Justia Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Opinion Summaries

In 2018, Appellant Terry Martin was stopped for multiple traffic violations while riding a motorcycle on U.S. Highway 87 in Lubbock County, Texas. During the stop, Corporal Michael Macias observed that Appellant was wearing a motorcycle vest, or “cut,” that read “Cossacks MC.” After patting him down, Officer Macias asked if Appellant had any firearms on him, to which Appellant responded that he had a pistol inside his vest. Officer Macias placed Martin in handcuffs while stating “I take it by your cut you’re a Cossack?” Appellant answered, “Yes, sir.” Appellant’s motorcycle “cut” contained Sergeant’s stripes and a portion that said “Cossacks MC, Lubbock County, Mid-Cities, Texas.” Corporal Macias believed, based on his training and experience, that the Cossacks were a criminal street gang. Appellant was ultimately charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon (UCW) as a member of a criminal street gang, a Class A misdemeanor. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the State Prosecuting Attorney’s petition for discretionary review to decide whether the unlawful carrying of a weapon by a gang member required proof the defendant was continuously or regularly committing gang crimes. The court of appeals found that the language of the statute plainly did, relying on the holding from the Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Ex parte Flores. To this, the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, and adopted and applied the holding from Ex parte Flores in that, to be a gang member for purposes of prosecution under Texas Penal Code section 46.02(a-1)(2)(C), an individual must be one of three or more persons with a common identifying sign, symbol, or identifiable leadership and must also continuously or regularly associate in the commission of criminal activities. View "Martin v. Texas" on Justia Law

Zena Collins Stephens appealed both the court of appeals’ denial of a pretrial writ of habeas corpus and its reversal of the district court’s decision to quash Count I of the indictment. Stephens was elected to the position of sheriff of Jefferson County, Texas in 2016. While investigating someone else, the FBI uncovered information regarding potential campaign-finance violations concerning Stephens. The FBI then turned this information over to the Texas Rangers. The Rangers’ investigation concluded Stephens received individual cash campaign contributions in excess of $100. A grand jury indicted Stephens on three counts: Count I: tampering with a government record in violation of Texas Penal Code section 37.10 “by reporting a $5,000.00 individual cash contribution in the political contributions of $50.00 or less section of said Report;” iIn Counts II and III, unlawfully making or accepting a contribution in violation of Texas Election Code section 253.033(a) by accepting cash contributions in excess of $100 from two different individuals. On appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Stephens asked: could the Texas Legislature delegate to the Attorney General, a member of the executive department, the prosecution of election-law violations in district and inferior courts? To this, the Court answered "no:" because Texas Election Code section 273.021 delegated to the Attorney General a power more properly assigned to the judicial department, the statute was unconstitutional. Therefore, the Court reversed the decision of the court of appeals and remanded the case to the trial court to dismiss the indictment. View "Texas v. Stephens" on Justia Law

Appellee successfully moved to quash his two-count indictment for state-jail felony possession of penalty group one controlled substances (cocaine and methamphetamine) on grounds that its enhancement paragraphs were invalid. The State appealed. The court of appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling and re-instated the indictment. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Appellee’s petition for discretionary review to decide whether an aggravated state-jail felony could be enhanced under the habitual offender statute. To this, the Court answered "yes" and affirmed the court of appeals' judgment. View "Texas v. Kahookele" on Justia Law

In two separate indictments, Appellant Johnny Joe Avalos was charged with capital murder for the serial killing of five women over the course of several years. The State waived the death penalty, and Appellant pled guilty to two capital murders, judicially confessing in the process to murdering all five of the alleged victims. In pre-trial proceedings, he preserved his argument that the only remaining punishment - mandatory life without the possibility of parole - was unconstitutional as applied to him because he was intellectually disabled. The trial court accepted Appellant’s plea but rejected his claim that to automatically assess life without parole against him, without allowing the consideration of mitigating evidence, violated the Eighth Amendment. Accordingly, the trial court sentenced Appellant to two life sentences without the possibility of parole, as required by statute when the State waives the death penalty in Texas. The Court of Appeals extended the ban on automatic life-without-parole sentences from Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), to cover murder defendants who were intellectually disabled. A panel of another court of appeals held that such an extension was not appropriate, albeit in an unpublished opinion. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to examine whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller should have been so extended. The Court concluded that it should not, and reversed the Court of Appeals’ judgment. View "Avalos v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Orlando Bell was charged with failure to timely report a change of address in violation of his sex-offender-registration obligations under Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 62, which as applied to these circumstances was a third-degree felony. At trial, the State sought to enhance Appellant’s punishment under the habitual-offender statute by alleging that he had twice previously been convicted of a felony offense, thereby subjecting him to a possible range of punishment from twenty-five to ninety-nine years’ imprisonment or life. Following a trial by jury, Appellant was found guilty of the failure-to-register offense. At punishment, the unobjected-to jury charge mistakenly instructed the jury to find the enhancement allegations true if it found that Appellant’s second prior felony conviction became final after the commission of the first felony offense. The correct statutory language in Section 12.42(d), however, required a finding that the first conviction became final prior to the commission of the second felony. But the prosecutor effectively articulated the correct law in closing argument. The jury found the enhancements true and assessed a sentence of fifty years’ imprisonment, which was within the permissible range of punishment for habitual offenders under Section 12.42(d) but longer than the maximum allowable sentence for an unenhanced third-degree felony offense. On direct appeal, the Court of Appeals rejected Appellant’s sole argument that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction. The court, however, sua sponte determined that the punishment-phase jury instructions did not properly authorize the enhancements. The issue this case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' review was whether, if a punishment-phase jury charge fails to properly track the language in the habitual-offender statute by misstating the statute’s sequencing requirement, should the resulting error be treated as an illegal sentence, or should it instead be treated as jury-charge error subject to a harm analysis? The Court held that the latter was correct. Accordingly, the Court reversed the judgment of the court of appeals which held that such error resulted in an illegal sentence. The case was remanded for a harm analysis. View "Bell v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Duke Edward was convicted of felony assault for beating his girlfriend. The offense was elevated to a third-degree felony based in part on the existence of a “dating relationship” between Appellant and the victim. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed Appellant’s conviction, finding the evidence insufficient to meet the statutory requirements under Family Code Section 71.0021(b) for establishing a dating relationship. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the State’s petition for discretionary review to address whether the Court of Appeal erred in holding that evidence of a dating relationship was insufficient where the State presented evidence that the victim referred to Appellant as her “boyfriend” when speaking to law enforcement immediately after the assault, as well as other circumstantial evidence suggesting the existence of an intimate relationship. The Court of Criminal Appeals found the Court of Appeal erred, and reversed that court's judgment. The trial court's judgment of conviction was affirmed. View "Edward v. Texas" on Justia Law

