270 S.W.3d 79

Juan Ramon Meza SEGUNDO, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas.

No. AP-75604.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Oct. 29, 2008.

Opinion Granting Rehearing Dec. 10, 2008.

*82David A. Pearson, Fort Worth, for appellant.

*83C. James Gibson, Asst. Crim. D.A., Fort Worth, Jeffrey L. Van Horn, State’s Attorney, Austin, for State.

OPINION

COCHRAN, J.,

delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court.

Appellant was convicted in December 2006 of capital murder for raping and strangling Vanessa Villa.1 Pursuant to the jury’s answers to the special punishment issues, the trial judge sentenced appellant to death.2 Direct appeal to this Court is automatic. We have reviewed appellant’s nineteen points of error, and, finding them without merit, we affirm the trial court’s judgment and sentence.

Factual Background

This “cold case” prosecution involved the 1986 rape and murder of eleven-year-old Vanessa Villa. Appellant was not a suspect until 2005 when, during a routine CODIS3 computer run, his DNA profile “matched” that from sperm found in Vanessa’s vagina.

Vanessa lived with her mother, Rosa Clark, her one-year-old brother, Enrique, her aunt, Alicia Avila, and her aunt’s three children in a small house in northwest Fort Worth. On August 2, 1986, Vanessa came home at about 5-6 p.m. after working at a flea market. She fell asleep, fully clothed, in the bedroom that she shared with her mother and baby brother. At about 10 p.m., her mother and aunt left to run some errands. When they returned an hour later, Rosa went into her bedroom, and she “hollered” to Alicia. When Alicia came into the bedroom, she saw a comatose Vanessa lying on the bed. Her blouse and bra were pushed up, she was naked from the waist down, and her bare legs were slightly separated. The window fan was on a bedroom chair and the window screen was hanging loose. Alicia saw what she thought was semen on Vanessa’s legs.

They called the police. Vanessa was taken to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. According to the medical examiner, the cause of her death was manual strangulation. Vanessa also had abrasions and bruises on her face consistent with a hand pushing down on her mouth and nose. There was muddy debris on her thighs, consistent with a hand grabbing her thigh, abrasions on her left breast, and a bruise on her right arm. She had a “huge tear” on the back wall of her vagina, and there was blood around her external genitalia. The medical examiner thought that these injuries were “perimortem” — caused right around the time she died. Sperm was found on the bedspread, the fitted sheet she was lying on, and in Vanessa’s vagina. The medical examiner agreed that sperm can remain in the vaginal vault for anywhere from 48-72 hours.

Although the Fort Worth police investigated several possible suspects, three of them were eliminated when their DNA profiles did not match the DNA from the crime scene semen samples, and the investigation of other suspects led nowhere. Vanessa’s rape and murder eventually became an unsolved “cold case.”

In 2000, a DNA blood sample was taken from appellant.4 His DNA profile was *84entered in the Texas CODIS computer database. In March 2005, a DNA profile from the semen samples taken from Vanessa was also entered into the CODIS system. Two days later, a routine “search and match” computer test matched appellant’s DNA profile with that of the semen. A verification test was performed the next month. Another DNA specimen was obtained from appellant, and, once again, his DNA matched that found in Vanessa’s vagina and on her bedspread. The odds of another random DNA match to some other person were astronomical because appellant has a rare micro-allele in his DNA.

Although appellant had never been a suspect in Vanessa’s rape and murder, he did know her family. Vanessa’s mother and aunt worked with appellant’s wife at a nursing home. Appellant would sometimes drive his wife over to Rosa’s home. Alicia remembered that he had attended Vanessa’s wake and had signed the guest book.

During the guilt phase, the State offered evidence of a second rape-murder appellant committed in 1995. During the punishment phase, the State offered evidence of a third rape-murder appellant committed in 1994. In both of these cases, the women were strangled, and semen containing appellant’s DNA profile was found in the victims’ vagina or mouth.

Other evidence at the punishment stage showed that, in 1987, appellant burglarized the home of Irene Perez by entering her bedroom through an open window one night. He grabbed her, hit her face, choked her, and covered her mouth. She thought she was going to die, but she fought him off, turned on the light, and recognized him as someone she used to work with. He did not have his pants on. He escaped and fled in a small black car.

Three years later, appellant burglarized Sandra Holleman’s apartment, coming in through a living-room window, as she and her two small children were asleep on a mattress in the living room. Ms. Holle-man woke up to see appellant lying naked beside her, trying to pull her pants down. As she screamed, he tried to choke her. He escaped by climbing back out the living-room window. She thought that she recognized him as someone who had once lived in the same apartment complex.

The State also offered evidence that appellant repeatedly molested his girlfriend’s five-year-old daughter in the late 1980’s. When he babysat her, he would buy her candy and then make her give him oral sex. Afterwards, appellant said that if she ever told her mother he would kill her and her mother. She was too afraid to tell her mother what appellant had done until she was sixteen years old.

Other evidence showed that appellant was arrested in 1993 when an officer saw him and another man pointing guns at each other on a Fort Worth street at 2:00 a.m. Appellant’s gun, a Larcin semi-automatic, was loaded with one round in the chamber and six more in the magazine. While appellant was in prison in 1998, guards found four metal rods, in the process of being sharpened into “shanks,” in the cell occupied by appellant and another man.

