Lott v. State

KODY AUSTIN LOTT, Appellant v. THE STATE OF TEXAS

No. 02-18-00487-CR

Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth

November 7, 2019

On Appeal from the 30th District Court Wichita County, Texas

Trial Court No. 58029-A

and

On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 1 Tarrant County, Texas

Trial Court No. C009529

Before Sudderth, C.J.; Gabriel and Womack, JJ.

Memorandum Opinion by Justice Gabriel MEMORANDUM OPINION

Rejecting his defense of insanity, a jury convicted appellant Kody Austin Lott of murder and of aggravated assault. For the murder, the jury assessed Lott's punishment at confinement for life and a $10,000 fine; the jury assessed punishment at twenty years' confinement and a $10,000 fine for the aggravated assault. The trial court sentenced Lott accordingly and ordered that the sentences run concurrently. On appeal, Lott challenges his convictions and sentences in four issues. Finding no merit in those issues, we affirm the trial court's judgments.

I. BACKGROUND

Many students at Wichita Falls' McNeil Junior High School use a nearby alley to walk to and from school. When school let out on the afternoon of September 2, 2016, several students, including thirteen-year-old eighth-graders Lauren Landavazo and Makayla Smith, began walking home down that alley toward Trinidad Drive, as they had on many other occasions. When they neared the alley's intersection with Trinidad Drive, a white male with shaggy brown hair stopped his gold Chevy Tahoe in the northbound lane of Trinidad Drive, aimed a semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle into the alley, and opened fire on the children. The driver then sped away.

Several children who had been walking in the alley behind Lauren and Makayla heard the gunshots, saw Lauren fall and Makayla attempt to run, and scattered for cover. When the gunshots stopped, some of those children came back into the alley and discovered that Makayla had fallen to her hands and knees in the alley and wasbleeding. She had suffered a single gunshot to her chest, an injury she survived. But Lauren lay fatally wounded with fifteen gunshots to her head, torso, arms, and hands.

The shooter remained at large until a tip led police to pull over a gold Chevy Tahoe two days after the shooting. Twenty-year-old Lott was driving, and officers arrested him after they conducted a consensual search of the Tahoe and found brass knuckles, which at the time was a prohibited weapon.¹ While in custody for the prohibited weapon, Lott confessed to shooting Lauren and Makayla. He also confided to police that he had been monitoring media reports of the shooting and that he had been angry when those reports characterized the shooting as a "senseless act of violence." Lott insisted that the shooting was not random or senseless but was "a sophisticated [expletive] assassination" that he had carried out because he "just wanted some people to feel a little bit of pain."

II. SUPPRESSION OF EVIDENCE

Lott filed a pretrial motion asking the trial court to suppress (1) any evidence seized as a result of the search of the Tahoe because the initial stop was not supported by reasonable suspicion and (2) evidence of his confession because he did not knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waive his privilege against self-incrimination.See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22, § 3, art. 38.23(a). The trial court heard the motion during trial outside the jury's presence and denied the motion. The trial court entered findings and conclusions regarding Lott's confession and concluded that it was voluntarily made and admissible.² See id. art. 38.22, § 6. As to Lott's challenge to the stop and subsequent search of the Tahoe, the trial court stated on the record that the officer had had reasonable suspicion to stop the Tahoe and that the resulting search of the Tahoe had been conducted with Lott's consent. In his first two issues, Lott argues that the denial of his motion to suppress was an abuse of discretion.

A. STANDARDS OF REVIEW

We apply a bifurcated standard of review to a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence. Amador v. State, 221 S.W.3d 666, 673 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007); Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997). We defer almost totally to the trial court's rulings on questions of historical fact and application-of-law-to-fact questions that turn on evaluating credibility and demeanor, but we review de novo application-of-law-to-fact questions that do not turn on credibility and demeanor. Amador, 221 S.W.3d at 673; Estrada v. State, 154 S.W.3d 604, 607 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005); Johnson v. State, 68 S.W.3d 644, 652-53 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002).

