Opinion
No. 05-10-01082-CR No. 05-10-01083-CR
08-13-2012
ALFRED SANTIAGO, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
AFFIRM;
On Appeal from the Criminal District Court No. 3 Dallas County, Texas Trial Court Cause Nos. F09-56942-J and F09-57747-J
OPINION
Before Justices Morris, Moseley, and Myers Opinion By Justice Myers
Appellant Alfred Santiago was convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of fourteen and injury to a child. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 21.02(b), 22.04(a) (West 2011). He was sentenced to concurrent terms of ninety-nine years in prison. In only one issue, appellant contends the trial court erred by denying his pretrial motion to suppress certain post-arrest statements made to the arresting officers. We affirm the trial court's judgments. Discussion
Cause number 05-10-01082-CR; trial court cause number F09-56942-J.
Cause number 05-10-01083-CR; trial court cause number F09-57747-J.
In his only issue, appellant argues the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress certain post-arrest statements he made to two police officers. Appellant contends his statements were inadmissible because they resulted from a custodial interrogation that was conducted before the police gave appellant the required Miranda warnings.
See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).
Appellant was indicted for continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of fourteen and injury to a child. Both offenses involved the same complainant, M. According to the record, Dallas police officers were dispatched on July 2, 2009, to a motel where appellant lived with his girlfriend and her four children, to investigate a child-custody dispute. Appellant answered the door to the motel room and was escorted to a nearby staircase by Dallas police officer Leah Risse. Appellant spoke with her while another officer, Robin Rowland, entered the motel room to search for the children. Appellant was not under arrest at this time and was not handcuffed.
Three of the children, M, O, and C, were found locked in the bathroom. All of them were severely malnourished. Dr. Matthew Cox, who later evaluated the siblings' medical condition, offered the following description of their appearance:
I'd never seen anything like it in person. I think the only thing I could ever compare it to is like seeing pictures of like Holocaust and what people looked like after the Holocaust. They were that emaciated.After the children were removed from the bathroom, one of the officers spoke with the oldest child, M, who told the officer about physical and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of appellant. Risse's partner, Officer Thomas Illingsworth, stepped outside of the motel room and signaled for Risse to handcuff appellant. At trial, appellant took the stand in his own defense. He contended he never sexually abused M and did not physically abuse M, O, or C. Appellant admitted telling the police he woke up one day to find that M "basically almost had my penis in her mouth, and when I woke up, I pushed her away from me. . . ." But appellant denied telling them that his penis was in M's vagina.
After the defense rested, the State called Risse and Illingsworth to testify as rebuttal witnesses regarding certain statements made by appellant. The defense objected that the statements in question were unduly prejudicial and improperly obtained in violation of Miranda. The State responded that the statements were res gestae and were only being admitted for impeachment purposes. The court overruled the objection and permitted Illingsworth and Risse to testify.
Prior to trial, appellant filed a motion to suppress his statements to the two officers. We find no indication in the record that the trial court expressly overruled appellant's motion, but the trial court's ruling on the defense's objection to the officers' testimony is an implicit overruling of appellant's pretrial motion. See Rey v. State, 897 S.W.2d 333, 336 (Tex. Crim. App. 1995) (trial court's ruling need not be expressly stated "if its actions or other statements otherwise unquestionably indicate a ruling"); see also State v. Kelly, 20 S.W.3d 147, 154 n.3 (Tex. App.--Texarkana 2000, no pet.).
