Rodgers v. State

RAY MITCHELL RODGERS, Appellant, v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee.

NUMBER 13-18-00453-CR

COURT OF APPEALS THIRTEENTH DISTRICT OF TEXAS CORPUS CHRISTI - EDINBURG

July 30, 2020

On appeal from the 36th District Court of San Patricio County, Texas.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Before Justices Benavides, Perkes, and Tijerina

Memorandum Opinion by Justice Perkes

A jury convicted Ray Mitchell Rodgers of capital murder, and he received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. See TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. §§ 12.31(a)(2), 19.02(b)(1), 19.03(a)(8). By a single issue, Ray contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his conviction. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Ray was charged by indictment with "intentionally and knowingly caus[ing] the death of an individual, namely, RaeJay A. Rodgers, an individual younger than 10 years of age, by causing blunt force trauma to RaeJay A. Rodgers in a manner and means which is unknown to the grand jury." The following evidence was presented at trial.

Angela Rodgers and her husband Ray had nine children together, ranging in age from thirteen-year-old twins to a four-month-old boy named RaeJay. In January 2016, the family resided in Portland and occupied separate two-bedroom apartments in the same complex, with Angela and the nine children living upstairs in one unit and Ray and his adult son Dominque living downstairs in the other. However, the children freely moved between the apartments and sometimes spent the night in Ray's unit where they kept some of their things.

On January 26, 2016, Angela and Ray were both off from work. Throughout the day, Angela ran errands and periodically returned home where Ray was taking care of their preschool-aged children, including RaeJay. Angela dropped Dominque off at work around 3:00 p.m. and then picked up the older children from school. When she returned home around 4:00 p.m., Angela testified that "[RaeJay] was doing good. He was playing with his sisters." She checked on him again before leaving for the grocery store around 6:30 p.m., and "he seemed to be well." When she left, RaeJay was lying on Dominque's bed in Ray's apartment. The other young children were also downstairs, and the twins were upstairs in Angela's place doing chores. According to Angela, the bed that RaeJay was lying on "was higher than usual," and the floor in that room was made of a hard,concrete tile.

Angela called Ray around 6:51 p.m. to ask him a question, and he didn't mention anything out of the ordinary. Then Ray called Angela approximately ten minutes later to find out if she had left the grocery store yet. According to Angela, "I told him I was checking out already[,] and he hung up." He called back minutes later, asking again if she had left the grocery store. At that point she asked if something was going on, and Ray told her something was wrong with RaeJay, that he must have fallen off the bed. Ray told her that he walked into Dominque's bedroom and found RaeJay lying on the floor. Ray picked him up and noticed that he wasn't moving, and despite "wiggling him," RaeJay remained unresponsive. Angela asked him what was wrong with RaeJay, and Ray told her that he "didn't know."

Angela hung up and called her thirteen-year-old daughter and asked her to go downstairs to check on RaeJay. Angela explained that her daughter quickly called back "crying" and "hysterical" because "[RaeJay] wasn't breathing." The daughter called 9-1-1 "because [Ray] couldn't find his cell phone."

Angela arrived home minutes later and immediately went to her neighbor Seth Malcolm's apartment because she knew he was employed as an emergency medical technician. Malcolm confirmed that RaeJay was not breathing and performed CPR on RaeJay before other emergency medical personnel arrived and relieved him. Malcolm, along with several of the emergency medical personnel, testified that they followed proper CPR protocols for an infant. Paramedic John King testified that RaeJay had no pulse when they arrived but during the transport to the local emergency room, "we gotcirculation back and actually got a pulse back during that time."

A week prior to the incident, Angela took RaeJay to the doctor for a check-up. The test results were normal, and Angela said that the doctor told her "[RaeJay] was doing fine and that he was developing very quickly and that everything was good."

Sergeant Michelle Quade with the Portland Police Department was the first officer on the scene. She began assisting Malcolm with CPR and noticed that RaeJay had "some bruising around the eyes and the bridge of the nose between the eyes."

According to Sergeant Quade, "[t]here was really no reaction from [Ray]," who was standing next to them during CPR. "There really wasn't a lot of emotion showing," she added. Malcolm made a similar observation, saying Ray "pretty much stood there quietly." By comparison, Malcolm said that when Angela "knocked on my door, she about knocked my door down . . . . [Ray] was not as emotional as she was. His emotions were well in check."

