Opinion
No. 05-10-01276-CR No. 05-10-01277-CR
02-27-2012
WOODROW RAYMOND GLOVER, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
AFFIRM; Opinion issued February 27, 2012
On Appeal from the 363rd Judicial District Court
Dallas County, Texas
Trial Court Cause Nos. F09-51389-W & F09-51393-W
OPINION
Before Justices Morris, Moseley, and Francis
Opinion By Justice Morris
A jury convicted Woodrow Raymond Glover of aggravated robbery and capital murder. He now complains on appeal that the evidence against him was legally insufficient to support his conviction for either offense and the trial court erred in overruling his hearsay objection. Concluding appellant's arguments are without merit, we affirm the trial court's judgments.
Factual Background
Appellant admitted that, on the night before the offenses, he was entrusted with safekeeping of several hundred dollars belonging to his fiancé but used the money to buy crack cocaine. He sought out the deceased as a seller. Appellant admitted he bought crack from the deceased, a man in his fifties who was in poor health, several times over the course of the night. He also admitted he met a prostitute at the deceased's apartment and took her back to the apartment he shared with his fiancé so the three could have sex together. When the prostitute later returned to his home with another drug dealer, he bought more crack and smoked it in front of his fiancé. Early the next morning, while his fiancé slept, appellant returned to the deceased's apartment.
According to appellant, he and the deceased smoked the last of the deceased's crack together, then he felt paranoid and blacked out. When he became aware of his surroundings, he saw a knife in the deceased's chest and blood on his own hands. He fled from the deceased's apartment and went home to his fiancé. He told her that he was unsure whether he had stabbed a man, changed his shirt, then went to a convenience store. There, he threatened the clerk with a beer bottle, demanded money, and left the store with the money from the store's cash register.
Dibon Massey, the drug dealer who went to appellant's apartment with the prostitute, testified that he had been with the deceased the night before the murder and robbery. Massey was selling drugs at the deceased's apartment with the deceased, whom he had known for approximately two weeks. He testified that the deceased sold crack cocaine from a bed in the apartment; he kept the drugs and money under a pillow. Massey met the deceased through a prostitute named Katie McDonald, who lived near the deceased. Massey testified that the deceased was a nice person who was well known and liked in the neighborhood. Massey did not think that the deceased owned a weapon.
Massey confirmed that appellant came to the deceased's apartment a “couple of times” to buy relatively large amounts of crack. He also saw McDonald leave with appellant for a “little threesome.” He confirmed that between 3:00 and 5:00 the next morning, he and McDonald went to appellant's apartment so he could sell him crack there. Afterward, they stopped by the deceased's apartment to say hello, then went to Massey's house between approximately 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. They later returned to the deceased's apartment briefly, but then Massey left to buy donuts. Sometime after 8:00 a.m., he knocked on the deceased's door. No one answered. Massey saw McDonald leaving for a “date” in a truck, so he went to her mother's house to wait for her to return. While he was there, McDonald's mother noticed police and an ambulance at the deceased's apartment. He walked to the apartment where he saw McDonald, who told him the deceased was dead. He told the police about what had happened over the course of the previous hours and agreed to have his hands and clothing tested for evidence. He also identified appellant from a photographic lineup. Massey testified that when he saw appellant, he appeared to be “zoning” on the crack and needing sleep.
Appellant's fiancé, Karen Pitts, confirmed that she had given appellant $500 to $600 dollars to hold for her because she was concerned she would spend it on drugs. She recalled sending him out for cigarettes on one occasion the night before the murder and robbery. She also admitted that sometime after 10:00 p.m. appellant left their apartment another time and returned with a prostitute, with whom she and appellant had sex. The prostitute left and then returned with another man at approximately 5:00 a.m. At that time, Pitts asked appellant if he was spending her money, and he said no.
