Opinion
No. 05-10-01395-CR
07-25-2012
PERRY JOE PATTERSON, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
AFFIRM; Opinion issued July 25, 2012
On Appeal from the 203 District Court
District Court of Dallas County, Texas. (Tr.Ct.No. F08-11133-P).
Dallas County, Texas
Trial Court Cause No. F08-11133-P
OPINION
Before Justices Bridges, FitzGerald, and Lang
Opinion By Justice Bridges
Perry Joe Patterson appeals his murder conviction. A jury convicted appellant and sentenced him to ninety-nine years' confinement. In two issues, appellant argues the evidence was legally insufficient to support his conviction and to show he was not acting in self defense. We affirm the trial court's judgment.
In late June 2008, the body of the decedent, Lisa Henry, was found inside her home. Medical examiner Keith Pinckard testified a substantial time passed before the decedent died and the time the autopsy was performed on her body. The cause of death was certified as “sharp force injuries” which are classified as “either stab wounds or incised wounds.” The decedent had sixteen sharp force injuries to the head, neck, and torso and approximately four to the hands and wrists. A cluster of five wounds appeared on the decedent's neck on the left side, seven wounds on the right, and one wound directly in front. Pinckard testified that, when sharp force injuries are located on the wrists, hands, or feet, they are classified as defensive injuries. Those areas “aren't generally sought after by an attacker” and defensive wounds appear in those areas “because the decedent is raising their hands or feet in a defensive posture to fend off a weapon.” Testing of the decedent's tissue revealed the presence of diazepam, “like valium” and benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.
Addison police detective Patrick Holland testified that he determined by using an in-store video camera that the decedent was last seen alive on June 11 or 12, and her body was found on June 27. Addison police detective Truman Akins testified that, by reviewing the decedent's cell phone records, he determined the last time her phone had been used was June 15 at 11:01 a.m. Akins determined that, in the early morning hours of June 15, the decedent called the room of Gerri Rhodes a motel in Irving. A subsequent search of Rhodes' room led to the discovery of a handwritten list of names that included appellant. Rhodes testified she smoked crack with appellant at her motel room on June 14. Rhodes was trying to get in touch with the decedent to see if she could stay at the decedent's house. Appellant became angry at Rhodes and accused her of “throwing his pipe in the trash.” Rhodes told appellant to leave, and appellant threatened Rhodes. Rhodes was scared and went outside. When she came back in, she lied and said someone had called the police to get appellant to leave. Appellant left, saying the decedent was coming to pick him up.
Appellant was arrested and brought to the Irving police department where he gave a statement to police. Appellant said the decedent picked him up from Rhodes' motel, and they went to West Dallas where a man identified as “Shane or Shawn” stabbed him in the hand. Appellant thought “Shane” was the decedent's ex-boyfriend. Appellant and the decedent went to the decedent's house, but appellant left and went home because he thought the ex-boyfriend was coming over. Later in the interview, appellant said the decedent drove him home. When police asked appellant what happened to the decedent, appellant terminated the interview. Appellant was subsequently charged with murder. The indictment alleged prior convictions for possession of a controlled substance in an amount more than one gram and burglary of a building.
Prior to trial, the State filed a “Notice of Extraneous Offenses” giving notice of the State's intent to offer evidence of the following offenses committed by appellant: (1) burglary of a motor vehicle, (2) burglary of a building, (3) theft by check, (4) aggravated kidnapping, (5) burglary of a habitation with intent to commit a felony, (6) theft, (7) possession of a controlled substance, (8) failure to identify fugitive, (9) driving with license suspended, and (10) unauthorized possession of a firearm by a felon.
At trial, appellant testified he went to Rhodes' motel room on June 14, and they “did drugs.” Appellant left and returned to the room several times to get more drugs. Rhodes talked about the decedent as someone appellant might like to date and someone who would purchase drugs from him. Appellant talked to the decedent on the telephone, and they made arrangements for her to pick appellant up from the motel. When the decedent arrived, she was drunk, so appellant drove her car to his house and Kenneth McCray's house and a neighborhood in West Dallas in search of more drugs. The two eventually went to the decedent's house where “some people” showed up that had been at the motel earlier. The people made appellant “nervous” because they were using steak knives to cut drugs and “looking at” appellant “most of the time while they were cutting the drugs and asking [him] for drugs.”