During the defense punishment case, appellant’s brother, Val Meza, testified that appellant and his two brothers grew up in “a ghetto area” of El Paso. They moved from California with their mother because appellant’s father physically abused their mother. They were very poor and had to scavenge for food when their mother disappeared for days at a time. Appellant fell down some stairs when he was about one, but he did not receive medical attention for that injury. Appellant seemed “slow” and “always in a daze” after that. *85Shortly thereafter, appellant and his brothers were taken to an orphanage, but they were eventually reunited with their mother, who remarried in 1967. Three years later, they moved to Fort Worth with their mother and stepfather, who was a physically abusive alcoholic.

Mr. Meza testified that appellant called him in 2000 from a halfway house and asked if he could stay with him. When Mr. Meza went to pick appellant up, he didn’t recognize his brother, he “looked so broken down and so pitiful.” Mr. Meza took him in on certain conditions, including attending church and getting a job. Appellant got a job, got married, and reestablished a relationship with his son, Joe Segundo, whom he had not seen since 1982.5 One of appellant’s employers, the director of a non-profit church entity, testified that appellant turned his life around after 2000. Several other witnesses also testified that appellant was now a “good person,” a faithful member of his church, and sincere in making personal changes.

A clinical neurologist, Dr. Hopewell, testified that appellant’s “extensive history of inhalant abuse” and his failure to have “a stimulating background upbringing” may have caused significant brain dysfunction. Appellant’s IQ tested at 75, and his memory is impaired, but he is not mentally retarded. Dr. Hopewell stated that appellant had “very poor” insight, “poor” judgment, and “significant difficulty” with executive functioning.

The jury found appellant guilty of capital murder, and, in accordance with their answers to the special issues at the punishment stage, the trial court sentenced him to death.

A. Admission of the Extraneous Murder at the Guilt Stage.

In his first point of error, appellant claims that the trial judge erred in admitting evidence of Maria Navarro’s rape and murder in 1995 because it “was not committed in a manner sufficiently similar so as to be a ‘signature’ offense,” and the charged offense was too remote in time from that crime. Appellant also argues that this evidence should not have been admitted because appellant’s identity as the person who both sexually assaulted and strangled Vanessa Villa was not undermined by his cross-examination of the State’s DNA experts. Based solely on the cold record, we do not think that appellant’s identity was seriously contested.6 However, appellant argued at the jury-charge conference that he was entitled to instructions on the lesser-included offenses of aggravated sexual assault and murder because his cross-examination had raised an issue concerning the identity of the *86murderer;7 therefore, we must agree that identity was disputed.

How strongly must identity be disputed before uncharged misconduct may be admissible? The trial judge has considerable latitude in determining that identity is, in fact, disputed.8 It may be placed in dispute by the defendant’s opening statement or cross-examination, as well as by affirmative evidence offered by the defense.9

That the impeachment was not particularly damaging or effective in light of all of the evidence presented is not the question. The question is whether impeachment occurred that raised the issue of identity. If so, Rule 404(b) permits the introduction of extraneous offenses that are relevant to the issue of identity.10

Although it is a close call, we conclude that the trial judge did not abuse her discretion in finding that appellant raised the issue of identity through his cross-examination.11

After the prosecutors presented their case-in-chief witnesses, they asked the judge to allow evidence of two extraneous rape-murders, one committed in 1994 and the other in 1995, in which appellant’s DNA profile matched that found in semen in those victims. The prosecutor relied upon “the doctrine of chances” and Rex v. Smith,12 the famous “Brides in the Bath” case:

*87Both of these individuals were found naked; both of them, there are no witnesses to their homicide; both of them occurred in Fort Worth. These are adult females.
And in both of them, there was a unique feature that makes this a signature-type offense, and that is that each of them at each of these scenes from the orifices of those individuals, a genetic profile was obtained. And that genetic profile is identical to the genetic profile of this Defendant.

The prosecutor noted that the State was required to prove both that appellant killed Vanessa Villa and that he did so in the course of committing sexual assault. This was the very issue that appellant disputed through his cross-examination. Thus, evidence that appellant’s DNA profile was found in two other women who were victims of rape-murder was highly probative of connecting the sexual assault of Vanessa temporally with her murder. According to the prosecutor, “[t]he unlikelihood of Defendant’s semen appearing in three different homicide scenes ... the improbability of that is, on its face, obvious, and in itself probative of a fact that the State is obligated to prove.”

The trial judge, exercising her discretion under Rule 408,13 allowed the State to offer evidence of the rape-murder of only one of these women, Maria Navarro. She noted that the specific circumstances surrounding that offense were more similar to those in the present case than the circumstances surrounding the rape-murder of the third victim.14 The defense both objected 15 and requested a limiting instruction, which the trial judge gave.

