Andy Fields v. State ( 2018 )

COURT OF APPEALS
SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS
FORT WORTH
NO. 02-17-00015-CR
ANDY FIELDS APPELLANT
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE
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FROM THE 213TH DISTRICT COURT OF TARRANT COUNTY
TRIAL COURT NO. 1463549R
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MEMORANDUM OPINION1
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Appellant Andy Fields appeals his third-degree felony conviction for
committing assault against a member of his family or household or against
someone with whom he had a dating relationship while having a prior conviction
for that offense.2 In one point, he argues that the trial court abused its discretion
1
See Tex. R. App. P. 47.4.
2
See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.01(a)(1), (b)(2)(A) (West Supp. 2017).
by admitting, over his relevance objection, one page of an exhibit that the State
offered to establish the prior assault conviction. We affirm.
Background
One Sunday in July 2015, R.A. (Rebecca) was relaxing at her house with
her twenty-year-old daughter T.A. (Tamara)3 and her two grandchildren. Fields,
who had been in an off-and-on intimate dating relationship with Rebecca, arrived
uninvited at the house and walked into Rebecca’s bedroom. Rebecca asked him
why he was there and told him to leave. He refused, so Rebecca grabbed a
backpack and a jacket that Fields had brought into the house and threw them
outside.
According to Rebecca, at that point, Fields became angry. After he
verbally sparred with her for a few minutes, he began hitting her face and chest
as she attempted to push him off. Rebecca yelled for Tamara, who was asleep,
to call 9-1-1. Tamara awoke, went to Rebecca’s room, saw Fields restraining
Rebecca in a choke hold and hitting her, and attempted to get him off of her.
Fields responded by hitting Tamara and by threatening to push her down some
stairs. Tamara called 9-1-1, and Fields left the house.
Greg Brooks, a Benbrook police officer, received a dispatch about the
assault and began looking for a suspect whom the dispatcher described as
shirtless and as wearing white shorts and blue shoes. Officer Brooks found
3
We use aliases to protect the anonymity of R.A. and T.A. See McClendon
v. State, 643 S.W.2d 936, 936 n.1 (Tex. Crim. App. [Panel Op.] 1982).
2
Fields, who matched the description, sitting on a porch in the same neighborhood
as Rebecca’s house. When Officer Brooks approached Fields, Fields gave
Officer Brooks an incorrect date of birth. Fields later admitted to Officer Brooks
that he had done so and gave his correct date of birth. Officer Brooks noticed
that Fields was sweaty and had fresh scratches on his back, neck, face, and
chest. Fields told Officer Brooks that he had been in an argument with his
girlfriend and that his girlfriend’s daughter had assaulted him.
Benbrook police officer James Hatton also received a dispatch about the
assault and went to Rebecca’s house. When Officer Hatton walked into the
house, he noticed blood on a wall, on a stairwell, in a bathroom, and on a chair.
He also saw that several items had been “thrown about.” To Officer Hatton,
Rebecca appeared hysterical; she was screaming, shaking, crying, and wincing
because of pain near one of her eyes.4 Rebecca told Officer Hatton that Fields
had accused her of “sleeping around,” that Fields had punched her, and that she
had attempted to defend herself against the assault. Officer Hatton noticed that
Rebecca’s face was swollen and that her hand was bleeding. He also noticed
that Tamara had a red scratch on her arm. He concluded that Fields was the
aggressor, relying in part on the fact that Fields was less credible because he
had lied to Officer Brooks about his date of birth. John Whiteside, a detective
At trial, Officer Hatton described Rebecca as “one of the most upset
4
reporting persons [he had] ever come across.”
3
with the Benbrook Police Department, joined Officer Hatton at the crime scene.
He concurred with Officer Hatton’s conclusion that Fields was the aggressor.