Later, appellant went outside to smoke, and Pitts fell asleep. When appellant returned sometime before 7:30 a.m., he was nervous. He told her he thought he might have stabbed a man and he had to go. He took off his shirt and put it on their bed. He also threw some money on the bed and pushed it toward her. She pushed it back because some of the money had blood on it. Appellant put the bloody bills in his pocket and left the rest with Pitts. Dressed in a fresh shirt, he smoked some crack in front of her, then he left the apartment. After appellant left, Pitts called her pastor for advice. He came over to her apartment and took appellant's shirt. He pointed out blood stains on the shirt to Pitts, who claimed she had not noticed them until then. Pitts attempted to reach appellant on his cell phone. At first, no one answered, but the second time she called a police officer answered the phone and told Pitts they were arresting appellant for murder. The pastor, who worked for the Dallas Fire Department, called a detective friend to report what Pitts had seen. Afterward, police arrived and photographed Pitts's apartment. Pitts went with her pastor to the police station to answer questions. Although she did not recall saying it at the time of her testimony, Pitts admitted that in her videotaped statement to police she said appellant had told her it was the “perfect opportunity” when the deceased fell asleep. She also agreed that in her statement she had said appellant mentioned he needed to return the money he had stolen from her. Pitts allowed police to swab her cheek for a DNA sample.
The pastor, Michael Phillips, also testified. He explained that when Pitts called him, she was “upset, crying, very disturbed” and appeared to be under the stress or excitement of a startling event or condition. Over appellant's hearsay objection, Phillips testified that Pitts said appellant told her “that he had possibly murdered someone.” Phillips had to calm Pitts down to determine what had happened. He testified, without objection,
[Pitts] told me that some money was stolen from her and that [appellant] was trying to replace the money and went back and . . . stole the money from a drug dealer and threw it on the bed and it had blood on it and she stated that she didn't want the money. And he changed clothes really quick . . . and that's when she stated that she had a shirt with some blood on it.Phillips stated that he told Pitts she needed to turn the shirt over to the police.
The clerk at the convenience store, Karim Jiwani, testified that appellant struck him with a forty-ounce bottle of beer at approximately 8:00 to 8:15 in the morning. Appellant had purchased the beer and a small pocketknife from Jiwani. After hitting Jiwani with the beer bottle, appellant cursed at him and demanded the money in the cash register while also holding the open three-inch knife in his hand. Jiwani was bleeding from his head. As he gave appellant the money, the bottle slipped out of appellant's hand. Appellant left the store with between $400 and $500. He told Jiwani he did not care if he called the police. Jiwani asked one of his customers outside to follow appellant and call the police. More than two weeks later, Jiwani identified appellant in a photographic lineup.
Isidro Ayala was the customer who followed appellant for Jiwani. He watched appellant leave the store putting money into his pockets. Then Ayala got into his car and followed appellant while talking on the phone to a 911 operator. He saw appellant walk up to some children at a school and get a sweater from one of them. Appellant threw off the shirt he had been wearing in front of the school.
Dallas Police Officer Jay Angelino received a call about the robbery at approximately 8:15 a.m. When he found appellant, he was walking at a “pretty quick pace.” Angelino and another officer approached appellant with their weapons drawn and ordered him to put up his hands. Appellant continued walking and would not answer Angelino. Eventually the officers were able to push him into a fence and handcuff him. Appellant said to them, “I might have robbed that place, but I didn't kill that old man.” He appeared to be intoxicated, he was sweating despite the fact that it was February, and his thoughts seemed to be “all over the place.” As appellant continued to offer information about the man and his location, Angelino determined appellant was talking about the deceased, whom Angelino knew from the neighborhood. Appellant told the officers that the deceased had a knife in his chest and it was already there when he got there. Angelino radioed a request that someone go to the deceased's apartment to see if he was dead.
Dallas Police Officer Raymond Watts acted as backup to Angelino. He recalled appellant's first statement as “I thought you were going to shoot. You should have killed me.” Appellant told the officers that he had been on the phone with 911; he was holding a cell phone in his hand. Appellant also said, “. . . I've been doing drugs all night with his old man,” and “. . . that money don't belong to me.” Watts recalled that appellant admitted to robbing the store but claimed “I didn't kill that man . . . on Virginia.” Appellant claimed he woke up and saw a knife in “the old man's chest.” He claimed he tried to pull it out and was going to “resuscitate him.” He also stated to Watts, “$150 belonged to my girlfriend that I stole from her.”
As they were patting down appellant before he was taken to jail, Watts noticed most of the money that came from appellant's pockets was bloody. Another officer testified that cigarette boxes holding clear baggies that appeared to have cocaine residue in them were also found in appellant's pockets. Appellant told the officers where to find the pocketknife and his shirt from the robbery. The items were found where he said they would be located. The officers collected from appellant a $20 bill and a $5 bill that appeared to be stained with blood and returned the rest of the money (over $400) to the store.