The State then offered evidence that the body of a woman, later identified as thirty-two-year-old Maria Navarro, was found in Buck Sansom Park on the north side of Fort Worth in June 1995. The woman was naked from the waist down, and her legs were spread apart. She had been manually strangled. Semen was found in her vagina. In 2005, DNA tests were performed on that semen, and that DNA profile matched appellant’s.16

The general rule is that the defendant is to be tried only for the offense charged, not for any other crimes or for being a criminal generally.17 However, evidence of extraneous acts of misconduct may be admissible if (1) the uncharged act is relevant to a material issue in the case, and (2) the probative value of that evidence is not significantly outweighed by its prejudicial effect.18 Because the propensity to commit crimes is not a material fact in a criminal case, Rule 404(b) explicitly *88prohibits the admission of uncharged acts to prove conduct in conformity with a bad character.19

One of the main rationales for admitting extraneous-offense evidence is to prove the identity of the offender.20 Here, the theory of relevancy is usually that of modus operandi in which the pattern and characteristics of the charged crime and the uncharged misconduct are so distinctively similar that they constitute a “signature.”21 Usually, it is the accretion of small, sometimes individually insignificant, details that marks each crime as the handiwork or modus operandi of a single individual. No rigid rules dictate what constitutes sufficient similarities; rather, the common characteristics may be proximity in time and place, mode of commission of the crimes, the person’s dress, or any other elements which mark both crimes as having been committed by the same person.22 But if the similarities are “generic,” i.e., typical to this type of crime, they will not constitute a “signature” crime.23 Sometimes, however, the “signature” is one unique characteristic. For example, suppose that three bank robberies are committed over a four-year period in different cities in which the robber used an antique silver crossbow. This scenario is so unusual that it is highly likely that each robbery was committed by the same person using the same antique silver crossbow. This is “the mark of Zorro” mode of proving identity; it is a remarkably unusual fact, in which a single detail suffices to establish identity.24

*89In this trial, the evidence concerning the rape-murder of Maria Navarro was highly probative of appellant’s identity as the person who both raped and murdered Vanessa Villa under either the “Mark of Zorro” or the “modus operandi ” rationale. First, DNA found in both murder victims matched appellant’s DNA profile — it is as if appellant left his calling card in both Vanessa and Maria or carved a “Z” upon their foreheads as his unique signature. Under Wigmore’s “doctrine of chances,” it is extraordinarily implausible to think that two murder victims would have had sexual intercourse with appellant shortly before their deaths, but that he was not the person who strangled them both.25 Second, the similarities between the two offenses marked them as products of appellant’s modus operandi: both victims were manually strangled; both had been raped immediately before their deaths; their bodies were nude from the waist down; appellant’s DNA was found in the vaginas of both victims. The similarities of these details are sufficient to mark the two rape-murders as the handiwork of a single person, appellant26

Appellant argues that the rape-murder of Maria Navarro was too dissimilar and too remote in time from that of Vanessa to constitute appellant’s “signature” or modus operandi. 27 Some dissimilarities existed between the two victims and the circumstances of the murders, but those dissimilarities do not affect the specific issue for which the extraneous offense was admitted: Did appellant both rape and murder Vanessa, leaving his DNA calling card during that offense? The probative value of the evidence concerning Maria Navarro’s rape-murder is the fact that appellant’s DNA was found in her vagina also. All other dissimilarities between the *90offenses — years between the crimes, age of the victims, location, and so forth — are immaterial to the singular relevant fact: appellant’s semen was deposited in their vaginas at or near the time of their strangulation deaths.

That singularity also ensures that the probative value of the evidence was not substantially outweighed by any unfair prejudice under Rule 403. Appellant argues that the evidence concerning Maria Navarro’s murder “had obviously great potential to impress the jury ‘in some irrational but nevertheless indelible way.’”28 He accurately notes that the State spent a great deal of trial time proving the extraneous offense. But developing the chain of custody of vaginal swabs, the analysis for semen, and the identification of the DNA profile that was then matched with appellant’s, requires a long list of witnesses and a slow plod through the pertinent scientific procedures. The State’s emphasis throughout, however, was upon the unemotional science of DNA profiling and identification, not the gory details of the extraneous murder. This was not evidence that might lead the jury into making an irrational or emotional decision; it was calculated to result in a rational decision based upon modern science, genetic fingerprinting, and probabilities.29

In sum, we cannot say that the trial judge abused her discretion in admitting the evidence of Maria Navarro’s rape and murder to prove that appellant murdered Vanessa at the same time that he raped her.30 We overrule appellant’s first point of error.

B. The Trial Court’s Failure to Charge the Jury on Lesser-included Offenses

In points of error two and three, appellant claims that the trial court erred in denying his requested jury charge on the lesser-included offenses of murder and of aggravated sexual assault. He claims that he was entitled to a charge on aggravated sexual assault because the State’s witness testified that it is possible for sperm to remain in the vaginal vault for up to 72 hours after intercourse. “Thus, according to this undisputed expert testimony, and according to a rational interpretation of the physical evidence, the murder and the aggravated sexual assault could not be said to have occurred in the same event.”31 The State argues that there was no evidence that would allow a rational jury to find that appellant committed either rape or murder, but not both.

In determining if the jury should be charged on a lesser offense, this Court applies a two-step analysis.32 First, we decide if the offense is a lesser-included offense of the charged offense by comparing the elements of the greater offense, as pled in the indictment, with the elements in the lesser offense.33 Second, we decide if there is some evidence in the record *91from which a rational jury could acquit the defendant of the greater offense while convicting him of the lesser-included offense.34 The evidence must establish the lesser-included offense as a valid rational alternative to the charged offense.35

In this case, the only evidence that appellant points to as raising an issue of the lesser-included offenses of murder or aggravated sexual assault is the medical examiner’s testimony that it is possible for sperm to remain in a person’s vaginal vault for up to 72 hours. But this evidence raises only a theoretical possibility that the rape and murder could be disconnected in time and space. There was no evidence in this record that Vanessa’s rape and murder were, in fact, disconnected. Quite the reverse.