Several times appellant left by himself, but one time the other people went with appellant to West Dallas where appellant tried to get someone he knew to come back to the decedent's with him because he was “feeling nervous.” Appellant testified he made approximately “six hundred or so” from selling the people drugs, and he did not just leave and not come back “because it was money involved.” The last time appellant left the decedent's, he was gone “like an hour or so,” and when he returned there was “an altercation . . . in the garage.” Appellant and the decedent got into “an argument,” and appellant was “stabbed in the mouth at that point in time by” the decedent, breaking his partial dentures. Appellant hit the decedent in the ribs with his fist. The decedent “went down” and “dropped the knife.” Appellant did not leave at that point because he would have had to “call somebody else to come get” him. Also, “once this kind of stopped and everybody kind of calmed down,” the decedent explained “it was an accident and it was only because [appellant] was smoking a cigar that [the decedent] freaked out and thought it was some kind of infrared beam or a gun or something.”
“Once everything cleared up,” the decedent offered to pay to fix appellant's broken dentures, so he stayed. Appellant testified he was not intoxicated, but the decedent was. Because the decedent offered to pay to fix appellant's dentures and pay for cutting him in the mouth, appellant began “accepting items, IOU's and stuff along that nature, and [he] gave [the decedent] and two other people some drugs.” Appellant began “drinking a little bit because [he] was in pain” and fell asleep in the living room. A ringing telephone awakened appellant, who had both his own phone and the decedent's telephone “in pawn.” The decedent checked her voicemail, and appellant fell asleep again after “a little bit of, not really arguing” about the people “trying to get more drugs from [appellant] and [he] wanted [his] money first.”
Appellant woke up again when he “was getting stabbed again and hit with a bottle.” Appellant was being hit in the head with the bottle and had “stab wounds on [his] head until [he] got up and then [he] was getting stabbed in [his] hands somewhere.” One of the next to last times appellant was stabbed, he was stabbed “all the way through [his] hand,” and when he pulled his hand back “the knife was still stuck through [his] hand and [he] yanked it out.” Appellant “stuck one person one time and [he] ran.”
From the time appellant woke up until he got outside, appellant did not have his sunglasses on. Appellant testified “all sunglasses are prescription glasses for [him] because [he is] light blinded.” Appellant testified he had “a light restriction” on his eyes because he was “stabbed in [his] eyes before.” Appellant left in the decedent's car because he had been told there was a shotgun in decedent's house, he had been shot four times previously, and he “didn't want to get shot no more.” Appellant drove to Kenneth McCray's apartment complex and left decedent's car there. “Someone” got appellant and took him home where he took a bath because he had lost so much blood he “couldn't stand up to take a shower.” Appellant's mother, a nurse, tended his wounds. Appellant told his mother somebody was trying to kill him and he “got into a fight.”
Appellant did not call the decedent again to ask about the money he was owed because he had the decedent's phone, and he waited on her to call him. He thought maybe the decedent had his number or that she would call Rhodes and then call appellant. Appellant did not call the police because he “had a warrant at that time” and because he was the “one that took drugs over there.” Appellant “was just hoping that [the decedent] would contact [him] later on . . . when she wasn't high or intoxicated and . . . agree to pay what she was supposed to pay” appellant. Appellant “wasn't going to worry about anything else that happened or anything.” Appellant did not call Rhodes because in his opinion Rhodes was “crazy” and “the one that set [him] up in the first place.” Appellant testified he was “positive” everybody was still alive at the decedent's house when he left. He left the knife “in the person [he] stabbed the same way they left it in [him].”
On cross-examination appellant testified he was wearing his sunglasses when he came in to the decedent's garage and was immediately stabbed in the face. Appellant could not see because he is “light restricted,” and “it's even worse at night.” After he was stabbed, appellant knew he was hitting somebody, but he did not know who it was. After appellant knocked the decedent to the ground, she asked, “why did you hit me?” and appellant realized who she was after he heard her voice. The decedent said it was an accident, and “everybody was saying, chill out.” Appellant came in the house and eventually fell asleep.
After he was awakened by being stabbed in the head and hit with a bottle, appellant engaged in a “tussle fight” with his attacker, and the couch where appellant was sleeping was knocked over backwards. Appellant did not know who was attacking him at first, but he remembered “seeing a lot of her long hair” and he assumed it was the decedent. Appellant later testified he assumed the attacker was the decedent “because of the long hair and because of something she said during the fight.” Appellant testified the decedent said “[appellant] was never going to get out of there.”
