Stevie Jones v. State ( 2019 )

In the
Court of Appeals
Second Appellate District of Texas
at Fort Worth
___________________________
No. 02-18-00237-CR
___________________________
STEVIE JONES, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS
On Appeal from the 431st District Court
Denton County, Texas
Trial Court No. F17-1823-431
Before Sudderth, C.J.; Birdwell and Bassel, JJ.
Memorandum Opinion by Chief Justice Sudderth
MEMORANDUM OPINION
A jury found Appellant Stevie Jones guilty of committing assault-family
violence, enhanced to a third-degree felony by Jones’s 1990 conviction for the family
violence-related murder of Yolanda Graves,1 and the trial court assessed Jones’s
punishment at four years and five months’ confinement. See Tex. Penal Code Ann.
§§ 12.34, 22.01(a), (b)(2)(A). In a single issue, Jones challenges the sufficiency of the
evidence to support his conviction, directing us to what he refers to as the “key
elements” that he claims are unsupported by the evidence—the prior conviction for a
family violence-related offense based on a dating relationship between him and
Graves.2 See id. § 22.01(b)(2)(A).
In our due-process evidentiary-sufficiency review, we view all the evidence in
the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational factfinder
1
See Jones v. State, No. 05-90-01026-CR, 1992 WL 111051, at *1 (Tex. App.—
Dallas May 26, 1992, no pet.) (not designated for publication).
2
Federal due process requires that the State prove beyond a reasonable doubt
every element of the crime charged. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 316, 99 S. Ct.
2781, 2787 (1979); see U.S. Const. amend. XIV. As authorized by the indictment, the
State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that on or about September 27, 2016,
Jones had intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causing bodily injury to D.P., a
member of his family or household or someone with whom he had a dating
relationship, by grabbing, pushing, or striking her with his hand or choking her with
his arm and that Jones had previously been convicted on August 24, 1990, in the
265th District Court of Dallas County, in cause number F88-81145-PR, of murdering
someone with whom he had had a dating relationship. See Tex. Penal Code Ann.
§ 22.01(a), (b)(2)(A).
2
could have found the crime’s essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt.3 Jackson,
443 U.S. at 319, 99 S. Ct. at 2789; Queeman v. State, 520 S.W.3d 616, 622 (Tex. Crim.
App. 2017). This standard gives full play to the factfinder’s responsibility to resolve
conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences
from basic facts to ultimate facts. See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S. Ct. at 2789;
Queeman, 520 S.W.3d at 622.
The factfinder alone judges the evidence’s weight and credibility. See Tex. Code
Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.04; Queeman, 520 S.W.3d at 622. Thus, when performing an
evidentiary-sufficiency review, we may not re-evaluate the evidence’s weight and
credibility and substitute our judgment for the factfinder’s. Queeman, 520 S.W.3d at
622. Instead, we determine whether the necessary inferences are reasonable based on
3
The record reflects that around mid-morning on September 27, 2016, Debra
Black called 911 to report that 49-year-old Jones was holding his girlfriend, Black’s 22-
year-old granddaughter D.P., against her will. In her written statement to the police,
D.P. stated that Jones had assaulted her with a belt, a cane, a shoe, and his fist, but at
trial, almost two years later, she called her written statement “scribble scrabble” that
she did not recall writing. Video footage from the arresting officer’s body camera was
admitted into evidence and published to the jury. On the video, D.P. speaks so softly
that the recording does not pick up her statements, but the officer repeats D.P.’s
statements without contradiction as follows: Jones punched her in the mouth and
choked her until she lost consciousness; when she regained consciousness, he kicked
her, punched her, and hit her with a belt, and he also tied one of her hands to a couch.
When the officer spoke with Jones, he told her that nothing physical had happened
between them. Jones’s relative and two of his friends who had been staying at the
house denied having heard anything. Photographs of D.P.’s mouth show that she
suffered some sort of injury. Jones does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence
to support the remainder of the offense’s elements, but the jury could have found
those elements beyond a reasonable doubt based on the above and its credibility
determinations.
3
the evidence’s cumulative force when viewed in the light most favorable to the
verdict. Murray v. State, 457 S.W.3d 446, 448 (Tex. Crim. App.), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct.
198 (2015); see Villa v. State, 514 S.W.3d 227, 232 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017) (“The court
conducting a sufficiency review must not engage in a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy but
must consider the cumulative force of all the evidence.”). We must presume that the
factfinder resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the verdict, and we must
defer to that resolution. Murray, 457 S.W.3d at 448–49. The trier of fact is free to
accept or reject all or any of the evidence of either party, and any or all of the
testimony of any witness. Franklin v. State, 193 S.W.3d 616, 620 (Tex. App.—Fort
Worth 2006, no pet.) (citing Hernandez v. State, 161 S.W.3d 491, 500 (Tex. Crim. App.
2005)).
To support the enhanced conviction, the State was required to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that Jones had previously been convicted on August 24, 1990, in the
265th District Court of Dallas County, in cause number F88-81145-PR, of murdering
someone with whom he had had a dating relationship. See Tex. Penal Code Ann.
§ 22.01(b)(2)(A). The trial court admitted into evidence Jones’s penitentiary packet
that contained his August 24, 1990 judgment of conviction for Graves’s 1988 murder,
which matched the above trial court and cause number information and which also
included Jones’s photographs, demonstrating to the jury that he was the same man on
trial for the instant offense, and satisfying the first portion of this element.
4
To satisfy the remainder—that the murder victim, Graves, had been someone
with whom Jones had had a dating relationship—the jurors had to find credible at
least some of the following evidence: the portion of the Dallas Court of Appeals’s
opinion, which affirmed Jones’s murder conviction and which was read to them by a
Denton County investigator;4 the testimony by Demetris Bollin that when she was
sixteen, Jones had dated Graves, her nineteen-year-old half-sister, and had been
convicted of murdering her; and the testimony of Kevin Navarro, who had retired
from the Dallas Police Department in 2012 after 31 years of service, and who had
investigated and arrested Jones for the murder of Graves and described Jones as
having been Graves’s ex-boyfriend. Navarro testified that he had determined Jones
and Graves’s relationship based on information from Graves’s family members and
friends; he did not speak with Jones’s friends or family during his investigation.
As the jurors could have chosen to believe any, all, or none of the above, see
Franklin, 193 S.W.3d at 620, they could have likewise chosen to disbelieve the
testimony of Jones’s relatives who at trial denied the existence of a dating relationship
between Jones and Graves. Jones’s mother described their relationship as “business
only.” Jones’s brother also refused to characterize their relationship as a dating one,
even though he acknowledged having seen Jones and Graves together on “a daily
4
The Denton County investigator read to the jury the following: “Yolanda
Graves and Stevie Jones met and began dating in high school. After Jones started
buying Graves expensive presents and taking her on trips, Graves’ father, [E.]D.
Johnson, asked her to move from his house.”
5
basis, pretty much” during the time period in question. Instead, Jones’s brother said
he considered Graves “[j]ust another girl hanging out with [them],” explaining that in
1988, he and his brother had not had girlfriends but rather just “girls that [they], you
know, mess[ed] with.”
Presuming that the jury resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the
verdict and deferring to that resolution, as we must, we hold that there was sufficient
evidence upon which the jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Jones
had had a dating relationship with Graves before he murdered her. Accordingly, we
overrule Jones’s sole issue and affirm the trial court’s judgment.
/s/ Bonnie Sudderth
Bonnie Sudderth
Chief Justice
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)
Delivered: April 11, 2019
6