The medical examiner testified that, in this particular case, Vanessa’s rape and murder occurred at the same time because the vaginal trauma was inflicted contemporaneously with her death. He stated that the tear on the back wall of her vagina had to be a perimortem injury, as her blood supply was cut off before that wound could swell. There is no evidence that could support a rational finding that some third person, either known or unknown, snuck into Vanessa’s bedroom and strangled her immediately after appellant had raped her or that someone else raped her and then appellant immediately snuck in and strangled her (and, in the process, deposited his sperm on the bedspread and in her vagina). Neither of these hypothetical scenarios is a rational alternative to the commission of a rape-murder by a single individual who deposited semen laden with appellant’s DNA at the scene.36 We overrule appellant’s second and third points of error.

C. Jury Selection Issues

In his fourth point of error, appellant claims that the trial judge improperly prevented him from fully questioning a prospective juror, Ms. Betty Martin, regarding her views on the death penalty before granting the State’s challenge for cause.37 He notes that the State’s questioning of Ms. Martin spanned nineteen pages, while his own spanned only twelve *92pages. Although appellant was not permitted to ask Ms. Martin every question that he wished to pose, he was given the opportunity to examine her. But Ms. Martin was firm in stating that she could not answer the special issues so as to allow a sentence of death.38 Appellant’s counsel also questioned Ms. Martin on this topic;39 he kept trying to change Ms. Martin’s mind, but eventually the trial judge interrupted and ended the questioning by granting the State’s challenge for cause.

Appellant argues that the trial court deprived him of “meaningful participation by refusing him the opportunity to determine for himself whether the prospective juror understood the court’s instructions and the oath to answer the special issues.” But Ms. Martin had made herself clear; she understood the law and the oath, but she was not going to answer those questions in a way so as to impose the death penalty. The trial judge has considerable discretion concerning how long a prospective juror may be questioned on a particular topic and how many times the juror must repeat herself.40 At some point the trial judge must decide that *93further questioning will be fruitless.41 After reading the record of Ms. Martin’s questioning, we conclude that the trial judge did not abuse her discretion. Appellant’s fourth point of error is overruled.

In his fifth and sixth points of error, appellant claims that the trial judge erred by granting the State’s challenges for cause against two prospective jurors in violation of Witherspoon v. Illinois,42 and Wainwright v. Witt. 43 Under Witherspoon and Witt, the trial judge may excuse prospective jurors based upon their views of the death penalty only if these views will prevent or substantially impair the jurors from following their oaths and the applicable law.44 “When a prospective juror’s answers are vacillating, unclear, or contradictory, we accord deference to the trial court’s decision,” and will not second-guess him when the prospective jurors are “persistently uncertain about their ability to follow the law.”45 We grant the trial judge considerable deference, because she is in the best position to evaluate the prospective juror’s demeanor and the tone and tenor of responses.46

Appellant argues that prospective juror Joseph Maldonado, although he was opposed to the death penalty, never said that his personal views would “substantially impair” his ability to follow the law in answering the special issues. He did not use that specific phrase, but he was clear that he could not follow the law in answering the special issues if it would lead to a death sentence.47 At one point he told *94appellant’s attorney that he would be able to follow his oath and be truthful. This was after Mr. Maldonado told appellant’s counsel that he did not give a truthful answer to question 41 on the juror questionnaire form asking if he could vote to impose the death penalty if the law established that the death penalty was appropriate. Mr. Maldonado had circled “yes,” he could vote to impose the death penalty, but during the questioning he realized that he could not do so. When the judge tried to clarify the venireman’s position, Mr. Maldonado said that he should have put “I don’t know” to that question because he believed that he might be able to impose the death penalty if it involved “a small child or something like that.” The trial judge then asked, “So except for that, you — you would have answered differently, that you’re opposed to it, is that not what I understand?” Mr. Maldonado said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” The trial judge did not requestion Mr. Maldonado about whether his views about the death penalty were so strong that they would prevent or interfere with his ability to perform his duties as an impartial juror because he had already answered that question, number 39, affirmatively both on the written juror questionnaire and during the prosecutor’s questioning. At best, Mr. Maldonado was a vacillating juror who gave contradictory answers to numbers 39 and 41 on the jury questionnaire. We therefore defer to the trial judge, who can best determine, based upon the prospective juror’s tone and ten- or, whether that person could follow the applicable law despite his views about the death penalty.48 We overrule appellant’s fifth point of error.

In his sixth point of error, appellant claims that the trial court erred in excusing Ms. Carla Rodenkirk despite her strong feelings against the death penalty. She repeatedly said that she did not think that she could sentence someone to death and that her views would affect her ability to serve in this case.49 She later told appellant’s attorney that she could follow her oath and would not violate it just to *95reach a particular result, but she then exclaimed, “I couldn’t live with myself af-terwards. Do you want me to be able to live with myself afterwards?” She told the judge that she wanted “to be perfectly clear that it is a violation of my conscience.” And the trial judge noted on the record that Ms. Rodenkirk was “visibly upset” by this dilemma.

