Thomas Gene Peiser v. the State of Texas, 03-19-00749-CR

Background

Appellant Thomas Gene Peiser was convicted by a jury of murder (count I), tampering with a human corpse (count II), and tampering with a firearm (count III); the jury found enhancement paragraphs true and assessed life sentences for each count.
Victim Antonio Romo was found a few miles north of town with a contact gunshot wound to the head; significant blood was found in Romo’s truck and in the Peisers’ house.
Witnesses placed Peiser and Romo together earlier that day after a dispute over payment; a neighbor heard a loud pop near the Peisers’ house; Peiser was seen driving Romo’s truck and later had blood on his clothes and boots but had showered and changed before police arrival.
Peiser’s wife, Tamatha Peiser, made statements shortly after the events implicating Peiser but invoked spousal privilege and did not testify; the trial court admitted her out-of-court statements as excited utterances.
Recorded jailhouse calls between Peiser and his wife (and others)—which included incriminating admissions and discussion of the gun, clothes, and concealment—were admitted; Peiser objected on spousal-privilege and privacy/waiver grounds.
On appeal Peiser raised six issues: three sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges and three challenges to admission of the jail calls and his wife’s out-of-court statements; the court affirmed all convictions.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (State)	Defendant's Argument (Peiser)	Held
1) Sufficiency — Murder	Circumstantial and forensic evidence (blood in house/truck, witness statements, neighbor hearing a shot, Peiser driving truck, blood on Peiser’s clothes, incriminating jail calls) supports finding Peiser intentionally shot Romo.	Insufficient—no eyewitness to the shooting, no murder weapon linked to Peiser, and a later statement by wife that she killed Romo undermines guilt.	Evidence sufficient to support murder conviction; issue overruled.
2) Sufficiency — Tampering with corpse	Combined evidence permitted inference that Peiser moved/concealed the body (blood patterns, truck, body found off-road in concealed area, Peiser’s conduct and statements).	Insufficient—no proof body was moved or altered, no expert showing body was relocated, body was found unburied and in plain view.	Evidence sufficient to support tampering-with-corpse conviction; issue overruled.
3) Sufficiency — Tampering with firearm	Ammo can with missing rounds, wife’s seeing a revolver previously, wife’s contemporaneous statements, and Peiser’s jail calls about the weapon support inference he concealed the gun.	Insufficient—no specific firearm linked to Peiser; absence of a gun is not proof of concealment.	Evidence sufficient to support tampering-with-firearm conviction; issue overruled.
4) Evidentiary — Jail calls and spousal privilege	Calls were recorded and inmates were notified; calls were not confidential, so spousal privilege did not apply.	Calls were confidential spousal communications protected by spousal privilege.	Calls were not privileged because recording/notice destroyed confidentiality; trial court did not abuse discretion.
5) Evidentiary — Jail calls and privacy/waiver	Incarcerated persons lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in monitored jail calls; no special admonition required for monitoring to be admissible.	Admission violated Peiser’s constitutional privacy/right not to have intra-spousal communications used against him; any waiver was coerced and involuntary.	No objectively reasonable expectation of privacy given notice that calls were monitored; admission proper.
6) Evidentiary — Wife’s out-of-court statements	Statements were made shortly after a startling event while declarant was distraught; admissible as excited utterances.	Statements were hearsay, self-serving, made by an always-excited declarant, and separated by intervening time so not spontaneous.	Trial court did not abuse discretion in admitting the statements under the excited-utterance exception.

Key Cases Cited

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (establishes the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt sufficiency standard for appellate review)
State v. Scheineman, 77 S.W.3d 810 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002) (inmates lack reasonable expectation of privacy in monitored jail calls)
Coble v. State, 330 S.W.3d 253 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010) (explains excited-utterance exception and factors for admissibility)
Gonzalez v. State, 544 S.W.3d 363 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018) (abuse-of-discretion standard for evidentiary rulings)
De La Paz v. State, 279 S.W.3d 336 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009) (an evidentiary ruling will be upheld if correct under any applicable legal theory)
Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (discusses loss of privacy incident to incarceration)