Justia Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Opinion Summaries

Appellant Charles Barton was charged with violating Texas Penal Code section 42.07(a)(7), the electronic harassment statute. Appellant filed a motion to quash the information, arguing that the statute was unconstitutional and that the information failed to provide adequate notice because it lacked specificity. The motion was denied after a hearing. Appellant then filed a pre-trial application for habeas corpus relief again raising the constitutionality of the statute. The trial court denied relief, but the court of appeals held section 42.07(a)(7) unconstitutional and reversed. Acknowledging that other appellate courts upheld the constitutionality of section 42.07(a)(7) by applying Scott v. State. 322 S.W.3d 662 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010), the court of appeals nevertheless declined to follow Scott, finding that Scott’s reasoning was undermined by the Court of Criminal Appeals' later opinion, Wilson v. State, 448 S.W.3d 418, 423 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014). The court of appeals found that section 42.07(a)(7) implicated the First Amendment and, following the precedent of its earlier opinion in Karenev v. State, held that section 42.07(a)(7) was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals clarified its holding in Wilson and its impact on its holding in Scott. Following Scott’s precedent, the Court held that section 42.07(a)(7) also failed to implicate the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections because it too prohibited non-speech conduct. The Court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals. View "Ex parte Charles Barton" on Justia Law

Appellant Nathan Sanders was charged with violating Texas Penal Code section 42.07(a)(7), the electronic harassment statute. Appellant filed a pre-trial application for habeas corpus relief on the basis that the statute was unconstitutionally overbroad. The trial court denied relief, and the court of appeals affirmed. The court of appeals determined that, for First Amendment purposes, section 42.07(a)(7) was the same as section 42.07(a)(4) which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld against a similar First Amendment challenge in Scott v. State, 322 S.W.3d 662 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010). The appellate court concluded that Scott was controlling and rejected Appellant’s First Amendment challenge. The Court of Criminal Appeals granted Appellant’s petition for discretionary review, in which he argued section 42.07(a)(7) violated the First Amendment, and that Scott should have been overruled. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals clarified its holding in Scott, and following Scott’s precedent, the Court held that section 42.07(a)(7) also failed to implicate the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections because it too prohibited non-speech conduct. The Court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals upholding section 42.07(a)(7) against Appellant's First Amendment challenge. View "Ex parte Nathan Sanders" on Justia Law

After biting off his ex-wife’s new boyfriend’s earlobe, Appellant Robert Wade, III was charged with aggravated assault by causing serious bodily injury. During his trial, Appellant testified that, in his opinion, biting off a portion of the victim’s earlobe did not cause serious bodily injury to the victim because it did not result in “serious permanent disfigurement.” Appellant requested a jury instruction on the lesser-included offense of assault by causing bodily injury. The trial court denied Appellant’s request, and the jury found Appellant guilty of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury. The court of appeals held that there was legally sufficient evidence to establish that the victim had suffered serious bodily injury. However, the court of appeals also held that the trial court erred in denying Appellant’s requested jury instruction because Appellant had presented more than a scintilla of evidence raising the lesser offense of assault. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted review to determine whether Appellant’s testimony combined with other evidence introduced at trial, could have provided the jury with a valid, rational alternative to the greater offense of aggravated assault. To this, the Court held that it could have. "On the record presented in this case, there was more than a scintilla of evidence from which the jury could have rationally doubted that Appellant caused serious permanent disfigurement by biting off the victim’s earlobe. Therefore, Appellant was entitled to his requested instruction on the lesser-included offense of assault." View "Wade v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Danny Alcoser was convicted of family violence assault with a prior conviction, endangering a child, and interference with an emergency request for assistance. He appealed, arguing that he was entitled to a new trial on all counts because he was egregiously harmed by a variety of jury charge errors that impacted all three offenses. In finding egregious harm, the court of appeals considered the “cumulative effect” of all the errors. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted review to decide whether the court of appeals erred when it did so, and whether it misapplied the egregious-harm standard. The Court reversed the court of appeals’ judgment as to the assault count and remanded the case for it to address Appellant’s remaining points of error. View "Alcoser v. Texas" on Justia Law

In the early morning hours of August 20, 2016, police and medics responded to multiple emergency calls regarding a drug overdose at the Texas A&M Sigma Nu fraternity house. Callers said that they saw drugs and that fraternity members did not want police to get involved. Upon arrival, law enforcement discovered a fraternity brother deceased from an apparent overdose, so they began treating the fraternity house as a murder scene. Police made three warrantless protective sweeps of the house to make sure that the members were out of their rooms and in common areas, as well as to determine if anyone else had overdosed or needed medical attention. During each sweep, police saw narcotics and paraphernalia in plain view inside certain rooms and common areas. Officers informed Investigator Garrett about their findings, and during the third warrantless protective sweep, he saw contraband in Appellant Samuel Patterson's room. Instead of seizing the illegal contraband, Investigator Garrett drafted a search warrant. The issue this case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was whether the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment was satisfied if a warrant described the place to be searched as a fraternity house as a whole without specifying a suspect’s actual room in the house, but an incorporated affidavit provided both descriptions. The Court held the particularity requirement was satisfied if an affidavit that was incorporated into the warrant included, somewhere, a specific description of the place that was searched. View "Patterson v. Texas" on Justia Law

