Justia Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Opinion Summaries

Ronald Wortham was convicted of injury to a child. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment, holding that the trial judge did not err in denying Wortham's request for a jury instruction on the lesser-included offenses of reckless and criminally negligent injury to a child. Because the court of appeals misapplied the two-part analysis used to determine the availability of lesser-included offense instructions, the Supreme Court reversed its judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Wortham, Jr. v. Texas" on Justia Law

Applicant was charged with murder, but convicted by a jury of the lesser included offense of manslaughter. He was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. The Sixth Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction. In 2006, Applicant moved for post-conviction DNA testing. In 2009, the trial court granted the motion and ordered the test. Although a knife had tested presumptively positive for blood, no DNA testing had been performed on the knife at the time of Applicant's trial. The results of the DNA testing performed on two stains from the knife indicated that a third party was excluded as a possible source of, or contributor to, the DNA profile obtained from the knife. A hearing was conducted on the post-conviction DNA testing results, at which Applicant argued that he was entitled to a new trial because the State had referred to the knife as the weapon used by Applicant and relied on the knife to prove its case against Applicant. Applicant then filed this application for writ of habeas corpus, raising five grounds for review in his application, including prosecutorial misconduct in failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense, ineffective assistance of trial counsel, and actual innocence. The Supreme Court remanded the matter to the trial court to obtain findings and affidavits addressing Applicant's claims. After the habeas hearing, the trial court entered findings of fact and conclusions of law, recommending that relief be granted on the basis of actual innocence. However, after its review, the Supreme Court found the trial court’s recommendation was not supported by the record. Furthermore, even if, as Applicant argued, the knife was "the piece of tangible evidence" upon which the jury relied to convict him, there was ample "intangible" evidence that Applicant stabbed several people with a knife on the night of the offense, including the testimony of people who saw Applicant stab people, and people who were themselves stabbed. Therefore, the Supreme Court concluded the DNA test results did not show by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in light of the new evidence. Accordingly, habeas relief was denied. View "Ex parte Holloway, II" on Justia Law

Appellant was convicted of the intentional murder of more than one person during the same criminal transaction (his wife and his mother-in-law), for which he received the death penalty. Appellant did not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to support either his conviction or death sentence. In fourteen of his twenty-four points of error, he claimed he was incompetent to stand trial, or that the trial court should at least have paused the proceedings at various stages of trial to conduct a formal competency hearing, as his trial counsel repeatedly requested. The Supreme Court concluded that this case presented one of the relatively rare instances in which there was at least some evidence from which it may rationally be inferred not only: (1) that defendant suffered some degree of debilitating mental illness; and that (2) he obstinately refused to cooperate with counsel to his own apparent detriment; but also that (3) his mental illness was what fueled his obstinacy. “Whenever a trial court's informal inquiry establishes that there is some evidence that could rationally support all three of these inferences, it should conduct a formal competency trial.” Accordingly, the Supreme Court sustained appellant's ninth point of error, abated the appeal, and remanded the case back to the trial court. On remand, the trial court was mandated to first determine whether it was feasible to conduct a retrospective competency trial, given the passage of time, availability of evidence, and any other pertinent considerations. Should the trial court deem a retrospective competency trial to be feasible, it should proceed to conduct such a trial in accordance with Chapter 46B, Subchapter C, of the Code of Criminal Procedure. View "Turner v. Texas" on Justia Law

In two separate indictments, appellant was charged with stalking his former girlfriend. Before trial, the judge permitted the State to consolidate the offenses and denied appellant's motion to sever. The jury convicted appellant of both offenses, and the trial judge sentenced appellant to ten years' confinement for each offense, to run concurrently. On appeal, appellant argued that the trial judge erred by denying his motion to sever. The court of appeals agreed, holding that appellant had an absolute right to sever under Section 3.04 of the Texas Penal Code. Finding the error harmful, the court of appeals reversed appellant's conviction and ordered a new trial. The Supreme Court concluded that the error was harmless because the State was entitled to offer evidence of appellant's prior acts of harassment relevant to the first stalking offense to prove the elements of the second stalking offense. View "Werner v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant was charged with the third degree felony of communicating in a sexually explicit manner with a person whom he believed to be a minor with an intent to arouse or gratify his sexual desire. He filed a pretrial application for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that this specific subsection of the felony offense of online solicitation of a minor was facially unconstitutional because: (1) it was overbroad and criminalized a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment; (2) it was vague because the term "sexually explicit" communications that "relate to" sexual conduct chills the exercise of free-speech by causing citizens to steer wide of the uncertain boundaries between permitted and prohibited speech; and (3) it violated the Dormant Commerce Clause. The trial judge denied relief, and the court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court granted discretionary review to determine, as a matter of first impression, whether Section 33.021(b) was s facially unconstitutional. The Court concluded the court of appeals used the wrong standard of review for addressing constitutional challenges to a penal statute that restricts speech based on its content, therefore it reached the wrong conclusion. Applying the constitutionally required presumption that "content-based regulations [of speech] are presumptively invalid" and subject to strict scrutiny, the Supreme Court concluded that Section 33.021(b) of the Texas Penal Code was overbroad because it prohibited a wide array of constitutionally protected speech and was not narrowly drawn to achieve only the legitimate objective of protecting children from sexual abuse. The Court did not address whether the provision was also unconstitutionally vague or violated the Dormant Commerce Clause. The Court of Appeals’ decision was reversed and the case remanded to the trial court to dismiss the indictment. View "Ex parte Lo" on Justia Law