Once EMS arrived, Sergeant Quade and the other officers who had arrived on the scene began their investigation. Sergeant Quade was wearing a bodycam and the recording was played for the jury. Ray mentioned that earlier in the day RaeJay had also fallen from a chair onto a blanket but appeared uninjured. He then took her through the sequence of events that evening.

Ray told Sergeant Quade that he gave RaeJay a bath and then laid him in the center of Dominque's bed with a bottle propped up by a blanket. The bed was in a corner of Dominque's bedroom with the headboard and one side each against a wall. Ray said that RaeJay was lying across the bed with his feet towards the open side of the bed. According to Ray, "everything was fine" with RaeJay at this point. Ray then left theapartment for approximately ten minutes to visit his friend Stephen Bell, who also lived in the complex. Ray acknowledged that he left RaeJay and the other small children unattended during this time but said that his older twins are usually "in and out" of his apartment.

Bell, whose conversation with Sergeant Quade was also recorded and played for the jury, confirmed that Ray visited him during this period. Bell stated that Ray came over ten to fifteen minutes after their last text exchange at 6:08 p.m. and stayed until Bell's girlfriend called ten to fifteen minutes after Ray arrived. Sergeant Quade looked at Bell's phone to confirm the timeline and saw that his girlfriend called him at approximately 6:50 p.m. Bell also told Sergeant Quade that a few minutes after Ray left, he went downstairs and borrowed $5.00 from Ray for cigarettes. Ray's thirteen-year-old daughter was leaving Ray's apartment at the time and told Bell he could find Ray in his bedroom. Bell said that he saw the other young children sitting on the couch and was only in the apartment for approximately thirty seconds before he left.

Ray told Sergeant Quade that when he returned home, he resumed cleaning the apartment before checking on RaeJay. He found RaeJay in Dominque's bedroom lying face down on the floor in the opposite direction from where he left him on the bed. Ray estimated that twenty to thirty minutes elapsed between when he laid RaeJay in the bed and discovered him on the floor and another thirty-five minutes passed before Malcolm began CPR. According to Sergeant Quade, based on Ray's descriptions of where he left and then found RaeJay, "[RaeJay] would have had to have flipped up right and rolled over to be facing the opposite direction face down."

Sergeant Quade measured the height of the bed at 29.5 inches. Pictures of thebed provided to the jury show that the mattress and box spring were placed on a thick frame that protrudes nearly two inches from the edge of the mattress. On cross examination, Sergeant Quade agreed that if RaeJay fell off the bed, as Ray said, he could have struck the frame on his way to the floor.

The pictures also show a baby bottle in the center of the bed along with a comforter. Lead investigator Lieutenant Jonathan Quade¹ with the Portland Police Department arrived at the scene shortly after EMS and other responding officers. He testified that the bottle in the picture was "warm to the touch."

Lieutenant Quade interviewed Ray the day after the incident, and a video recording of the interview was played for the jury. During the interview, Ray repeated the version of events that he told investigators on the scene. He added that at some point after he returned from Bell's, but before he discovered RaeJay, his thirteen-year-old son came downstairs to use the restroom. He also expressed his love and affection for RaeJay and became emotional during the interview. Ray denied that RaeJay had ever been spanked or "whooped," as Lieutenant Quade called it. They also discussed a statement made by a third person who claimed to overhear medical professionals at Driscoll Hospital acknowledging that RaeJay received negligent medical care at Driscoll. Based on the reports he received from the treating physicians and the Nueces County medical examiner, Lieutenant Quade later wrote a complaint against Ray for capital murder.

Dr. Carlyle Langhorn was the attending physician at the local emergency room. Dr. Langhorn testified that when RaeJay arrived by ambulance "he was in a grave condition, critical condition; not breathing on his own, no heartbeat." The facility was notequipped to handle the severity of RaeJay's injuries, so Dr. Langhorn did his best to stabilize RaeJay and then transferred him to Driscoll Children's Hospital in nearby Corpus Christi.

Dr. Langhorn stated that he was "very suspicious" of Ray's explanation because RaeJay's injuries did not "match up" with a fall from a bed. During trial, Dr. Langhorn was shown a picture of the actual bed. Based on his training and experience as an emergency room physician, Dr. Langhorn opined that RaeJay's injuries were not consistent with a fall from the...