We conclude that Ms. Rodenkirk was a vacillating juror like the veniremember in Granados v. State50 who first told the trial court that she probably could not answer the special issues because of her opposition to the death penalty.51 The veniremember in Granados then said that she could follow the law, but it would “upset” her: “I would have to do it, but it would just eat me up inside, and I don’t want that on my conscience. But yet if I was called, I would have to do it.”52 In Granados, we concluded that the trial court had a rational basis for concluding that the venire-member’s personal feelings would substantially impair her ability to be fair and to follow the court’s instructions and her oath.53 The same is true in this case. The trial judge did not abuse her discretion in granting the State’s challenge for cause based upon Ms. Rodenkirk’s inability to answer the special issues in a way that would result in the death penalty without violating her conscience and by making it impossible for her to live with herself af-terwards. Appellant’s sixth point of error is overruled.

C. Evidentiary Issues

In his seventh point of error, appellant claims that the trial court violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation by admitting, over his objection, testimonial statements in Exhibits 171,172, and 173, which, he asserts, are parole revocation documents.54 We conclude that appellant has forfeited this issue on appeal because there are no parole revocation certificates in Exhibits 171, 172, or 173. Those exhibits deal with certificates of parole releasing appellant from prison, not revoking his parole. If there once had been some revocation certificates attached to those documents, they are not in the record that this Court has. By failing to ensure that the appellate record contains the material that is relevant to his point of error, appellant has forfeited this issue.55

In his eighth point of error, appellant claims that the trial court erred in refusing *96to orally instruct the jury, at the time that the evidence was introduced during the punishment phase, that extraneous acts of misconduct must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.56 We have previously rejected this contention.in Jackson v. State, 57 and appellant fails to persuade us to overrule that holding.58 Appellant’s eighth point of error is overruled.

In his ninth and tenth points of error, appellant claims that the warrant-less seizure of his blood sample, taken pursuant to Texas statute while he was in prison, violated both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, section 9, of the Texas Constitution.59 We disagree. This blood sample was taken pursuant to a mandatory DNA statute. No warrant was necessary.

Chapter 411, Subchapter G of the Texas Government Code deals with this state’s DNA database system. The legislature’s stated primary purpose of that database system is to assist law-enforcement agencies “in the investigation or prosecution of sex-related offenses or other offenses in which biological evidence is recovered.”60 The legislature has mandated that certain categories of persons are required to submit blood samples for inclusion in the DNA database system. These categories include persons charged with or convicted of certain felonies,61 persons placed on community supervision for certain offenses,62 and certain inmates,63 especially those charged with, or convicted of, sex-related offenses. This statutory requirement is much akin to those mandating fingerprinting,64 and the DNA statute, like that for fingerprinting, does not require individualized suspicion or probable cause as a predicate for taking a blood sample. To ensure a person’s privacy, however, the *97legislature has also mandated that the records stored in the DNA database remain confidential, and that the information in that database may be used only as authorized by Chapter 411.65

Because of the importance of DNA as an identification method, all 50 states and the federal government have adopted DNA collection and databank storage statutes that, although not identical, are similar to the ones in Texas.66 Generally these statutes require the extraction and indexing of DNA taken from individuals convicted of certain felonies.67

Although the taking of a blood sample for DNA analysis purposes is clearly a search, the Fourth Amendment does not proscribe all searches, only those that are unreasonable.68 The United States Supreme Court has yet to address the validity of state and federal DNA collection statutes under the Fourth Amendment, but state and federal courts that have addressed the issue of a warrantless search for DNA databank samples pursuant to statute are almost unanimous in holding that these statutes do not violate the Fourth Amendment.69

The courts deciding this issue have split in their rationale. Some have stated that DNA collection statutes permit a warrant-less, suspicionless search under the Supreme Court’s “special needs” test.70

*98Most federal and state courts, however, have upheld the DNA databank statutes under the “totality of circumstances” test.71 This trend increased after the Supreme Court’s decision in Samson v. California,72 which used the “totality of the circumstances” test to uphold suspicionless searches of felons on parole, as long as the searches are not arbitrary, capricious, or harassing.73 Even before Samson, numerous courts had applied the “totality of the circumstances” test and concluded that the governmental interest served by collecting DNA outweighed the minimal intrusion upon a probationer’s or parolee’s privacy.74 We agree with those jurisdictions that have held that warrantless DNA collection and databank systems pass Fourth Amendment scrutiny under the “totality of the circumstances.”

Appellant acknowledges these cases, but urges us to adopt the position expressed by the dissent in United States v. Kin-cade,75 because “[ujnlike fingerprints that yield only identification, DNA contains information on other family members, on propensity for certain diseases, on recessive traits, and perhaps on propensity for certain behaviors as well as other health information.”76 Appellant is correct that information collected from a DNA analysis and profile could be used for many differ*99ent purposes, not all of them salubrious. To guard against potential mischief, the Texas Legislature requires CODIS77 information to be kept confidential.78 Any unauthorized release of information is a crime.79 In fact, the CODIS databank does not even contain any names, only an identification number which, if a DNA match is found, is sent to the originating entity that has the donor’s name and other identifying information on file.80 Regarding his argument concerning the potential for abuse, appellant has made no showing that any such abuse has occurred in the Texas CODIS system, much less that such abuse occurred in his case.81 Further, appellant does not explain how obtaining a search warrant before taking a blood sample would prevent or mitigate such abuse. We overrule appellant’s ninth and tenth points of error.

