Justia Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Opinion Summaries

Applicant Ray Hicks pled guilty to attempted forgery of a government instrument in 2013 and was sentenced, under a plea agreement, to 180 days of confinement in a state jail facility. Applicant filed this application for a writ of habeas corpus, contending he was actually innocent because subsequent analysis showed the $100 bill he possessed was genuine. Applicant was charged with forgery but ultimately pled guilty to attempted forgery. More than five years later, the United States Secret Service notified the Webster Police Department by letter that Applicant’s $100 bill was genuine. The habeas court found Applicant was actually innocent of the charged offense and any possible lesser included offenses based on newly discovered evidence neither introduced nor available to the defense at trial. Specifically, the habeas court found the State could not have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Applicant had intent to defraud because the bill was not actually forged. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did not find Applicant was actually innocent, but instead, granted relief on the ground of an involuntary plea. View "Ex parte Ray Hicks" on Justia Law

Before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals were two distinct issues, one at the guilt stage and one at the punishment stage. The guilt stage issue was whether Appellant Happy Pham was entitled to a “threat of deadly force” instruction under Penal Code section 9.04. To this, the Court concluded he was not entitled to such an instruction because, by shooting the victim, he acted contrary to the statute’s requirement that his purpose in threatening deadly force be “limited to creating an apprehension that he will use deadly force if necessary.” The punishment stage issue was whether trial counsel was ineffective for failing to call punishment stage witnesses to give positive character testimony about Appellant. The Court concluded prejudice was not established because Appellant’s status as a fugitive and drug dealer made the proposed positive character testimony by these witnesses "problematic." Concluding that Appellant’s guilt and punishment stage contentions are without merit, the Court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals. View "Pham v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Jace Laws was charged with two counts of assaulting a peace officer. When defense counsel received the proposed jury charge, he learned that the judge intended to require an alternate juror to retire with the jury while it deliberated. Appellant objected to the alternate juror’s presence during deliberations, and the trial judge overruled the objection. Appellant was subsequently convicted and sentenced to thirty years’ confinement for the first assault and forty years’ confinement for the second assault. Appellant appealed and argued that the trial court erred under Article 36.22 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. The court of appeals refused to address the merits of Appellant’s claim, instead holding that Appellant’s objection was general because he could have been referring to a constitutional claim that alternate jurors could not be present during deliberations based on the “No More Than Twelve Jurors” Clause of Article V, Section 13 of the Texas Constitution. The court of appeals also faulted Appellant for not saying “Article 36.22” when he objected. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found the record showed that the legal ground for Appellant’s objection was apparent to the prosecutor and the trial judge. Appellant repeatedly said that the alternate juror should not be allowed to retire with the jury because the danger that the alternate juror might participate in the deliberations was too high, that possible violations could not be “policed,” and that he did not understand why the alternate could not be in another room and “brought up to speed” in the unlikely event that a juror became disabled. While the Court also granted review to determine if Article 36.22 was violated when the alternate juror retired with the jury while it deliberated, and if so, whether Appellant was harmed, it declined to address those issues at this time. Instead, the Court remand this case for the court of appeals to address the merits of Appellant’s claim in the first instance. View "Laws v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Bradley Shumway voluntarily confessed to his pastor and then later to his wife: he pushed aside a pre-verbal, seventeen-month-old infant’s diaper and touched her genital region with his hands, mouth, and penis. While the State corroborated the confessions by presenting details showing opportunity, motive, and a guilty conscience, the confessions themselves were the only evidence that the touching had occurred. Appellant challenged his dual convictions for indecency with a child by arguing that the State’s evidence was not sufficient to satisfy the corpus delicti rule. The issue this case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' review was whether, a defendant confesses to the offense of indecency with a child against a child who can’t communicate and the conduct resulted in no apparent injury, should a conviction be overturned because there is no evidence of the crime itself besides the defendant’s confession? The Court responded no: when sufficient evidence exists in the record to support the conviction for a sexual offense with no perceptible harm against a pre-verbal child victim and a defendant’s confession is sufficiently corroborated, the failure to satisfy the corpus delicti rule should not bar conviction. View "Shumway v. Texas" on Justia Law

In the course of Appellant Christopher Holder’s capital murder trial, the State admitted evidence of his cell-phone site location information (CSLI) to establish his whereabouts during the weekend in which the offense was committed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately concluded that this evidence was obtained in violation of Article I, Section 9, of the Texas Constitution. The Court also concluded that the evidence should have been suppressed, and it remanded the case for the court of appeals to determine in the first instance whether Appellant was harmed “when the trial court failed to suppress the records under Article 38.23(a).” Following the Court of Criminal Appeals’ lead in Love v. Texas, 543 S.W.3d 835 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016), the court of appeals on remand conducted a constitutional harm analysis under Rule 44.2(a) of the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure. Under that standard of harm, the court of appeals was unable to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the CSLI evidence did not contribute to the jury’s verdict. It reversed Appellant’s conviction and remanded the case for further proceedings. As the court of appeals acknowledged, since Love was decided, it had come into question whether the Court properly applied Rule 44.2(a)’s standard for harm with respect to constitutional error in that case. The State petitioned the Court of Criminal Appeals to determine whether the appropriate standard for determining harm is that articulated in Rule 44.2(b). The Court determined the proper harm analysis was the one contained in Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure Rule 44.2(b), not 44.2(a). With regard to the State's second ground for review, arguing the admission of Appellant's CSLI records was harmless under Rule 44.2(b), the Court of Criminal Appeals found it did not ordinarily determine questions of harm in the first instance. Accordingly, the Court vacated the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case to that court to conduct a harm analysis under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 44.2(b). View "Holder v. Texas" on Justia Law