Appellant testified he stabbed the decedent one time in “self defense,” and he denied stabbing the decedent an additional nineteen times. After stabbing the decedent one time, appellant testified, he left her house. Concerning his vision, appellant testified he did not have nearsightedness or farsightedness. Regarding his initial interview with police, appellant testified he “told them everything except for the confrontational part, because it was kind of wishful thinking.” During the interview, appellant testified, “[he] was just making something up, trying to get [his] asthma medication.” According to appellant, he was “almost dying on the camera and they wouldn't give [him] his medication.”
Appellant's mother, Jo Ann Patterson, testified she had worked in the nursing profession for thirty-four years. On a day in June 2008, appellant had been out at a party and “came home saying that someone had attacked him, and he had some cuts on his face and his hands and other places.” Patterson cleaned appellant with soap and water and put antibiotic ointment and a dressing on his injuries. Appellant told Patterson “someone had jumped him and attacked him and that he fought back.” Patterson testified appellant “didn't need sutures, so there was no need to take him to the hospital.”
Fredrich Henry testified he worked at a temporary employment agency with appellant in the summer of 2008. Henry and appellant smoked crack together. During one conversation, appellant said he got in a fight and received a stab wound on his hand. Appellant also told Henry about his martial arts training. Henry testified he remembered telling authorities in an interview that appellant said he “inflicted martial arts pain on a person and blood was coming out of their neck,” but Henry did not remember the conversation at the time of trial. Henry testified appellant told him “that his DNA might be on the scene because he cut himself.”
Angela Fitzwater, a forensic biologist at the Southwestern Institute for Forensic Science, testified the DNA profiles that she obtained from evidence collected at the scene of the murder matched the DNA profiles of the decedent and appellant. Fitzwater testified the probability of selecting at random an unrelated individual with the same DNA profile as the samples matching appellant's DNA profile would be 1 in 313 billion. At the conclusion of trial, the jury convicted appellant of murder. This appeal followed.
In two issues, appellant argues the evidence is legally insufficient to show he committed murder or to show he was not acting in self defense. In reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we examine all the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979); Lucio v. State, 351 S.W.3d 878, 894-95 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011); Brooks v. State, 323 S.W.3d 893, 895 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010) (plurality op.). We are required to defer to the jury's credibility and weight determinations because the jury is the sole judge of the witnesses' credibility and the weight to be given their testimony. See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 326. The jury may resolve conflicts in the evidence, accept one version of the facts, disbelieve a party's evidence, and resolve any inconsistencies in favor of either party. McIntosh v. State, 855 S.W.2d 753, 763 (Tex. App.-Dallas 1993, pet. ref'd). The jurors are also entitled “to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts.” Id. The jury may use common sense and apply common knowledge, observation, and experience gained in the ordinary affairs of life when giving effect to the inferences that may reasonably be drawn from the evidence. Griffith v. State, 976 S.W.2d 686, (Tex. App.-Tyler 1997, pet. ref'd).
A person commits the offense of murder if he “intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual” or if he “intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual[.]” Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 19.02(b) (West 2011). A person is justified in using deadly force against another: (1) if the actor would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.31; and (2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary: (A) to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force; or (B) to prevent the other's imminent commission of ... murder.... Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 9.32(a) (West 2011).
Here, appellant was the last known person to see the decedent alive. Appellant testified he stabbed the decedent one time and did not know about the nineteen other wounds. The jury was free to disbelieve appellant's testimony and believe appellant stabbed the decedent twenty times, killing her. See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 326; McIntosh, 855 S.W.2d at 763. Only appellant's and the decedent's DNA were recovered from the scene. The decedent's wounds were clustered on her neck, and Henry told police appellant told him about appellant stating he “inflicted martial arts pain on a person and blood was coming out of their neck.” The decedent had defensive injuries on her hands and wrists, indicating the decedent had raised her hands in a defensive posture to fend off a weapon. After carefully reviewing the record, we conclude the jury could have reasonably concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant intended to kill the decedent and was not acting in self defense. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 9.32(a), 19.02(b) (West 2011); Brooks, 323 S.W.3d at 895. We overrule appellant's first and second issues.
We affirm the trial court's judgment.
DAVID L. BRIDGES
JUSTICE
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47
101395F.U05
Court of Appeals Fifth District of Texas at Dallas JUDGMENT
PERRY JOE PATTERSON, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
No. 05-10-01395-CR
Appeal from the 203
Opinion delivered by Justice Bridges, Justices FitzGerald and Lang participating.
Based on the Court's opinion of this date, the judgment of the trial court is AFFIRMED.
Judgment entered July 25, 2012.
DAVID L. BRIDGES
JUSTICE