In his eleventh point of error, appellant claims that the DNA statute was unconstitutionally applied to him because the DNA profile obtained from a blood sample taken while he was in prison was retained in the CODIS databank even after his parole expired in July 2000. He quotes from United States v. Weikert,82 which had, as an aside, noted that it was not faced with an issue concerning the retention of DNA profiles in CODIS after a person’s parole or probation had expired.83 Although several courts and law review articles have expressed concern about the potential for abuse of this information, appellant has not directed us to a single state or federal case that has held that the DNA record must be expunged once an offender is released from supervision. In Johnson v. Quander, 84 the D.C. Circuit explicitly held that no Fourth Amendment violation results from retaining a DNA profile in the database after the offender is released from all supervision.85 The court explained that “accessing the records stored in the CODIS database is not a ‘search’ for Fourth Amendment purposes,” because “the process of matching one piece of personal information against government records does not implicate the *100Fourth Amendment.”86 It then analogized CODIS to police files containing snapshots and fingerprint databases, concluding that if such material “is taken in conformance with the Fourth Amendment, the government’s storage and use of it does not give rise to an independent Fourth Amendment claim.”87 We agree with those courts that have held that the CODIS statutes are not unconstitutional because they allow for the retention of a DNA profile after a parolee’s period of supervision is complete. We overrule appellant’s eleventh point of error.

In his twelfth point of error, appellant claims that (1) the State did not produce any evidence that Deborah Taylor, the person who drew appellant’s blood sample at the Clements prison unit in 2000, met the statutory qualification to take that sample, and (2) when he told Ms. Taylor that he did not want to give her a blood sample, she told him, “If you don’t do this, then you’ll get a case for refusal, and you’ll be here longer.”

As to his first argument, we note that appellant testified that the person who took his blood sample was a woman who worked in the Clements infirmary and that she “[l]ooked like, I guess, a nurse.” She signed the CODIS blood sample card as “Deborah Taylor” and identified her “agency name” as TTUHSC, presumably the Texas Tech University Health Science Center.88 Under Section 411.146, a CO-DIS blood sample must be collected in a medically approved way by “(1) a physician, registered nurse, licensed vocational nurse, licensed clinical laboratory technician; or (2) another person who is trained to properly collect blood samples or other specimens and supervised by a licensed physician.”89 As the trial judge noted in her written findings, Section 411.148(h) permits TDCJ to “contract with an individual or entity for the provision of phlebotomy services under this section.”90 Be*101cause Ms. Taylor worked in the Clements Unit infirmary, “looked like a nurse” to appellant, and stated that her agency was TTUHSC, we agree with the trial court’s implicit factual finding that Ms. Taylor was statutorily qualified to draw appellant’s CODIS blood sample. Appellant offered no evidence that demonstrates her lack of qualifications.

As to his second argument, appellant relies upon the former version of § 411.148 of the Government Code which stated, “An inmate may not be held past a statutory release date if the inmate fails or refuses to provide a blood sample or other specimen under this section. A penal institution may take other lawful administrative action against the inmate.”91 First, the trial court was not required to believe appellant’s self-serving hearsay statement about what Ms. Taylor purportedly told him. Second, as the State argues, the trial court may have interpreted Ms. Taylor’s purported statement as one acknowledging possible “administrative action” — such as the loss of good time credits — should he refuse to comply with the mandatory statute.92 Appellant has failed to show that the trial judge abused her discretion in refusing to suppress the DNA profile obtained as a result of the analysis of his blood sample taken by Ms. Taylor. Appellant’s twelfth point of error is overruled.

In his thirteenth point of error, appellant contends that the trial judge deprived him of his Sixth (and Fourteenth) Amendment rights to present a defense by excluding “alternative perpetrator” evidence. During his cross-examination of Detective Reyes, appellant wanted to question Det. Reyes about the fact that Rosa Clark, Vanessa’s mother, gave him the name of Dolores Balderas as a possible suspect. She suspected him because he had been previously arrested for sexually assaulting his sister. She also gave Det. Reyes the name of Martin Martinez, a “doper” who occasionally lived in her home. The trial court declined to allow Det. Reyes to testify to these hearsay and double hearsay statements by Vanessa’s mother. However, Det. Reyes did testify that Martinez voluntarily gave a DNA sample and that he was eliminated as a suspect. Det. Reyes also testified that Dolores Balderas, Bartolo Salazar, Van Johnson, and James McKelroy were other possible suspects who were investigated and/or interviewed. Those investigations did not lead anywhere. Thus, the only items of evidence that the trial court disallowed were the hearsay statements by Rosa Clark about her suspicions. Appellant has failed to show that Ms. Clark’s suspicions were relevant or that her hearsay statements were reliable. He was not prevented from questioning Det. Reyes about the existence, development and investigation of other possible suspects in Vanessa’s murder. He could present his defense without resort to unreliable hearsay.93 The trial judge did not abuse her *102discretion in excluding that evidence.94 Appellant’s thirteenth point of error is overruled.