A grand jury indicted Fields with assaulting Rebecca by striking her face or
by squeezing her neck. For jurisdictional purposes, the indictment alleged that
Fields had a prior conviction for assault against a member of his family or
household or against someone with whom he had a dating relationship. For
sentence-enhancement purposes, the indictment also alleged that Fields had two
prior felony convictions.
At a jury trial, Fields pleaded not guilty, and he pleaded not true to the
indictment’s enhancement allegations. Through his cross-examination of the
State’s witnesses and through his closing argument, Fields proposed to the jury
that he had acted in self-defense. Rebecca testified that Fields had been
previously convicted for assaulting her and that he had a history of abusing her.
The trial court admitted documentary evidence of Fields’s prior misdemeanor
assault conviction. In the guilt-innocence jury charge, the court instructed the
jury about the law of self-defense.
The jury found Fields guilty. The jury then heard further evidence and
arguments concerning his punishment, found the indictment’s sentence-
enhancement allegations true, and assessed fifty years’ confinement. The trial
court sentenced Fields accordingly, and he brought this appeal.
4
Admission of Evidence
In his only point, Fields contends that the trial court abused its discretion
by overruling his relevance objection to one page of State’s Exhibit 20, which the
State offered to establish his prior conviction for assault against a member of his
family or household or against someone with whom he had a dating relationship.
See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.01(b)(2)(A) (making assault against a member of
a family or household or against someone with whom the defendant has a dating
relationship a third-degree felony if the defendant has another conviction for that
offense).
State’s Exhibit 20 contains four pages. The first page is a docket sheet
stating that in November 2014, Fields pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, was
convicted, and received a sentence of ninety days’ confinement. The second
page is the judgment related to that conviction; the judgment states that Fields
pleaded guilty to “ASSAULT BODILY INJURY-FM,” a class A misdemeanor. The
third page is a charging instrument alleging that in September 2014, Fields
assaulted Rebecca by striking her upper body with his hand. The fourth page is
an earlier-filed complaint for the same case, alleging, unlike the charging
instrument, that Fields assaulted Rebecca by applying pressure to her neck or
throat with his hand and by impeding her breathing.5
5
This complaint alleged a felony assault. See Tex. Penal Code Ann.
§ 22.01(b)(2)(B). The charging instrument to which Fields pleaded guilty in 2014,
which omitted the allegations about Fields applying pressure to Rebecca’s neck
and impeding her breathing, alleged a misdemeanor assault. See id.5
On appeal, Fields contends that page four was inadmissible because it
bore “no relevance to the jurisdictional conviction, which [was] for misdemeanor
assault bodily injury.” He argues that page four’s admission harmed him
because that page “introduced an extraneous offense to the guilt or innocence
phase of the trial.”
We conclude that we need not decide whether the trial court abused its
discretion by admitting page four because any such error did not result in harm
that justifies reversing Fields’s conviction.6 See Tex. R. App. P. 44.2(b).
We must disregard any nonconstitutional error that does not affect an
appellant’s substantial rights.7 See id. An error affects an appellant’s substantial
rights when it has a substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining
the jury’s verdict. King v. State, 953 S.W.2d 266, 271 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997)
(citing Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S. Ct. 1239, 1253
(1946)). Conversely, an error does not affect a substantial right if we have “fair
assurance that the error did not influence the jury, or had but a slight effect.”
§ 22.01(a)(1), (b). In response to Fields’s relevance objection in the trial court, a
prosecutor argued, “It’s a document under seal. I mean, it’s a certified copy of a
judgment.” The trial court overruled Fields’s objection without explaining its
reasoning.
6
An error analysis is not required when a harm analysis is dispositive. See
Wooten v. State, 400 S.W.3d 601, 607 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013).
7
Fields concedes that the trial court’s alleged error was “not constitutional
in nature” and that rule 44.2(b)’s harmless error standard applies.
