Court Opinion

ID: 9893672
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-29 08:13:42.227196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:37.845424
License: Public Domain

Affirmed and Memorandum Opinion filed October 17, 2023.

                                       In The

                       Fourteenth Court of Appeals

                               NO. 14-22-00580-CR

                       RODRICK WILLIAMS, Appellant

                                         V.
                       THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

                    On Appeal from the 337th District Court
                            Harris County, Texas
                        Trial Court Cause No. 1647125

                          MEMORANDUM OPINION

      In this appeal from a conviction for aggravated robbery, appellant argues in a
single issue that the judgment should be reversed because the evidence is legally
insufficient to support the conviction. For the reasons that follow, we overrule this
issue and affirm the trial court’s judgment.
                                 BACKGROUND

      The complainant was robbed as he was walking out of a bank. Using
surveillance footage from the bank’s parking lot, the police identified a suspect as a
man who drove away in a silver sedan with visible damage on the rear driver’s side.

      Believing that the robbery was part of a larger trend of “bank jugging”—
which is a type of robbery in which the robber watches and preys on individuals
leaving banks or ATMs—the police initiated an undercover surveillance of the bank
where the complainant’s robbery took place. Six days after that robbery, the
undercover team encountered the same sedan that was recorded on the surveillance
footage.

      The sedan exhibited suspicious behavior. It would circle the bank’s parking
lot or park in a position that faced the bank’s entrance, but no one would ever exit
the sedan and engage in any sort of business or transaction with the bank. The sedan
would then drive to at least three additional banks and repeat this same process.

      The police initiated a traffic stop of the sedan, and appellant was found to be
driving. Appellant’s picture was then placed in a photo array and shown to the
complainant, who identified appellant as his assailant. Following appellant’s
subsequent charge, the complainant identified appellant in court as the man who had
robbed him. Based in part on that identification, a jury convicted appellant and
assessed his punishment at five years’ imprisonment.

                                    ANALYSIS

      In a sufficiency challenge, a reviewing court must determine whether a
rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of an offense beyond a
reasonable doubt. See Temple v. State, 390 S.W.3d 341, 360 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013).
The offense here was aggravated robbery, and under the circumstances of this case,

                                          2
the prosecution had the burden of proving the following essential elements:
(1) appellant committed a robbery; (2) appellant caused bodily injury to the
complainant; and (3) the complainant was sixty-five years of age or older. See Tex.
Penal Code § 29.03(a)(3)(A).

         Appellant does not dispute that a robbery occurred, that the complainant
suffered bodily injury, or that the complainant was over the age of sixty-five. Rather,
appellant only challenges the element of identity—i.e., whether there was legally
sufficient evidence that he was the person who committed the charged offense. We
limit our analysis accordingly. See Murray v. State, 457 S.W.3d 446, 448 n.1 (Tex.
Crim. App. 2015) (solely addressing the element of the offense that was challenged
on appeal). And in assessing whether the evidence was legally sufficient as to the
element of identity, we consider all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the
verdict. See Zuniga v. State, 551 S.W.3d 729, 732 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018).

         There was direct evidence of identity in this case. There was testimony from
an officer that the complainant identified appellant in a photo array, and the
complainant testified in court that appellant was his assailant. This evidence alone is
sufficient for a rational jury to find the element of identity beyond a reasonable
doubt.

         There was also circumstantial evidence of identity, in that appellant was found
driving a distinctive sedan that matched the same vehicle captured on the
surveillance footage. That evidence likewise supports the jury’s finding that
appellant was the person who committed the aggravated robbery.

         Appellant makes a series of counterarguments, all of which challenge the
jury’s implied finding of identity. He begins by arguing that he could not have
committed the aggravated robbery because the suspect seen on the bank’s
surveillance footage does not match his own physical description. Appellant points
                                            3
out that he—and not the suspect—has long braided hair, which was not apparent in
the surveillance footage at all. Appellant recognizes that the suspect in the footage
was wearing a hoodie, which concealed his hair, but appellant still suggests that he
could not have been the suspect because his hair would have created a bulge under
the hoodie, which was not apparent either. We cannot indulge these points because
they all lead to inferences that were rejected by the jury, and under our standard of
review, we must consider all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury’s
decision. See Turro v. State, 867 S.W.2d 43, 47 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993) (“The
evidence is not rendered insufficient simply because appellant presented a different
version of events.”). Furthermore, we note that the surveillance footage was not
recorded in high resolution, and it does not clearly or conclusively exculpate
appellant. See Brooks v. State, 323 S.W.3d 893, 907 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010)
(plurality op.) (explaining that a finding of guilt would not be rational if video
evidence clearly showing the defendant’s innocence contradicted witness testimony
showing the defendant’s guilt).

      Appellant also argues that the evidence is insufficient because he does not
match the descriptions of the assailant that were given by the complainant. But there
was a clear conflict in the evidence as to this point, and the existence of such a
conflict does not establish that the evidence is legally insufficient. Rather, we
presume that the jury resolved that conflict in favor of the verdict. See Braughton v.
State, 569 S.W.3d 592, 608 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (“We presume that the factfinder
resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the verdict, and we defer to that
resolution.”).

      Appellant focuses next on the photo array, which he contends was irregularly
administered. But insofar as appellant believes that the photo array was
impermissibly suggestive, and therefore inadmissible, that argument has no bearing

                                          4
on a sufficiency analysis, which considers both properly and improperly admitted
evidence. See Thomas v. State, 444 S.W.3d 4, 8 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014) (“When
assaying the record for evidentiary sufficiency, we consider all of the admitted
evidence, even if it was improperly admitted.”).

      Appellant also suggests that the photo array should have been disregarded
because it does not reflect the certainty of the complainant’s identification. But even
if true, this point does not establish that there was no evidence of identity.

      Appellant turns next to the complainant’s in-court identification, which he
challenges because the complainant claimed to need his glasses during the trial,
despite not wearing any glasses at the critical time of the offense. This point merely
attacks the weight and credibility of the complainant’s in-court identification, which
we do not reevaluate in a sufficiency analysis. See Williams v. State, 235 S.W.3d
742, 750 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007) (“Under a legal sufficiency review, our role is not
to become a thirteenth juror. This Court may not reevaluate the weight and
credibility of the record evidence and thereby substitute our judgment for that of the
factfinder.”).

       In his last point, appellant focuses on the silver sedan. Because the
prosecution did not produce any direct evidence regarding the ownership of that
sedan, appellant suggests that the jury could not have concluded that he was the
person driving the sedan on the day of the robbery. Again, this argument must fail
under our standard of review. The complainant’s direct testimony places appellant
at the scene of the robbery. The jury could have reasonably determined that appellant
was the person who committed the robbery on the basis of that testimony alone. That
determination is further supported by the distinctiveness of the sedan, which police
identified several days later when appellant was behind the wheel. See State v.
Baldwin, 664 S.W.3d 122, 131 (Tex. Crim. App. 2022) (holding that a magistrate

                                           5
could have reasonably concluded that the defendant was involved in an offense
based on vehicular sightings that were too similar and too coincidental to be
unrelated).

      For all of the foregoing reasons, we conclude that a rational jury could have
found the essential element of identity beyond a reasonable doubt.

                                 CONCLUSION

      The trial court’s judgment is affirmed.

                                      /s/       Tracy Christopher
                                                Chief Justice

Panel consists of Chief Justice Christopher and Justices Bourliot and Hassan.
Do Not Publish — Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b).

                                            6