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Risse testified that, while she interviewed appellant at the staircase, appellant told her "[h]e had woke[n] up and his daughter was on top of him having sex with him." Appellant also told Risse that "[h]e had allowed [M] to finish and had spoke[n] with [M's] mother that she needed to tell her maybe to quit having sex with him." Risse did not ask any questions of appellant, allowing him to continue talking. Later, while transporting appellant to the police station for interrogation, neither Illingsworth nor Risse gave appellant Miranda warnings. Illingsworth could not remember whether he or Risse drove appellant to the police station, but he recalled that appellant said, while sitting handcuffed in the back seat of the police car, "I woke up from a nap one day and my penis was in her vagina." When asked if he could be wrong about what appellant said, Illingsworth responded, "No." Illingsworth also testified that, at the time appellant made the statements in question, appellant seemed nervous, upset, and was very talkative. At the police station, a detective gave appellant the Miranda warnings, and appellant indicated he understood his rights and wanted to talk. During the recorded interview, appellant told the detective that "he was asleep and that at one point in time he woke up and that he had his penis inside of [M's] mouth or that [M] had her mouth on his penis."
Prior to testifying before the jury, Illingsworth testified out of the jury's presence that he asked appellant questions required for completing a Dallas County "book-in sheet," including appellant's full name, date of birth, social security number, place of birth, and occupation. When asked if he told appellant he had the right to counsel, Illingsworth responded, "I told him that we were taking him to 1400 Lamar where he would have the opportunity to speak with detectives." Illingsworth testified that he placed appellant under arrest at the apartment and then placed him in the patrol car. Illingsworth said he did not Mirandize appellant because he did not ask appellant any questions about the arrest. Illingsworth testified that appellant would have been Mirandized if he had been "interrogated regarding . . . his arrest." Illingsworth told the interrogating detective about appellant's statement.
A bifurcated standard of review applies to a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence. Randolph v. State, 152 S.W.3d 764, 769 (Tex. App.--Dallas 2004, no pet.). This standard gives almost total deference to a trial court's determination of historical facts and applies a de novo review of the trial court's application of the law to those facts. Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997). The trial court is the sole trier of fact, the judge of witness credibility, and the determiner of the weight given to witness testimony. Randolph, 152 S.W.3d at 769. We must sustain a trial court's decision to overrule a motion to suppress if the decision is reasonably supported by the record and is correct under any theory of law applicable to the case. See Armendariz v. State, 123 S.W.3d 401, 404 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003). When, as in this case, the trial judge denies a motion to suppress and does not enter findings of fact, the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the trial judge's ruling, and we assume the trial judge made implicit findings of fact supporting his ruling as long as those findings are supported by the record. State v. Ross, 32 S.W.3d 853, 855 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000). Statements obtained as a result of custodial interrogation and without proper Miranda warnings may not be used as evidence by the State in a criminal proceeding during its case-in-chief. Herrera v. State, 241 S.W.3d 520, 525 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). The Supreme Court has defined "custodial interrogation" as "questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way." Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966).
Article 38.22, § 3(a), of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure precludes the use of an accused's oral statement made as a result of custodial interrogation unless, among other things, (1) the accused's oral statement was electronically recorded by a competent operator using accurate equipment; (2) the accused was given the statutory warnings before the statement was made and during the recording; and (3) the accused knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waives the rights set out in the warnings. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22, § 3(a). But section 5 of article 38.22 provides:
Nothing in this article precludes the admission of a statement made by the accused in open court at his trial, before a grand jury, or at an examining trial in compliance with Articles 16.03 and 16.04 of this code, or of a statement that is the res gestae of the arrest or of the offense, or of a statement that does not stem from custodial interrogation, or of a voluntary statement, whether or not the result of custodial interrogation, that has a bearing upon the credibility of the accused as a witness, or of any other statement that may be admissible under law.Id. art. 38.22, § 5; Galloway v. State, 778 S.W.2d 110, 112 (Tex. App.--Houston [14th Dist.] 1989, no pet.). Section 5 is an exception to the requirements of article 3 and allows for admission of an accused's oral statement to impeach or contradict the accused's testimony when the accused chooses to testify as a witness at trial. See Tigner v. State, 928 S.W.2d 540, 542 n.4 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996); Polk v. State, 170 S.W.3d 661, 665 (Tex. App.--Fort Worth 2005, pet. ref'd); Lott v. State, No. 05- 09-01098, 2011 WL 2573371, at *3 (Tex. App.--Dallas June 29, 2011, pet. ref'd) (mem. op., not designated for publication).
