murder with malice where defendant repeatedly struck 22-month-old child, causing child to fall and strike her head, the “relative size and strength of the parties, the manner of the attack, and the extent to which it was carried,” all being proper considerations for the jury in determining whether defendant acted with an intent to kill the child. Id. at 96.); Sowell v. State, 503 S.W.2d 793 (Tex.Cr.App.1974) (evidence sufficient to support inference of an intent to kill where seven-year-old child was strangled to death with a belt, where expert testimony showed that death would have required three to five minutes of constant pressure with the belt, and where defendant’s statement, admitted in evidence, was to the effect that she struggled with the child when he grabbed the belt as she attempted to whip him in an effort to make him eat his breakfast, and that she buried the child on her father’s premises); Hunter v. State, 468 S.W.2d 96 (Tex.Cr.App.1971) (evidence sufficient for jury to infer an intent to kill, in prosecution for assault to commit murder with malice, where it was shown that defendant drove his automobile for a period of time at speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour while victim clung to open door of the car, from which she ultimately fell causing her to suffer a broken hip and a skull fracture).
Instead of attacking the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury’s findings that appellant intentionally and knowingly caused the death of Rosenbaum, he contends that certain statements in his confession, introduced by the State, constituted evidence of certain lesser offenses, because those statements imply that he acted with a different mental state than that required for murder. Appellant refers to those parts of his confession which are to the effect that he only wanted to make Rosenbaum say she was sorry for her statements, that he “didn’t want to hurt anybody,” that “she wasn’t supposed to be dead,” and that he “never intended to hurt [her].” Appellant assigns as error, therefore, the trial court’s failure to charge the jury on voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and criminally negligent homicide, each of which requires a culpable mental state implied in such statements, in appellant’s view of those statements.
One should first observe that appellant’s confession contains nothing which expressly denies that he intentionally and knowingly caused Rosenbaum’s death by drowning her. Rather, appellant’s statements are to the effect that he did not want to hurt her at any particular time in the episode. Nevertheless, the statements are susceptible of an inference that appellant generally denied acting at any time with an intent to kill Rosenbaum, which is, of course, consistent with his plea of not guilty and the presumption of his innocence.
While sufficient to raise an inference that appellant denied acting with an intent to kill, the statements relied upon by appellant do not, in my view, affirmatively suggest any inference that he acted with a *501culpable mental state required for the lesser offenses which appellant contends should have been included in the charge of the trial court. The trial court was not required so to instruct the jury unless appellant’s statements constituted evidence of such other mental states, that is, the culpable mental states required to convict for (1) voluntary manslaughter, (2) involuntary manslaughter, and (3) criminally negligent homicide.
I would hold with the majority that the statements abstracted from appellant’s confession, and relied upon by him as constituting evidence of the culpable mental states required for the lesser offenses, are not sufficient in that regard.
The culpable mental state required to raise voluntary manslaughter is described as causing death “under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from adequate cause.” Tex.Pen.Code Ann. § 19.04 (1974). This mental state is not implied in appellant’s confession. The confession shows that the emotion suggested by appellant arose first in the initial stages of his encounter with Rosenbaum; that appellant handcuffed Rosenbaum; that she fled, fell, and injured herself while handcuffed; that appellant left her, entered the kitchen where he saw the mop bucket and then determined to use the bucket to extract an apology from Rosenb-aum; that he then filled the bucket and returned to where Rosenbaum lay; that he then placed her head twice under water, and then a third time, because she continued until the last to scream and curse at appellant. These facts, when taken as true, imply in their totality a course of conduct by appellant based not upon emotion but upon reflection and decision, with opportunities therefor. While Rosenbaum’s conduct may have understandably caused in appellant an emotional response, under the circumstances shown by his confession, his emotion at the time he began placing her head in the bucket cannot be said to be “sudden.” Hobson v. State, 644 S.W.2d 473 (Tex.Cr.App.1983). Moreover, appellant’s response to the asserted provocation by Rosenbaum was not, as a matter of law, that of an ordinary person and cannot, therefore, be said to issue from “adequate cause.” Ayers v. State, 606 S.W.2d 936 (Tex.Cr.App.1980); McCartney v. State, 542 S.W.2d 156 (Tex.Cr.App.1976).
The culpable mental state required to raise involuntary manslaughter, or the reckless causing of death, under § 19.05 of the Penal Code, is defined as follows:
A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor’s standpoint.
Tex.Pen.Code Ann. § 6.03(c) (1974).
At best, appellant’s statements deny an intent to kill. Nothing in the confession implies that appellant was (1) aware of the risk of drowning and that he (2) consciously disregarded that risk. The confession is merely silent in that regard and therefore did not raise the issue of involuntary manslaughter. Simpkins v. State, 590 S.W.2d 129 (Tex.Cr.App.1979).
The culpable mental state required to raise the offense of criminally negligent homicide, or the causing of death by criminal negligence, under § 19.07 of the Penal Code, is defined as follows:
A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exer-*502eise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor’s standpoint.
Tex.Pen.Code Ann. § 6.03(d) (1974).
The confession may in its totality suggest that appellant (1) ought to have been aware in the circumstances of a substantial and unjustifiable risk of drowning Rosen-baum, but nothing therein is to the effect that (2) he failed to perceive that risk. Both are required to raise the issue of criminally negligent homicide arising from a voluntary act. Bravo v. State, 627 S.W.2d 152 (Tex.Cr.App.1982); Simpkins v. State, supra; Lamberson v. State, 509 S.W.2d 328 (Tex.Cr.App.1974).
Holding that the trial court was under no duty to submit to the jury the offenses suggested by appellant, I concur in the judgment.