Justia Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Opinion Summaries

Applicant was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. Applicant filed this habeas corpus application in 2006, alleging actual innocence and mental retardation. After the judge of the convicting court heard evidence and found that applicant had not proved his actual innocence but had proved his mental retardation, the court filed and set the case to review the findings. The court shall remand the case to the convicting court for the judge to consider the factors the court established in Ex parte Briseno. View "Ex Parte Sosa" on Justia Law

Applicant was convicted of evading arrest and was found guilty of a state-jail felony that was enhanced to a second-degree felony. Applicant argued that his state-jail conviction was void because the offense alleged was committed before the effective date of the statute under which he was tried, convicted, and sentenced. The court held that, because the date of applicant's prior conviction was not an element of the offense, applicant was not entitled to relief and his request for writ of habeas corpus was denied. View "Ex Parte Carner" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. On direct appeal, the court considered issues related to the murder instruction; expert testimony; the punishment charge; future dangerousness; pre-trial motion to preclude the death penalty; and constitutional challenges to Texas's death penalty statute. The court affirmed the judgment of guilt but reversed defendant's sentence and remanded the case to the trial court for a new punishment hearing. View "Olsen v. State" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with possessing cocaine in an amount less than one gram. A laboratory report was admitted into evidence, but the analyst who conducted the test and prepared the report did not testify. The court held that defendant's trial counsel had not been shown to have performed deficiently in failing to object to the report on Confrontation Clause grounds when the record did not contain counsel's reasons for failing to object and did not establish whether the analyst could or would have testified if an objection had been lodged. View "Menefield v. State" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with two counts of assault on a public servant. The court of appeals subsequently held that his trial proceedings, which were convened at the prison-chapel courtroom, were not closed to the public, that a violation of the Establishment Clause was not structural error, and that the violation of the Establishment Clause in his case was harmless. The court held that defendant showed that his trial was closed to the public, and because that closure was not justified, the court reversed the judgments of the court of appeals and trial court, remanding for a new trial. View "Lilly v. State" on Justia Law

After the trial judge denied his motion to suppress methamphetamine found during a traffic stop, defendant pled guilty to its possession pursuant to a plea bargain. He then appealed the trial judge's suppression ruling. The court of appeals reversed, finding that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to continue to detain defendant until a drug dog was brought to the scene. The court also declined to address what it called a "cross-appeal" because the State failed to file its own notice of appeal. The court held that the State need not file its own notice of appeal when it raised a cross-point concerning a ruling on a question of law under Article 44.01(c). View "Pfeiffer v. State" on Justia Law

A jury found defendant guilty of arson for the burning of an insured and mortgaged vehicle. The trial court assessed his punishment at confinement for ten years and one day. The First Court of Appeals reversed, determining that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction. The court held that the court of appeals erred in holding that the evidence was insufficient where the jury was able to assess the credibility and demeanor of the witnesses who testified at trial; the court of appeals incorrectly applied the Jackson v. Virginia standard when considering the circumstantial evidence supporting defendant's conviction and improperly employed a "divide-and-conquer" approach; and the court of appeals improperly acted as a thirteenth juror when it speculated and focused on the existence of a reasonable hypothesis inconsistent with the guilt of the accused. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Merritt v. State" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of three different offenses related to the possession of various items that could be associated with drug trafficking. In a motion to suppress the results of the search, defendant alleged that the supporting affidavit "fails to show that the act or event upon which probable cause is based occurred within a reasonable time prior to making the affidavit." The court held that the search-warrant affidavit in this case was imprecise as to the timing of the events it described. Nevertheless, the affidavit sufficiently supported the issuance of the search warrant, primarily because it suggested a continuing criminal investigation. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Jones v. State" on Justia Law

Immediately before the voir dire commenced at his trial, defendant requested that he be permitted to ask the members of the venire panel whether they understood that the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt constituted a level of confidence under the law that was higher than both the preponderance of the evidence and the clear and convincing evidence standards. When the trial court denied his request, defendant objected that he was thereby denied the right to ask a "proper" question during voir dire, depriving him of the ability to intelligently exercise challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. The State contended that error in denying defendant the ability to ask a proper question was harmless on the particular facts of this case. The court held that this type of error was indeed subject to harm analysis, but defendant had not briefed the question, and the State did not convince the court that the error was so plainly harmless that the court should conduct that review for the first time on discretionary review in the interest of judicial economy. Therefore, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "Fuller v. State" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted for various counts of aggravated assault. At issue was whether a variance between the allegations in the charging instrument and the proof at trial rendered the evidence legally insufficient to support the conviction. Because the variance in this case involved a non-statutory allegation that did not affect the "allowable unit of prosecution," the variance could not render the evidence legally insufficient to support a conviction. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals. View "Johnson v. State" on Justia Law