Dallas Police Officer Michael Shaw went to the deceased's apartment. There, he found the deceased lying on a mattress. His throat had been cut open. A large kitchen knife was sticking out of his chest. Another knife and blade were in the bedding around the deceased. The deepest stab wound to the deceased's chest was six inches long and the blade taken from his body was about seven inches long. The deceased had been stabbed four times in the chest and also slashed across his neck. It appeared he had not tried to defend himself against his attacker.
Police officers interviewed Massey and McDonald and took DNA samples from them and their clothes. Massey and McDonald did not test positive for the presence of blood nor did their clothes. Appellant's dollar bills, t-shirt, sweat pants, jeans, belt, and jacket all revealed the presence of human blood, as did swabs of his right middle finger and right palm. The handle of the knife found in the deceased's chest at the murder scene contained DNA from appellant and the deceased but not from Pitts, McDonald, or Massey. Testing did reveal, however, that someone other than appellant and the deceased had also handled the knife at some point. The testing of the swab of appellant's palm showed the presence of his DNA and that of Pitts and the deceased. Appellant's sweat pants showed that the deceased was the major contributor of the DNA and the lesser contributors were appellant and Pitts. Testing of appellant's jeans showed that the major contributor was also the deceased and the minor contributor was appellant. Test results from appellant's t-shirt also showed that the major contributor of DNA was the deceased and the lesser contributors were appellant and Pitts. The sole DNA contributor on the $5 bill was the deceased. The DNA profile of the $20 bill was also linked to the deceased, and trace amounts of DNA were linked to appellant as well.
Appellant's older sister, Zelda Mack testified that appellant did not have a reputation as a violent man. She admitted, however, that he had been in trouble on several occasions for domestic violence. When appellant testified in his own defense, he admitted he had assaulted one of his previous girlfriends but claimed his other conviction for domestic violence had not actually involved him harming that girlfriend.
Appellant also claimed he had not met the deceased, Massey, or McDonald until the night before the offenses. He confirmed that he had gone to the deceased's apartment three to four times that night and spent $350 to $400 of Pitts's money. He admitted that he had McDonald come over to their apartment for sex in exchange for crack. He also admitted that Massey and McDonald came to the apartment still later in the morning, though he claimed that visit had annoyed him. According to appellant's version of events, he never saw Massey at the deceased's apartment and met him for the first time when Massey and McDonald came to his apartment.
Appellant claimed that he went back to the deceased's apartment at approximately 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. He said that the deceased simply gave him some of his last supply of crack because he was nearly out and that the two smoked the crack together at the deceased's apartment. About what happened next, appellant testified,
I just . . . remember taking a hit, and I just remember my mind racing and like just unbelievable paranoia. I felt like . . . people were after me. I felt like people were trying to attack me, and . . . I felt like they were - they were on me, so I felt like I had to defend myself or whatnot. And I don't . . . really remember how long this lasted or whatnot, but I . . . just remember like I'm waking up. I remember waking up, and I remember seeing him. And I didn't know . . . what happened. I didn't know - and . . . I had blood on my hands, but it was like - so I just - I left. . . . . And as I was walking down the street, that's when I called [Pitts] and I told [Pitts] to open the door. And when I got in . . . the house, I'm panicking at this point, you know.Appellant testified he did not know if he had fallen asleep or blacked out from the drugs. He claimed he had not taken anything from the deceased and the money he threw on the bed for Pitts was the same amount of money he had left with.
Appellant also testified that he “just meant to scare [the clerk] with the bottle but it slipped out of my hand and the next thing I know the man is bleeding.” He admitted he grabbed the money and walked out of the store. Appellant testified,
. . . I just went totally stupid, man. . . . I seen him open that cash register, and I was like - to be honest, I was - at this point, man - at this point, man, I'm really on [sic] a self-destruct mode. I'm just thinking, man, let me do something so - I was really like let me do something so somebody could - somebody could just kill me.As he walked from the scene, he called 911.
According to appellant, he did not know whether he had murdered the deceased. He claimed he did not recall stabbing him. He testified, “I take responsibility for spending [Pitts's] money. I take responsibility for robbing that store. But I . . . can't honestly sit here and take responsibility for killing a man that I don't know that I killed him.”