Appellant Ramon Perez was convicted of three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child by contact. He was sentenced to life in prison for each of the three aggravated counts and twenty years in prison and a fine for each count of indecency. All sentences were to run consecutively. The Tenth Court of Appeals affirmed his sentence. Appellant was originally charged in an eleven-count indictment with four counts of indecency with a child and seven counts of aggravated sexual assault. The day before trial, the State filed a motion asking the trial court to amend the indictment by replacing the existing eleven counts with the five counts in an attached exhibit. The motion also stated, "The Defendant, by and through his attorney of record, has been notified that the State is seeking amendment of the indictment, agrees to the amendment and waives ten (10) days notice to prepare for trial ...." The State's motion was signed by appellant and his trial attorney as "Agreed." The trial court held a hearing on the motion. Appellant's trial counsel stated that he had no objections to the amendments and that they were waiving the statutorily-allowed extra time. On appeal of his convictions, however, appellant raised two issues: 1) whether the indictment was properly amended from its original eleven counts to five ; and 2) whether the trial court committed reversible error by not granting the appellant a hearing on his motion for new trial. Finding no error, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the Court of Appeals. View "Perez v. Texas" on Justia Law

Applicant Robert Harleston, Jr., was serving a twenty-five-year sentence for the aggravated sexual assault of a child. In his application for a writ of habeas corpus, Applicant claimed that he was actually innocent based on the victim's alleged recantations. After conducting a live evidentiary hearing, the habeas court adopted findings of fact that the victim's recantations were credible and recommended that this Court grant relief. After independently reviewing the record, the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the habeas court's findings that the victim's recantations were credible because those findings were not supported by the record. The Court held that Applicant failed to present clear and convincing evidence that unquestionably established his innocence. View "Ex parte Harelston" on Justia Law

Just after 2 A.M., officers were dispatched to a fast food restaurant following a complaint of a disturbance between the restaurant’s customers and two intoxicated men. Upon arrival, the officer encountered two men that matched the complainant’s description; the men were sitting in a truck with the engine running in the restaurant’s parking lot. The officer told appellee three times to turn off the truck before appellee complied. Appellee had answered the officer's initial requests to turn off the truck with claims that he was not driving and that he was moving the truck for someone else. The officer had appellee exit the truck, at which time he also smelled alcohol on appellee's breath and saw that his eyes were bloodshot. To investigate his suspicion that appellee may have been driving while intoxicated, he placed appellee unhandcuffed into the back of his patrol car and called for a department DWI specialist. Appellee failed field sobriety tests and was arrested for DWI. The trial court granted appellee’s motion to suppress appellee's oral statements made to the officers. In response to the State's request, the trial court made findings of fact and conclusions of law: that the responding officer had no reasonable suspicion to detain appellee for the disturbance in the restaurant and that appellee was "under arrest for suspicion of DWI when [the DWI specialist] began questioning" him without giving him the statutory warnings. On the State's petition for discretionary review, the Supreme Court determined that the court of appeals erred: (1) by failing to apply a de novo standard of review to the trial court's ultimate legal determination that appellee was in custody when he made incriminating statements to police; and (2) by failing to abate the appeal for further findings of fact by the trial court. The case was reversed and remanded to the court of appeals with instructions to abate the case to the trial judge for supplemental findings.View "Saenz v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Jamie Zamora and his brother Danny had a business selling cocaine and marijuana. His brother ran the business in Mexico, and appellant was in charge of distribution throughout the Houston area. Appellant received the assistance of salesmen in Houston who helped him distribute the drugs. The issue before the Supreme Court in this case centered on whether a trial court must, sua sponte, give an accomplice-witness instruction when the evidence raises the issue under the theory that the witness was a party as a co-conspirator. The Supreme Court answered that question affirmatively. Furthermore, the Court held that when the issue of a trial court's failure to give an accomplice-witness instruction is raised on appeal, a court of appeals should first determine whether a trial court erred by failing to sua sponte give that instruction before it considers whether a defendant preserved his complaint for appeal, a matter that is pertinent to a harm analysis. Because it failed to address the question of charge error in the first instance, the Court held that the appellate court erred by determining that appellant forfeited his jury-charge complaint by failing to request an accomplice-witness instruction that was based specifically on a co-conspirator theory of party liability. This case was remanded to the court of appeals for further proceedings.View "Zamora v. Texas" on Justia Law

Ben Chambless appealed the court of appeals' judgment affirming his sentence of eight years' confinement for committing criminally negligent homicide. Upon careful consideration of the record of this case, the Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals' conclusion that the jury instructions properly defined the punishment range of a third-degree felony because there was no conflict between the relevant statutes, the state-jail felony deadly-weapon punishment enhancement was applicable to criminally negligent homicide, and its application was not contrary to legislative intent.View "Chambless v. Texas" on Justia Law