During the guilt phase of Appellant Adrian Valadez’s jury trial for third-degree possession of marihuana, the trial court admitted over various defense objections evidence of extraneous drug incidents. The jury found Appellant guilty as charged and sentenced him to five years in prison and a fine of $8,500. The court of appeals affirmed, holding that the trial court did not err in admitting the evidence of the extraneous incidents. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted review to consider whether the extraneous drug evidence was admissible under the doctrine of chances or under Texas Rules of Evidence 404(b) and 403. The Court held the evidence was inadmissible under the doctrine of chances because the extraneous incidents and the charged offense were not highly unusual or exactly the same. "And even if Rule 404(b) might have justified the admission of extraneous drug incidents, Rule 403 required their exclusion because they were unsupported by competent evidence; and even if they had been otherwise admissible, some were misleading and/or prejudicial in other ways. Consequently, any probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and misleading the jury under the peculiar facts of this case." Judgment was reversed and the case remanded to the court of appeals for a harm analysis. View "Valadez v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant David Spillman, Jr. was convicted by jury of two counts of assault of a public servant and one count of possession of methamphetamine. The court of appeals affirmed his convictions. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Appellant’s petition for discretionary review to determine whether the evidence was sufficient to support his assault of a public servant convictions. The Court found the evidence could enable a rational jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Appellant committed assault of a public servant. Accordingly, the convictions were affirmed. View "Spillman v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Ruben Gutierrez planned and, with two accomplices, committed the robbery and murder of eighty-five-year-old Escolastica Harrison, the owner of a mobile-home park in Brownsville. After his conviction was affirmed on direct appeal, he filed a motion for DNA testing, seeking to have various items of biological evidence tested. Appellant was attempting to show that Harrison’s nephew, Avel Cuellar, was the true perpetrator of the offense. In this, Appellant's direct appeal of his third motion for post-conviction DNA testing, Appellant’s sought to test the same biological materials he sought to have tested in his first two motions, both of which the convicting court denied, and both of which denials the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals subsequently affirmed. In response to Appellant’s third motion for DNA-testing, the State filed a motion styled a “Plea to the Jurisdiction,” in which it asked the convicting court to dismiss Appellant’s third DNA motion on the ground that the convicting court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate it. Because the federal district court declared Article 64.03 to be unconstitutional, the State contended, there was no longer any legitimate statutory authority for DNA testing at all, and so there was no legal basis for Appellant to claim entitlement to such testing, and no “special” jurisdiction in the convicting court to permit it. The convicting court granted the State’s motion and dismissed Appellant’s motion for DNA testing “for want of jurisdiction.” The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals determined "resolution of this case turns first and foremost on the principle that state courts are not bound by decisions of the lower federal courts." The trial court in this case was not divested of its jurisdiction to entertain and resolve Appellant’s third motion for post-conviction DNA testing by the federal district court’s opinion. For that reason, the Court of Criminal Appeals held the trial court erred to dismiss Appellant’s motion “for want of jurisdiction.” View "Gutierrez v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Kevin Ratliff, the Llano chief of police, was convicted by a jury of two counts of official oppression (a third-degree felony), and one count of the misdemeanor offense of tampering with a governmental record. The issue is case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' review centered on whether the evidence was sufficient to support those convictions. As to the official oppression counts, the Court concluded the evidence was sufficient: a rational jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Appellant subjected Cory Nutt to an arrest that he knew was unlawful and intentionally subjected Cory Nutt to mistreatment, knowing that his actions were unlawful, by criminally trespassing in Nutt’s home. The Court therefore affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals as to those two counts. As to tampering with a governmental record, the Court concluded the evidence was insufficient, and the court of appeals erred in relying on omissions to support its holding because including the specific facts of the arrest in an offense report was not required by any statute or rule, and any facts not stated in the offense report were provided through video evidence. As to this count, the Court rendered a judgment of acquittal. View "Ratliff v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Michael Gonzales appealed a trial court order denying his motion for post-conviction DNA testing filed pursuant to Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 64.1 Specifically, the trial court determined that Appellant failed to: (1) show that identity was or was an issue; (2) establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing; and (3) establish by a preponderance that his request for DNA testing was not made to unreasonably delay the execution of sentence or administration of justice. After reviewing the record, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found Appellant was not entitled to relief. Consequently, it affirmed the trial court’s order denying testing. View "Gonzales v. Texas" on Justia Law