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710 S.W.2d 828

Williams v. State

Texas Court of Appeals, 5th District (Dallas) · decided 1986-04-30

Applies TX PE § 2.03

Relies on Lehman Bros. v. Lilly · McGoldrick v. State · Luck v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1986-04-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently March 2014

7 state decisions

401986199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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SCALES, Justice.

¶1The appellant was found guilty of the offense of murder by the trial judge. Punishment was assessed at confinement in the Texas Department of Corrections for 9 years. The appellant contends that the evidence of self-defense entitles her to an acquittal as a matter of law. We disagree, and, consequently, we affirm the conviction.

¶2A person is justified in using deadly force in self-defense against another when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force. TEX.PENAL CODE ANN. § 9.32 (Vernon Supp.1986). Self-defense is a justification excluding criminal responsibility and, as such, is a defense under section 2.03 of the Penal Code. Under section 2.03, the defendant has the initial burden of producing evidence to raise a defense, but the State then has the burden of persuasion to disprove that defense beyond a reasonable doubt. Luck v. State, 588 S.W.2d 371, 375 (Tex.Crim.App.1979) (en banc), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 944, 100 S.Ct. 2171, 64 L.Ed.2d 799 (1980). In order for the appellate court to hold that, as a matter of law, a defendant in a homicide prosecution killed in self-defense, the evidence must be uncontradicted and no issue presented for the factfinder’s determination. Whitfield v. State, 492 S.W.2d 502, 504 (Tex.Crim.App.1973). The appellant’s testimony alone, although uncontradicted, does not conclusively prove self-defense. Cruz v. State, 629 S.W.2d 852, 860 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1982, pet. ref’d); see Sebree v. State, 695 S.W.2d 303, 305 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1985, no pet.). In considering the record before us, we view the *829evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s judgment to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. McGoldrick v. State, 682 S.W.2d 573, 577 (Tex.Crim.App.1985); Faggett v. State, 673 S.W.2d 700, 702 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1984, pet. ref'd).

¶3The record reflects that the deceased and the appellant were husband and wife. They were not living together at the time of the offense. Following a series of quarrels, the appellant stabbed her husband one time in the chest. The stabbing occurred at about 11:00 p.m. There were no witnesses to the stabbing, other than appellant. There was no evidence that the deceased had a weapon at the time.

¶4Alice Boldon testified that she and the appellant were in appellant’s house when the deceased began banging on the door and window to enter. Appellant asked Bol-don to get a knife from the kitchen in order to secure the front door, because the door latch did not work. Boldon testified that they stuck a knife in the doorjamb to lock the door every night before they went to bed. Boldon gave the knife to her. Boldon stated that she was afraid both appellant and the deceased would “end up dead.” Appellant told Boldon to go call the police, and Boldon was not present at the time of the stabbing a few minutes later.

¶5Betty Washington testified that she lived next door to the appellant. She was out on her front porch, and she saw the deceased at the appellant’s door. She stated that she could not see everything that was going on. She did not see anything in the deceased’s hand. She heard appellant tell the deceased three times to get away from her door. The deceased continued “fumbling and beating at the door like he was trying to get in.” Washington saw the appellant run out into the street after the stabbing. Appellant was naked.

¶6Another witness, Margaret Ford, testified that she lived across the street from the house. She and her husband were outside on their porch. She saw the deceased when he broke the front window and banged on the door. He then left. She saw him return and knock on the door again. She heard the appellant tell the deceased, “I told you about coming to my house this time of night.” She then heard the door open and heard it close. She saw the deceased “hit the ground outside a little ways from the porch.” Shortly thereafter, she saw the appellant run out of the house.

¶7Dallas Police Officer O’Connor testified that he arrived at 11:10 p.m. The deceased was dead at the time O’Connor arrived. O’Connor had a conversation with the appellant. She eventually led him to a trash pile, and he recovered appellant’s knife where she had thrown it. O’Connor testified that the first thing appellant told him was: “ ‘I told him not to hit me any more.’ ”

¶8Dallas Police Officer Steven Pitts, a witness for the defense, testified that he responded to a family disturbance call concerning appellant and the deceased during the afternoon before the stabbing. He stated that he had responded to similar calls on at least two prior occasions and that “my experience on those two previous calls was that [appellant] was the agitator.” Officer Pitts testified that appellant “would always be yelling at [the deceased], shouting obscenities at him in public....” On the afternoon before the stabbing, Officer Pitts advised the deceased to leave appellant’s premises. Officer Pitts testified that this incident during the afternoon “was no more volatile than the other times I had been out there.”

¶9Sammy Boldon, the appellant’s brother, also testified for the defense. Boldon stated that on the evening of the stabbing, he was worried about what “might happen to both of them [appellant and the deceased], because they was both going at it pretty bad.” Boldon testified that he was worried about the deceased, as well as the appellant, being injured.

¶10The appellant testified on her own behalf. She stated that she and the deceased had had fights before, and “[e]very time we’d fight, someone would always end up *830getting hurt.” Although appellant’s brother wanted her to stay at his house that night, appellant wanted to stay at her own house in order to protect it, because the deceased had “tore up the house, turned over everything” on three or four prior occasions when appellant was not at home.

¶11The appellant testified that the deceased came to her house that night between 10:45 and 11:00 p.m. She said that the deceased was “kicking and beating” on her front door. She stated that the door could be kicked open even when the knife was stuck in the doorjamb. Appellant testified that the knife began falling out of the doorjamb, that she picked up the knife; and “[tjhat’s when the door come open, he said, ‘Bitch, I’m going to kill you,’ and he hit me.” Appellant stabbed the deceased one time in the chest. Appellant testified:

Q. After_ he said ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and he hit you, and then you were defending yourself and that’s when you stabbed him, is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. What did you do next?
A. I started — I fought him back after he hit me. I just did like this. And I wasn’t thinking about the knife being in my hand. I was thinking about protecting myself.

¶12Carrie Wofford was called by the prosecution as a rebuttal witness. She told of a conversation with appellant earlier in the day. The appellant threatened to kill the deceased, and Wofford told appellant to think about it. Wofford testified that appellant “said ‘I’m going to kill Rickie, Miss Carrie. I’m going to kill him.’ And I said, ‘Well, you should think about your children before you do that.’ ”

¶13We hold that, although the issue of self-defense was raised by the evidence in this case, appellant’s testimony alone does not conclusively prove self-defense as a matter of law. Whitfield, 492 S.W.2d at 504; Cruz, 629 S.W.2d at 860. Thus, whether the State disproved self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt was a question of fact to be determined by the trier of fact. Nelson v. State, 573 S.W.2d 9, 12 (Tex.Crim.App.1978). Here, the trial judge was the exclusive judge of the facts proved, of the credibility of the witnesses, and of the weight to be given to the testimony. Bellah v. State, 653 S.W.2d 795, 796 (Tex.Crim.App.1983); Thorn v. State, 651 S.W.2d 39, 41 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1983, pet. ref’d). The trial judge was free to accept or reject the appellant’s testimony. Nelson, 573 S.W.2d at 12; Thorn, 651 S.W.2d at 41. It is not the function of the court of appeals to reweigh the evidence presented at trial. Thorn, 651 S.W.2d at 41. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the judgment, we must affirm appellant’s conviction because there was evidence from which a rational trier of fact could find appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

¶14We overrule appellant’s ground of error and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

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