In September 2015, a jury convicted Appellant Gabriel Hall of the 2011 murder of Edwin Shaar, Jr. in the course of committing or attempting to commit burglary. Based on the jury’s answers to the special issues set forth in Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071, Sections 2(b) and 2(e), the trial court sentenced Appellant to death. Upon automatic appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Appellant raised fifteen points of error. Finding none of merit, the Court affirmed the trial court's judgment of conviction and death sentence. View "Hall v. Texas" on Justia Law

Appellant Anthony George was convicted of capital murder in the course of a robbery. One of the theories of Appellant’s liability for capital murder was a conspiracy theory under Penal Code Section 7.02(b) for an offense committed by a co-conspirator. The facts at trial showed that Appellant and three others entered into an agreement to rob the victim in his hotel room. The victim was later found dead in his hotel bed, having been severely beaten, bound, and left unconscious lying face-down in a pool of his own blood. On direct appeal, Appellant challenged the trial court’s refusal of a jury instruction on the lesser-included offense of robbery, arguing that testimony from two of his co- conspirators suggested that he did not participate in the beating and only intended to rob the victim. Based on this evidence, he argued that the jury could have rationally concluded that he should not have anticipated the murder and, therefore, robbery was a valid alternative to the charged offense. In upholding the refusal of the lesser-included-offense instruction, the court of appeals appeared to create a bright-line rule applicable to conspirator-liability capital- murder-in-the-course-of-a-robbery cases. Appellant challenged the court of appeals’ decision to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who rejected the applicability of this type of bright-line rule. The Court agreed, however, with the court of appeals’ ultimate conclusion that Appellant was not entitled to a lesser-included-offense instruction on robbery based on the particular facts presented here. "The record contains no evidence that rationally refutes the conclusion that Appellant should have anticipated the victim’s murder, and the totality of the circumstances objectively show that the murder was reasonably foreseeable. Therefore, robbery was not a valid, rational alternative to the charged capital murder." View "George v. Texas" on Justia Law

At trial, Appellant Raul Bahena objected that a State’s witness was not the custodian of records for a disc containing recordings of jailhouse calls. On appeal, the court of appeals determined that the witness was the proper custodian of records and upheld the trial court’s admission of the disc. However, the majority noted that Appellant failed to challenge, at trial and on appeal, that the State’s witness was not another qualified witness, and this failure forfeited any appellate review on that issue. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed Appellant’s failure to object on the specific ground that the State’s witness was not another qualified witness foreclosed consideration of review on that prong of Rule of Evidence 803(6)(D). However, the Court agreed with the court of appeals’ conclusion that the State satisfied the hearsay exception through the in-court testimony of the custodian of records. The Court went one step further and held the State’s witness was qualified to testify to authenticate the jail call recordings. Therefore, the Court affirmed the court of appeal’s judgment upholding the trial court’s admission of the evidence. View "Bahena v. Texas" on Justia Law

Using a confidential informant, the Hays County Narcotics Task Force (Task Force) conducted a controlled drug buy from Joel Espino, who was a narcotics dealer along with his roommate, Andrew Alejandro. Three months later, Appellee Reynaldo Lerma and several co-defendants allegedly attempted to rob Espino and Alejandro. During the attempted robbery, Alejandro shot and killed his roommate Espino and wounded two of the alleged robbers. Alejandro was the only person to fire a weapon during the incident. Appellee was charged with the capital murder of Espino. The trial court granted Appellee's motion to dismiss pursuant to Texas Rule of Evidence 508. On appeal, the court of appeals decided that the trial court abused its discretion. "But a defendant’s burden under Rule 508 is not a high one," and, based upon its review of the record, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals determined Appellee made the necessary plausible showing required by the rule. The trial court’s dismissal was not an abuse of discretion; the court of appeals' judgment was reversed. View "Texas v. Lerma" on Justia Law