Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Derrick Deran Jones was charged with robbing a Beaumont gas station during the early morning of December 31, 2022. The clerk identified Jones as the robber. Later that morning, Jones robbed a Family Dollar store while wearing clothing similar to that worn by the gas-station robber. During the Family Dollar robbery, Jones struck assistant manager Jamesha Joseph in the head multiple times with a gun, took money from the store’s safe, and was arrested outside.
A jury convicted Jones of the gas-station robbery, a second-degree felony. During the punishment phase, Jones pleaded true to enhancement allegations based on prior convictions for attempted burglary of a building and attempted murder. The jury assessed life imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. On appeal, Jones challenged the admission of testimony about Joseph’s injuries, the absence of express jury findings on the enhancement allegations, and the legality of his sentence.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that Jones failed to preserve his challenge to Joseph’s injury testimony because the Family Dollar surveillance video was admitted without objection, Joseph testified without objection that Jones struck her and caused a large gash, and Jones objected only when she said the injury caused pain. He also did not obtain a running objection or object to her later testimony about the injuries.
The court further held that Jones’s pleas of true relieved the State of its burden to prove the enhancement allegations and eliminated the need for separate jury findings that the prior convictions were true. Although the punishment charge did not include a question asking the jury to find the enhancements true, it instructed the jury to treat them as true and provided the enhanced sentencing range. Jones did not object to the charge or show that the enhancements were improper.
Because the two prior felony convictions properly triggered Texas Penal Code section 12.42(d), the applicable range was 25 to 99 years or life, rather than the ordinary two-to-20-year range for a second-degree felony. Jones’s life sentence and $10,000 fine therefore fell within the authorized punishment range.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant generally must object each time allegedly inadmissible evidence is offered or obtain a running objection to preserve the complaint for appeal.
- A plea of true to an enhancement allegation relieves the State of proving that allegation and can eliminate the need for a separate jury finding on its truth.
- Two qualifying prior felony convictions increased Jones’s sentencing range under Texas Penal Code section 12.42(d) to 25 to 99 years or life.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the procedural consequences of failing to make timely and repeated evidentiary objections. An objection lodged only after substantially similar evidence has already been admitted will generally not preserve the issue.
It also confirms that a defendant’s plea of true can establish habitual-offender enhancements without an express jury finding, so long as the record does not affirmatively demonstrate that the enhancements were invalid. That plea can expose a defendant to a substantially greater punishment range, including life imprisonment.