D. Constitutionality of Article 37.071

In his fourteenth point of error, appellant claims that the Texas death-penalty statute is unconstitutional because it fails to require the State to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there are no mitigating circumstances that would warrant a life sentence. Appellant relies upon Ring v. Arizona,’ 95 and Apprendi v. New Jersey. 96 We have previously rejected this argument,97 and appellant gives us no reason to revisit the issue. We overrule his fourteenth point of error.

E. Jury Charge Issues

In four points of error, appellant claims that the trial court committed error in her punishment jury charge.

In point of error fifteen, appellant claims that she erred by overruling his objections to the charge on the ground that the indictment did not contain grand jury findings of probable cause on the three special issues. According to appellant, these special issues should have been contained in the indictment. We rejected this contention in Russeau v. State, 98 and appellant has not persuaded us to overrule that decision.

In point of error sixteen, appellant claims that the trial judge erred in charging the jury that it had to find whether there was a probability beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a threat to society. Appellant argues that this instruction dilutes the reasonable-doubt standard. We rejected this contention in Rayford v. State, 99 and appellant fails to persuade us that Rayford was wrongly decided.

In points of error seventeen and eighteen, appellant claims that the trial judge erred in failing to instruct the jurors that they need not agree on what particular evidence is mitigating. He argues that this failure violated his rights under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.100 Because appellant was tried for *103an offense that he committed in 1986, the applicable sentencing procedure is set out in Article 37.0711.101 That article does not require the jury to be instructed that they need not agree on what particular evidence supports an affirmative finding on the mitigation special issue. Article 37.071, the provision setting out the applicable sentencing procedure for capital cases committed after 1991, does contain such an explicit instruction.102 Appellant relies primarily on Mills v. Maryland,103 which had held that Maryland’s death-penalty scheme was unconstitutional because the jury charge appeared to instruct the jurors that they could not consider any mitigating evidence unless all twelve of them agreed on the existence of a particular mitigating circumstance.104 The question in this case, then, is as follows: Could the jurors in appellant’s case have reasonably believed that they could not consider any mitigating evidence in deciding the third special issue unless all twelve of them found that a particular piece of evidence was mitigat-mg? We think not. A capital defendant cannot establish a constitutional violation simply by claiming that an allegedly erroneous jury instruction could have or might have affected some hypothetical jury.105

In this case, the jurors were explicitly instructed that they “shall consider mitigating evidence that a juror might regard as reducing the defendant’s moral blameworthiness.” 106 Here, the emphasis is upon “a” juror, not all twelve jurors. The legislature chose its words so that the jurors must consider any piece of evidence that any one or more of them might consider as reducing a defendant’s moral blameworthiness. That does not mean that all of the jurors must conclude that a specific item of evidence is mitigating just because one juror thinks it is, but they must at least consider evidence that any one juror thinks is mitigating. We do not agree that the jury instructions as given were reasonably likely to be misunderstood by the jury or that they violated appellant’s constitutional rights.107 We *104overrule points of error fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen.

F. The Lethal Injection Protocol

In his nineteenth point of error, appellant claims that the Texas-lethal injection protocol violates the federal constitution, the state constitution, and international law. Because appellant’s execution is not imminent, his claim is not ripe for review.108 Furthermore, appellant did not litigate this issue in the trial court, and the record is not sufficiently developed for this Court to resolve his claim.109 Appellant’s nineteenth point of error is overruled.

Having found no reversible error, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

PRICE, J., filed a concurring opinion in which MEYERS and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.

PRICE, J.,

concurring in which MEYERS and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.

I agree that it is a close question whether the extraneous offense should have been admitted in this case. The close question is not, in my view, whether the extraneous offense is relevant (apart from inferences of character-conformity) to an issue in the case. To me, the much closer question is whether the evidence was substantially more prejudicial than probative. On the particular facts of this case, however, the trial court was justified in concluding that the extraneous offense evidence was not substantially more prejudicial than probative, and therefore acted within its discretion to admit it under Rule 403 of the Texas Rules of Evidence.1

The appellant argues that there are insufficient similarities between the charged offense and the extraneous offense to establish modus operandi, which is typically thought to be required before an extraneous offense may be admitted to show identity under Rule 404(b) of the Rules of Evidence.2 The Court today quite correctly rejects this argument on the peculiar facts of this'case. The appellant does not challenge his identity as the person who sexually assaulted the victim. He simply argues that under the State’s evidence it is possible that after he sexually assaulted her, someone else may have been the one to murder her. Under this scenario, the relevance of the extraneous offense to the charged crime does not reside in the similarities between the two offenses, to show the appellant’s overall complicity in the charged crime. Instead, the relevance resides in the tendency of the extraneous offense to prove that the appellant did not simply sexually assault the victim of the charged offense, but that he killed her as well.

Evidence that on other occasions the appellant has sexually assaulted and murdered other victims tends to show that the appellant did not just sexually assault the instant victim, but that he murdered her, too. And the more victims the appellant has sexually assaulted who have also turned up dead, the greater the probability (utilizing inferences having nothing to do *105with character-conformity) that the appellant does not typically leave his sexual assault victims alive. As the Court rightly observes, the kind of similarities we usually look for to establish modus operandi, and hence identity, are simply unnecessary to establish the operative inference in this case — that appellant raped and killed the victim of the charged offense. Indeed, that being the operative inference, one must wonder why the trial court did not see fit to admit both extraneous offenses proffered by the State in this case. After all, the more often DNA evidence shows that the appellant has committed sexual assault, and those victims have also turned up dead, the greater the likelihood that the appellant was responsible, not just for the assaults, but for the killings, too.