In 2013, Applicant Aaron Matthews pled guilty to delivery of a controlled substance, namely cocaine, in an amount less than one gram, a state jail felony offense. He was sentenced to 180 days. In 2019, Applicant was notified that Officer Gerald Goines of the Houston Police Department - the officer working undercover at the time of his alleged offense and the sole witness against him - was under investigation for falsifying evidence, and Goines had been relieved from duty. Applicant claimed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals should infer that Officer Goines’s testimony against him was false and that Applicant’s right to due process was violated. The Court responded by filing and set this cause to address whether the requirements for the inference of falsity that this Court adopted in Ex parte Coty, 418 S.W.3d 597 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014) should apply in cases involving a police officer with a demonstrated pattern of misconduct in drug-related cases. The Court concluded that it should, and remanded for the convicting court to "look to whether it has been shown that Goines provided false information in a search warrant affidavit in 2019 - and thus, that he committed repeated acts of misconduct in pursuit of illicit-drug investigations. The convicting court should also determine whether the alleged act of misconduct in this case occurred 'within roughly the same period of time as the other misconduct.' A stipulation of these facts alone will not suffice." View "Ex parte Aaron Matthews" on Justia Law

In 2018, Appellant Christopher Rubio was convicted by a jury of the capital murder of the mother of his children and her new boyfriend. Because the State had not sought the death penalty, Appellant was automatically sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On the same day the verdict was rendered, and the sentence was pronounced, Appellant filed a general form motion for new trial, challenging the verdict as contrary to the law and the evidence. The motion was filed for the purpose of giving the court reporter more time to file the record with the court of appeals. The trial court promptly overruled it. Exactly thirty days later, Appellant, represented by new counsel, filed a motion for leave to file an amended motion for new trial along with an amended motion for new trial. The latter motion alleged new grounds upon which Appellant sought a new trial. He also filed eleven additional exhibits in support of his amended motion. The State objected, arguing that the amended motion was untimely and that the trial court should take no action on it. Nevertheless, seventy-two days after the sentence was pronounced, the trial court conducted a hearing on the amended motion. The State again objected that the amended motion was untimely. The State’s objection was overruled, and the trial court heard evidence on the motion. Following the hearing, the trial court denied the amended motion on the merits. The question presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' review was what happens when a defendant timely files a motion for new trial, the trial court overrules that motion, and then the defendant tries to file an amended motion, all within the same 30-day window of time within which motions for new trial are permitted to be filed. Is a trial court vested with discretion to grant leave of court permitting a defendant to file an amended motion for new trial even after the trial court has overruled an initial motion for new trial? We conclude that the trial court does have that discretion. The Court therefore reversed the judgment of the court of appeals. View "Rubio v. Texas" on Justia Law

The State sought to illustrate the testimony of an accident reconstruction expert along with testimony regarding other forensic evidence with a series of computer animations. The three computer animations at issue each showed a moving, 3-D diagram of Appellant Allen Pugh’s truck from three different angles colliding with a human figure, consistent with the testimony of the State’s sponsoring accident reconstruction expert. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with the court of appeals that the computer animations were properly admitted. The computer animations were relevant, were authenticated, and had probative value that was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. View "Pugh v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Cornell Witcher was convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child. Holding that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction, the court of appeals reversed the judgment. The question in this case was whether the State proved that Appellant’s sexual abuse of the victim occurred over a period of thirty days or more. The parties agreed there was evidence that the last instance of abuse occurred on July 26, 2018, two days before the child was examined by medical personnel. "For the evidence to be sufficient to show a period of abuse of thirty days or more, then, there must be some evidence from which a rational jury could infer that the abuse began on or before June 26, 2018." The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found the abuse began when the victim’s brother went to jail and that he went to jail “around” June 10, 2018. The court of appeals concluded that a rational jury could only speculate from this evidence that the abuse began on or before June 26. The Court disagreed, holding that a rational jury could have inferred it from the evidence. View "Witcher v. Texas" on Justia Law

In November 1998, Appellee Leonardo Garcia pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft. In May 2007, he pleaded guilty to another misdemeanor theft charge. On that charge, he was sentenced to ten days in jail with three days credit for time served. At the time of both pleas, Appellee was not a United States citizen. Appellee was granted post-conviction habeas corpus relief and his misdemeanor was vacated. The issue this case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was whether the State could appeal the trial court's order that granted habeas relief and vacated the misdemeanor conviction. The Court held that here, the trial court’s order granting habeas corpus relief and vacating Appellee’s misdemeanor conviction effectively granted a new trial. Under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 44.01, the State could appeal a trial court’s order granting a new trial. Consequently, the court of appeals erroneously held that the State lacked the ability to appeal the trial court’s order granting habeas corpus relief. The Court reversed the court of appeals’ judgment and remanded to the court of appeals to consider the merits of the State’s appeal. View "Texas v. Garcia" on Justia Law