In The
Court of Appeals
Sixth Appellate District of Texas at Texarkana
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No. 06-03-00027-CR
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DARNANN BAYNE DAVIS, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee
On Appeal from the 402nd Judicial District Court
Wood County, Texas
Trial Court No. 15,396-97
Before Morriss, C.J., Ross and Carter, JJ.
Memorandum Opinion by Chief Justice Morriss
MEMORANDUM OPINION
On April 27, 1998, Darnann Bayne Davis pled guilty to two separate charges of injuring a child. Pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement, the trial court deferred a finding of guilt in each case and placed Davis on community supervision for a period of six years.
On July 24, 2002, the State filed its first amended motion to proceed to an adjudication of guilt. The trial court conducted a hearing on the State's motion and, on January 14, 2003, decided Davis had violated the terms of his community supervision, adjudicated Davis' guilt, and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment. Both convictions were appealed separately, but the briefs in each case are substantively identical.
Since the briefs and arguments raised therein are identical in each appeal, for the reasons stated in Davis v. State, No. 06-03-00026-CR, we likewise dismiss Davis' appeal for want of jurisdiction.
Josh R. Morriss, III
Chief Justice
Date Submitted: May 12, 2004
Date Decided: May 28, 2004
Do Not Publish
ck cocaine on the ground next to the passenger side of the vehicle. Rogers subsequently arrested Williams, who denied possessing any cocaine or having any knowledge of the cocaine. A search of the vehicle revealed a canister with cocaine residue in it; this canister had been within arm's reach of Williams's seat inside the car.
After Williams had been taken into custody, he was apparently directed to sit on the front of Rogers's patrol vehicle while she conducted a more thorough search of the interior of the other vehicle. The video camera in the patrol car continued to record the remainder of the traffic stop. While Williams sat on the patrol car and while Rogers was distracted with searching the other car, Williams appears on the police videotape to pull something out of his shoe and then throw it while Rogers conducted her search. Rogers did not herself see Williams throw this object at this point in time; the officer learned of Williams's furtive conduct when she reviewed her videotape later the next morning. When Rogers returned to the scene of Williams's arrest, she was unable to find anything such as drugs at the location where Williams had been arrested.
Melissa Brooke Harrison, a forensic scientist with the Texas Department of Public Safety's Crime Laboratory in Tyler, testified that she examined the suspected drugs seized by the Rusk County Sheriff's Office in connection with this case. According to Harrison's scientific testing, the eight off-white rocks submitted in connection with the case by the sheriff's office contained cocaine; the total weight of the narcotics came to 1.37 grams.
Next, Williams took the witness stand in his own defense. He told the jury that neither he nor his companion that evening, Gary Roquemore, had been using drugs on the night in question. Williams denied possessing or disposing of any drugs that night. Instead, Williams told the jury that what they had seen him drop on the side of the road was a white cigarette lighter. Williams also claimed that his apparent nervousness on that evening (shaking hands and profuse sweating) was the result of having a high white blood cell count in his body. He thereafter repeatedly denied throwing anything out of the car's window. Williams's only explanation for how police found cocaine at the scene of the traffic stop was that such was a freakish coincidence.
The thrust of Williams's argument on appeal is that the evidence fails to show sufficient links between himself and the cocaine later found by the police. We disagree. Rogers testified that, not long after the initial traffic stop, she saw the passenger (whom she identified as Williams) reach his hand out of the passenger-side window and drop something. Rogers later observed the dropped object and thought it looked like rocks of crack cocaine. When this dropped object was submitted to the crime laboratory, it turned out to contain eight rocks of cocaine. Given Williams's nervous appearance (shaking and sweating), his proximity to the drugs both when and where they were initially discarded, the presence of other contraband containing cocaine residue inside the car (which was found within an area that Williams could have reached), and Williams's post-arrest furtive movements (from which the jury was free to infer that Williams possessed additional contraband and knew of its illegality), we conclude there were sufficient links between Williams and the cocaine from which the jury could have reasonably concluded that Williams knowingly possessed the crack cocaine in question. The evidence is, therefore, factually and legally sufficient to support the jury's verdict that Williams "possessed" the cocaine in question.
Conclusion
Having found no merit in Williams's appellate issues, we affirm the trial court's judgment.
Bailey C. Moseley
Justice
Date Submitted: April 7, 2008
Date Decided: April 24, 2008
Do Not Publish
1. These links include the following factors:
(1) the contraband was in plain view or recovered from an enclosed place; (2) the accused was the owner of the premises or the place where the contraband was found; (3) the accused was found with a large amount of cash; (4) the contraband was conveniently accessible to the accused; (5) the contraband was found in close proximity to the accused; (6) a strong residual odor of the contraband was present; (7) the accused possessed other contraband when arrested; (8) paraphernalia to use the contraband was in view, or found on the accused; (9) the physical condition of the accused indicated recent consumption of the contraband in question; (10) conduct by the accused indicated a consciousness of guilt; (11) the accused attempted to flee; (12) the accused made furtive gestures; (13) the accused had a special connection to the contraband; (14) the occupants of the premises gave conflicting statements about relevant matters; (15) the accused made incriminating statements connecting himself or herself to the contraband; (16) the quantity of the contraband; and (17) the accused was observed in a suspicious area under suspicious circumstances.
Washington, 215 S.W.3d at 554.