Every defendant has the right to testify in his own behalf. Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 225 (1971). If a defendant voluntarily takes the stand, however, he is under an obligation to speak truthfully and accurately. Lykins v. State, 784 S.W.2d 32, 36 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989). "The shield provided by Miranda cannot be perverted into a license to use perjury by way of a defense, free from the risk of confrontation with prior inconsistent utterances." Id. By using a defendant's own statements against him, the prosecution does no more than "utilize the traditional truth-testing devices of the adversary process." Id.
In this case, we need not determine the issue of custody because the statements in question were spontaneous, voluntary, and therefore admissible under section 5 of article 38.22. Appellant does not argue, nor does the record show, that Risse was attempting to elicit any sort of an incriminating response from appellant when he sat on the stairs outside of the motel room and told the officer he woke up one day and "his daughter was on top of him having sex with him." As for the statement that appellant made while sitting handcuffed in the back seat of the police cruiser ("I woke up from a nap one day and my penis was in her vagina"), the record reflects that Illingsworth made only routine administrative inquiries that are incident to an arrest. "Questions about a person's address or employment are normally attendant to administrative 'booking' procedures and do not constitute custodial interrogation." Badall v. State, 216 S.W.3d 865, 868 (Tex. App.--Beaumont 2007, pet. ref'd) (citing Cross v. State, 144 S.W.3d 521, 524, n.5 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004)). There is, in other words, no indication that either statement was obtained by the "type of coercive, focused inquiry which would have amounted to interrogation and implicated the protections of Miranda and Article 38.22." See Galloway, 778 S.W.2d at 113.
Many cases have concluded that spontaneous, volunteered statements not made in response to interrogation are admissible, whether or not the defendant was in custody. See, e.g., Smith v. State, 949 S.W.2d 333, 338-39 (Tex. App.--Tyler 1996, pet. ref'd) (captured defendant's unsolicited statement that it would not take him as long to escape from prison the next time was admissible); Higgins v. State, 924 S.W.2d 739, 743-45 (Tex. App.--Texarkana 1996, pet. ref'd) (spontaneous statement by defendant charged with murdering his wife, that he "killed the bitch, so please shoot me," made while in custody and in back seat of a police car, was not the product of police questioning and was voluntary and admissible); DeLeon v. State, 758 S.W.2d 621, 624-25 (Tex. App.--Houston [14th Dist.] 1988, no pet.) (defendant was handcuffed and questioned about prison stabbing because officer noticed a blood stain on defendant's knee; statement in response to police questioning about location of the knives was suppressed, but subsequent spontaneous statement, "I killed him," was voluntary and admissible); Wiley v. State, 699 S.W.2d 637, 638-39 (Tex. App.--San Antonio 1985, pet. ref'd, untimely filed) (defendant's statement, "Okay, I did it," made after being shown bloody clothes and bloody knife, was not in response to interrogation and was admissible).
Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting appellant's oral statements. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22, § 5. We overrule appellant's issue.
The trial court's judgments are affirmed.
LANA MYERS
JUSTICE
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47
101082F.U05
ALFRED SANTIAGO, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
No. 05-11-01082-CR
Appeal from the Criminal District Court No. 3 of Dallas County, Texas. (Tr.Ct.No. F09- 56942-J).
Opinion delivered by Justice Myers, Justices Morris and Moseley participating.
Based on the Court's opinion of this date, the judgment of the trial court is AFFIRMED.
Judgment entered August 13, 2012.
LANA MYERS
JUSTICE
ALFRED SANTIAGO, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
No. 05-11-01083-CR
Appeal from the Criminal District Court No. 3 of Dallas County, Texas. (Tr.Ct.No. F09- 57747-J).
Opinion delivered by Justice Myers, Justices Morris and Moseley participating.
Based on the Court's opinion of this date, the judgment of the trial court is AFFIRMED.
Judgment entered August 13, 2012.
LANA MYERS
JUSTICE