Discussion
In his first issue, appellant complains the evidence against him is legally insufficient to support his conviction for capital murder. He specifically contends there is nothing in the record to indicate that he went to the apartment to murder the deceased in order to rob him or that a robbery in fact occurred. In reviewing a challenge to the legal sufficiency of the evidence, we examine the evidence to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Vodochodsky v. State, 158 S.W.3d 502, 509 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005). We review all the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and assume the trier of fact resolved conflicts in the testimony, weighed the evidence, and drew reasonable inferences in a manner that supports the verdict. See Rollerson v. State, 227 S.W.3d 718, 724 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007).
Here, testimony at trial showed appellant acknowledged to Pitts that he was remorseful about stealing her money and wanted to get it back to her. He told her that he had the perfect opportunity to stab the deceased when he fell asleep. When he returned to her apartment, he threw a pile of bills on the bed, some of them covered in blood, then he smoked yet more crack cocaine. The DNA profiles on at least two of the bills were linked directly to the deceased. Police found baggies with cocaine residue in appellant's pockets. Viewing this evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we conclude it is legally sufficient to support appellant's conviction. Even if appellant's intoxication from crack cocaine played some part in his decisions to rob and murder the complainant, it does not excuse his actions. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 8.04(a) (West 2011). We resolve appellant's first issue against him.
In his next issue, appellant claims the evidence against him is also legally insufficient to support his conviction for the aggravated robbery of Jiwani. Appellant argues he lacked the necessary mental state to commit the crime because his true intent was to generate so much attention to himself that police would shoot him. We disagree.
Regardless of appellant's underlying reasons for committing the aggravated robbery, the evidence - including appellant's own testimony - showed he knowingly and intentionally committed the offense. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 29.02, 29.03 (West 2011). Accordingly, we resolve appellant's second issue against him.
In his final issue, appellant complains the trial court erred in permitting Phillips to offer hearsay testimony about what appellant told Pitts. Over appellant's hearsay objection, Phillips testified, “[Pitts] stated that she was upset because [appellant] possibly had did [sic] something that he shouldn't have done. And I asked her what - what happened, and she stated that [appellant] told her that he possibly had murdered someone.” Appellant did not object again when Phillips later testified as follows,
She told me that some money was stolen from her and that [appellant] was trying to replace the money and went back and . . . and stole the money from a drug dealer and threw it on the bed and it had blood on it and she stated that she didn't want the money. And he changed clothes really quick, and . . . that's when she stated that she had a shirt with some blood on it.Appellant again failed to object when Phillips testified that appellant “was just trying to replace the money he had stole[n] from her because he felt bad about stealing the money.”
Appellant does not specify which of Phillips's statements were erroneously admitted by the trial court. If his complaint relates to the one statement to which he had made a hearsay objection, such evidence could not have harmed appellant because the jury heard similar testimony both from Pitts and appellant. See Tex. R. App. P. 44.2(b). And appellant did not timely object on the basis of hearsay when Phillips made the other two statements and did not request a running objection to all the evidence. He has not preserved any error based on those statements for appeal. See Tex. R. App. P. 33.1(a); Martinez v. State, 98 S.W.3d 189, 193 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003). We therefore resolve appellant's third issue against him.
We affirm the trial court's judgments.
JOSEPH B. MORRIS
JUSTICE
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47
101276F.U05
Court of Appeals Fifth District of Texas at Dallas JUDGMENT
WOODROW RAYMOND GLOVER, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
No. 05-10-01276-CR
Appeal from the 363rd Judicial District Court of Dallas County, Texas. (Tr.Ct.No. F09- 51389-W).
Opinion delivered by Justice Morris, Justices Moseley and Francis participating.
Based on the Court's opinion of this date, the judgment of the trial court is AFFIRMED.
Judgment entered February 27, 2012.
JOSEPH B. MORRIS
JUSTICE
Court of Appeals Fifth District of Texas at Dallas JUDGMENT
WOODROW RAYMOND GLOVER, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
No. 05-10-01277-CR
Appeal from the 363rd Judicial District Court of Dallas County, Texas. (Tr.Ct.No. F09- 51393-W).
Opinion delivered by Justice Morris, Justices Moseley and Francis participating.
Based on the Court's opinion of this date, the judgment of the trial court is AFFIRMED.
Judgment entered February 27, 2012.
JOSEPH B. MORRIS
JUSTICE