In other words, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling. Wiede v. State, 214 S.W.3d 17, 24 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007); State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 819 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). When the trial court makes explicit fact findings, we determine whether the evidence when viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling, supports those findings. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d at 818-19; see also State v. Cullen, 195 S.W.3d 696, 699 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006) (recognizing findings and conclusions may be "stated on the record at the hearing"). We then review the trial court's legal ruling de novo unless its explicit fact findings that are supported by the record are also dispositive of the legal ruling. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d at 818.

B. TRAFFIC STOP

1. Suppression Hearing

Officer John Gordon of the Wichita Falls Police Department was the only witness at the suppression hearing regarding the traffic stop. The trial court also admitted Defendant's Exhibit 1, which contained a series of 911 calls related to the shooting investigation.

Gordon was a patrol officer whose duties included conducting traffic stops. On September 4, 2016, he was aware that the shooting had occurred two days earlier and that the investigation of that case had taken a high priority within the department. In fact, before Gordon started his shift that day, he had been told that investigators had developed a description of the suspect. The suspect was described as a whitemale who had shoulder-length, possibly shaggy hair and who was driving a gold Chevy Tahoe.

In the early afternoon, a dispatch came over the computer in his patrol car to "check suspicious" at the Fountaingate Apartment complex, which is approximately one block away from the shooting site. The dispatcher's information was based on a 911 call from Joanne Perez. Perez had told the dispatcher that she had driven by the location where the shooting had happened and that she had stopped on a nearby road that went to the Fountaingate Apartments. Perez stated that she had seen a tall, white male, with shoulder-length hair and driving a gold Chevy Tahoe, park in front of one of the apartments. She further said that the driver had gotten out of the Tahoe, had retrieved something out of the back seat, which "looked like a rifle . . . wrapped in clothes and blankets," and that he had hurriedly and "suspicious[ly]" taken the bundle into one of the apartments.

Perez provided the dispatcher with the Tahoe's license-plate number and the apartment the driver had gone into. She also told the dispatcher that she was willing to stay at the scene and speak to officers about the call if needed. She gave the dispatcher her location and information about the car she was in. Perez then reported that the driver of the Tahoe had reappeared and was leaving the apartment complex. The dispatcher instructed Perez to remain where she was; Perez remained on the phone until the dispatcher informed her that officers had located the Tahoe.

The dispatcher told Gordon the basic information Perez had reported. Specifically, the dispatcher told Gordon that the "check suspicious" dispatch involved a report that a white male with shoulder-length hair had taken a rifle into one of the apartments, that he had done so in a hurry, and that he had then left in a gold Chevy Tahoe. The dispatcher also gave Gordon the license-plate number of the Tahoe and the direction the Tahoe was heading in. Gordon quickly found the Tahoe at a stop light.

Gordon followed the Tahoe and confirmed with the dispatcher that the license-plate number matched Perez's report. Gordon activated his patrol car's emergency lights and stopped the Tahoe, which was driven by Lott. Gordon testified that he did not have an independent reason for stopping Lott other than the information he had received from the dispatcher.

2. Applicable Law

In his first issue, Lott contends the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress because Gordon did not have reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop, which rendered the stop unlawful. It is lawful for a police officer to conduct a brief investigatory detention if the officer has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. See Matthews v. State, 431 S.W.3d 596, 602 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). Reasonable suspicion exists if the officer has specific, articulable facts that, when combined with rational inferences from those facts, would lead the officer to reasonably conclude that theperson detained is, has been, or soon will be engaged in criminal activity. Ramirez-Tamayo v. State, 537 S.W.3d 29, 36 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017).

Reasonable suspicion is an objective standard that disregards the actual subjective intent of the detaining officer and instead looks to whether there was an objectively justifiable basis for the detention. Wade v. State, 422 S.W.3d 661, 668 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013). We determine whether an investigatory detention was supported by reasonable suspicion by considering the totality of the circumstances. Delafuente v. State, 414 S.W.3d 173, 177 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013). As the name itself suggests, the totality-of-the-circumstances test does not look to individual circumstances in isolation. See Derichsweiler v. State, 348 S.W.3d 906, 914 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011). Actions in a series may appear innocent when viewed in isolation...