Page 23 - TPA Journal March April 2017
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member, Rigalado Silder, and waited for the In assessing the legal sufficiency of the
assistance of a SWAT team. After Moreno had evidence, we consider all of the evidence in
been watching the complex for about 25 min- the light most favorable to the verdict and
utes, he observed Balderas and Silder leave an determine whether, based on that evidence
upstairs apartment and start down the stairs. and reasonable inferences therefrom, any
Each man was carrying a large box, and rational juror could have found the essential
Balderas had a black bag slung over his shoul- elements of the crime beyond a reasonable
der. When they saw the SWAT team arriving, doubt. “The reviewing court must give defer-
Balderas and Silder set everything down and ence to ‘the responsibility of the trier of fact to
started running. Moreno caught Silder in the fairly resolve conflicts in testimony, to weigh
apartment complex, while the SWAT team pur- the evidence, and to draw reasonable infer-
sued Balderas into the neighborhood and ences from basic facts to ultimate facts.’” Each
caught him as he tried to hide under a car. fact need not point directly and independently
to a defendant’s guilt, as long as the cumulative
Moreno saw that the boxes and bag con- force of all the incriminating circumstances is
tained firearms and other weapons, bullet- sufficient to support the conviction.
proof vests, identification holders, magazines,
and ammunition. One of the weapons recov- The State may prove a defendant’s iden-
ered from the box that Balderas had been car- tity and criminal culpability by either direct or
rying was a handgun that was later identified, circumstantial evidence, coupled with all rea-
through ballistics testing, as the murder sonable inferences from that evidence. The jury
weapon in Hernandez’s killing. A shell casing is the sole judge of the credibility and weight
from a semiautomatic handgun was recovered to be attached to witness testimony. When the
from Balderas’s right rear pants pocket. record supports conflicting inferences, we pre-
sume that the jury resolved the conflicts in
In his first point of error, Balderas asserts favor of the verdict, and we defer to that deter-
that the evidence is insufficient to prove his mination. Because we will not second-guess
guilt. Specifically, he argues that Wendy the jury’s assessment of the credibility and
Bardales, the only eyewitness who identified weight of witness testimony, and because we
him as the gunman, was not credible and testi- defer to the jury’s resolution of conflicting
fied falsely. He points to inconsistencies inferences, Balderas’s allegations that Wendy’s
between her statements to police and her trial testimony was false and not credible play no
testimony, as well as ways in which her part in our review of the sufficiency of the evi-
description of the gunman did not accurately dence.
describe Balderas. Balderas also alleges that
Wendy’s statements to police evolved over In this case, Balderas was tried under an
time: first, she did not recognize the gunman indictment that alleged, in relevant part, that
and had never seen him before; then, upon he, on or about December 6, 2005, “while in
viewing the photo array, she immediately rec- the course of committing or attempting to com-
ognized Balderas, whom she had known for mit the burglary of a habitation owned by
several months, but she was not sure that he Durjan ‘Rata’ Decorado and Wendy Bardales,
was the gunman; and finally, she confidently intentionally cause[d] the death of Eduardo
identified Balderas as the gunman. Hernandez by shooting Eduardo Hernandez
Mar. - Apr. 2017 www.texaspoliceassociation.com • 866-997-8282 19