6
Solomon v. State, 49 S.W.3d 356, 365 (Tex. Crim. App. 2001); Johnson v. State,
967 S.W.2d 410, 417 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998).
In making this determination, we review the record as a whole, including
any testimony or physical evidence admitted for the jury’s consideration, the
nature of the evidence supporting the verdict, and the character of the alleged
error and how it might be considered in connection with other evidence in the
case. Motilla v. State, 78 S.W.3d 352, 355 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002). We may also
consider the jury instructions, the State’s theory and any defensive theories,
whether the State emphasized the error, closing arguments, and even voir dire, if
applicable. Id. at 355–56. We must determine whether the error likely moved
the jury from a state of nonpersuasion to a state of persuasion concerning
Fields’s guilt. See Snowden v. State, 353 S.W.3d 815, 825 (Tex. Crim. App.
2011); Murkledove v. State, 437 S.W.3d 17, 29 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2014,
pet. dism’d).
We first consider the alleged error in context with other evidence and in
light of Fields’s defensive theory. Motilla, 78 S.W.3d at 355. As explained
above, Fields’s theory in the trial court was that he acted in self-defense during
the altercation with Rebecca and Tamara. To evaluate this theory, the jury
considered first-hand accounts of the altercation from Rebecca and Tamara and
Fields’s challenges to those accounts through cross-examination. The jury also
considered an audio recording of Tamara’s 9-1-1 call; testimony from officers
who interacted with Fields, Rebecca, and Tamara shortly after the altercation and
7
observed their demeanor; and photographs of Fields’s and Rebecca’s injuries
and of the state of Rebecca’s home following the altercation. In the context of
this evidence that focused the jury’s attention on the charge at issue, we cannot
conclude that the jury likely predicated its decision of Fields’s guilt on page four’s
extraneous allegation.8 Furthermore, even if the jury was prone to base its
decision to convict Fields on his prior misconduct rather than on testimony and
evidence related to the July 2015 assault, page four’s allegation of such
misconduct was not likely as compelling as Rebecca’s and Tamara’s testimony—
received by the jury without objection—that Fields had repeatedly abused
Rebecca in the past.
We next consider the alleged error in light of the trial court’s jury charge.
See id. The trial court’s guilt-innocence jury charge instructed the jury that it
could not consider evidence of Fields’s extraneous offenses unless it found
beyond a reasonable doubt that he had committed them. The charge also
instructed the jury that even if it made such a finding, it could consider the
offenses only for determining “motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan,
knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident, if any, in connection with
this offense.” We presume that the jury followed these instructions and therefore
did not consider page four’s allegation as evidence of Fields’s guilt for the July
8
As the State argues, the record reflects that the jury sent notes to the trial
court during deliberations, including a note asking to see “pictures of the parties
involved,” but does not reflect that the jury requested to review State’s Exhibit 20.
8
2015 assault. See Casanova v. State, 383 S.W.3d 530, 543 (Tex. Crim. App.
2012) (reciting the “usual presumption that jurors follow the trial court’s explicit
instructions to the letter”).
Finally, we consider whether the State emphasized the error. See Motilla,
78 S.W.3d at 355. The State did not emphasize page four’s allegation (that
Fields had choked Rebecca and had impeded her breathing during his
September 2014 assault) during its questioning of Rebecca or during its closing
argument. Instead, during Fields’s cross-examination of Rebecca, he elicited
testimony concerning the allegation.
For all of these reasons, we cannot conclude that the trial court’s alleged
error in admitting page four of State’s Exhibit 20 affected Fields’s substantial
rights. See Tex. R. App. P. 44.2(b); Motilla, 78 S.W.3d at 355. Because the
record does not reveal reversible error, we overrule Fields’s sole point.
Conclusion
Having overruled Fields’s only point, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.
/s/ Wade Birdwell
WADE BIRDWELL
JUSTICE
PANEL: SUDDERTH, C.J.; PITTMAN and BIRDWELL, JJ.
DO NOT PUBLISH
Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)
DELIVERED: March 1, 2018
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