Also on the peculiar facts of this case, it seems that the State’s need for the extraneous offense evidence is not that pressing.3 The victim was left alone for only an hour, and the medical examiner testified that the rape and murder were contemporaneous. It seems highly unlikely that the appellant would have come through the window, sexually assaulted the victim, and left, only to have some unidentified and non-complicit third party follow the appellant through the window later within that same hour and murder her. The State did not have a particularly compelling need for the extraneous offense evidence to establish that the appellant was the murdered.4 Moreover, the extraneous offense is of a sensational nature, suggesting a potential to impress the jury in an irrational and indelible way.5 A more than plausible argument can be made, under these circumstances, that evidence of the extraneous offense was substantially more prejudicial than probative, and hence inadmissible under Rule 403. Nevertheless, given the substantial efforts of the defense to argue that the State’s evidence did not establish that the appellant both raped and murdered the victim, I reluctantly agree that the trial court did not abuse its substantial discretion (did not, that is, depart from the “zone of reasonable disagreement”6) to admit evidence of the extraneous offense. With these observations, I join the Court’s opinion.

OPINION ON REHEARING

COCHRAN, J.,

delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court on Appellant’s Motion for Rehearing.

In December 2006, a jury convicted appellant of capital murder, and the trial court sentenced him to death. On October 29, 2008, this Court rejected appellant’s nineteen points of error on direct appeal and affirmed his conviction and sentence. In his seventh point of error, appellant claimed that the trial court erred in admit*106ting, over his objection, testimonial statements contained within State’s Exhibits 171, 172, and 173, which were parole-revocation documents. In our original opinion, we stated that the revocation certificates were not contained in Exhibits 171-173. Accordingly, we held that appellant forfeited review of this issue by not ensuring that the appellate record contained the material relevant to his point of error.

Appellant filed a Motion for Reconsideration asserting that this Court erred in concluding that he had forfeited his seventh point of error because he had filed a supplemental record which contained complete copies of these exhibits after he had filed his brief. In his original brief, appellant referenced only the trial record containing the partial exhibits; he did not file a supplemental brief pointing out the existence of a supplemental record that contained the complete exhibits. It is not the appellate court’s responsibility to wade through voluminous records in search of material that is missing from its referenced location.1 To avoid such problems in the future, counsel should normally file a supplemental brief pointing out the existence of the supplemental record and explaining that the material pertinent to a particular point of error may be found in that supplemental record.

Because appellant has now directed the Court to the portion of the appellate record in which the complete parole-revocation documents are located, we shall address his seventh point of error.

Appellant argues that his constitutional right to confrontation was violated when the State introduced these Board of Pardons and Paroles certificates that contained what he asserts are testimonial statements. The specific statements to which he objected at trial are that appellant “subsequently failed to fulfill the terms and conditions of said release, and is therefore not worthy of the trust and confidence placed therein,” that he “has violated the conditions of administrative release,” and that he was an “administrative release violator.” He claims that these statements were “testimonial” in nature and that he was deprived an opportunity “to cross-examine the State witnesses who determined to revoke his parole.”

We conclude that these statements were not testimonial. The language to which appellant refers is standard “boilerplate,” pre-printed language in a form entitled Board of Pardons and Paroles Proclamation of Revocation and Warrant of Arrest. These “boilerplate statements” are nontestimonial under Crawford v. Washington, 2 and the revocation certificates in which they are contained are ad*107missible as an exception to the hearsay rule both as public records3 and as business records.4 Other courts that have addressed the issue of public records documenting prior convictions or other similar official findings have concluded that such records are non-testimonial and therefore beyond the prohibition of Crawford.5

Appellant relies upon our decision in Russeau v. State. 6 In that case, we held that jail records containing specific incident reports written by corrections officers graphically documenting their detailed observations of the defendant’s numerous disciplinary offenses were testimonial and inadmissible under Crawford when those officers did not testify at trial.7 We specifically stated that “[t]he trial court erred in admitting those portions of the reports that contained the testimonial statements.” 8 Only those portions of the otherwise admissible jail business records that contained testimonial descriptions of specific facts and observations were inadmissible.

The “boilerplate” parole-revocation certificates admitted in this case did not contain any such testimonial statements, narratives of specific events, or written observations. Texas courts have recognized this distinction between official records that set out a sterile and routine recitation of an official finding or unambiguous factual matter such as a judgment of conviction or a bare-bones disciplinary finding and a factual description of specific observations or events that is akin to testimony.9

*108The certificate of parole revocation in this case is nothing but a sterile recitation of the fact that appellant violated his parole and was subject to re-arrest and re-incarceration. It has none of the features of a subjective incident report made by a law-enforcement officer or other person conducting a specific factual investigation for use in a criminal proceeding.

Accordingly, we grant the motion for rehearing, conclude that appellant’s seventh point of error is without merit, and once again affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Segundo v. State
270 S.W.3d 79

Case Details

Name
Segundo v. State
Decision Date
Oct 29, 2008
Citations

270 S.W.3d 79

Jurisdiction
Texas

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