Texas Courts of Appeals
Williams v. State
No. 04-20-00486-CR 7/16/25
Issue:
Was the defendant entitled to have his indictment for aggravated promotion of prostitution quashed for using undefined terms of indeterminate or variable meaning?
Holding:
Yes. The defendant was entitled to notice through a more specific pleading of how the State contended he knowingly owned, invested in or financed, managed or supervised, or controlled a prostitution enterprise. The Court agreed with the defendant that the “statutory methods of committing the offense are indefinite and variable.” The Court also pointed out that the record did not show what information the defendant had access to as a result of a standing discovery order and the State’s open file policy. “Indeed, we find it significant that the State did not file or state in open court that it had complied with Article 39.14. … On this record, we conclude [the defendant] did not receive sufficient pretrial notice of the charges against him.” Read opinion.
Commentary:
The central dispute in this iteration of the case (a predecessor opinion was reversed and remanded by the CCA in Williams v. State, 685 S.W.3d 110 (Tex. Crim. App. 2024)) concerns whether the plain and ordinary meanings of the terms of the statutory methods of committing this offense (i.e., “owns, invests in, finances, controls, supervises, or manages”) suffice to convey adequate notice of the alleged crime, or whether the statutorily undefined terms are of “indeterminate and variable meaning” and, so, required more specific pleading. Borrowing from Judge Newell’s dissent in Williams and observing that the Merriam Webster dictionary provides alternative definitions for the terms, the appellate court agreed with the defense that the plain meanings are inadequate and that additional pleading detail was necessary to describe how the defendant engaged in the alleged manners and means.
However, at least one other appellate court (the Fourteenth Court of Appeals) has held that at least one of these terms (“owns”) is not of indeterminate or variable meaning. See Nix v. State, 401 S.W.3d 656, 663 (Tex. App. — Houston [14th Dist.] 2013, pet. ref’d). Further, although the majority in Williams was not presented with this precise issue—and so did not rule directly upon it—the majority did express that there was “no notice problem” when the State alleged all of the statutory methods (“own, invest in, finance, control, supervise, or manage”) in a manner that tracked the language of the statute, but without any further descriptions. Thus, hopefully the State will pursue a petition for discretionary review of this opinion in the CCA and the CCA will grant review, so that practitioners can get a definitive answer to this debate.
Del Toro v. State
No. 04-24-00152-CR 7/23/25
Issue:
Did the trial court improperly admit data from the airbag control module (“ACM”) in an intoxication manslaughter case without a witness from the manufacturer of the ACM testifying to explain its operation?
Holding:
No. Testimony from the officer who obtained a warrant to download the airbag control module data was sufficient. The officer testified as to what the report generated from the ACM but did not testify to the veracity of the data’s conclusions. The Court concluded there was no Confrontation Clause violation because the officer who generated the report was available at trial and subject to cross-examination. Read opinion.
Commentary:
This opinion is consistent with other jurisprudence that establishes that a witness may testify about the contents of a machine- or program-generated report without needing to be an expert in the underlying science or programming required to generate the final report. For example, a witness may testify about text messages recovered during a Cellebrite cellphone extraction without needing to know the underlying programming of Cellebrite or the specific techniques utilized during Cellebrite extractions. See Villareal-Garcia v. State, 671 S.W.3d 791 (Tex. App. — Dallas 2023, no pet.). Similarly, a witness may testify about the location of a cellphone without needing a factual understanding of the error rates of the mapping software that she used to calculate that location. See Williams v. State, 606 S.W.3d 48 (Tex. App. — Houston [1st Dist.] 2020, pet. ref’d)).
Adaji v. State
Nos. 14-24-00645-CR & -00646-CR 7/22/25
Issue:
Did an indictment for fraudulent use of identifying information from the victim’s bank account sufficiently identify the accountholder under Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 21.08?
Holding:
Yes. While the bank account was in the name of a business entity (a law firm) rather than the immigration lawyer who owned the law firm, the Court found that alleging the lawyer as the special owner of the account did not create a material variance. “We conclude that Article 21.08 permits the prosecution to allege … ownership with either the actual owner of the account (e.g., [the lawyer’s] law firm) or the special owner in possession (e.g., [the lawyer], the individual).” Read opinion.
Commentary:
This opinion provides a good refresher (with useful hypothetical examples) on the law concerning the three types of variances: (1) a variance related to a statutory allegation that defines the offense, which is always material; (2) a variance related to a non-statutory allegation that is descriptive of the offense that defines or helps to define the allowable unit of prosecution, which is sometimes material; and (3) a variance related to a non-statutory allegation that is unrelated to the allowable unit of prosecution, which is never material. Here, the appellate court concluded that the discrepancy between the alleged owner of the account at issue (the lawyer who is the founder and sole partner of a law firm) and the owner proved at trial (the lawyer’s law firm/business entity) falls into the second, sometimes-material category, but was immaterial in this instance because Article 21.08 permits the State to allege ownership of property legally owned by a business entity in either the entity’s name, or in the name of a person acting for the entity (with the latter being the preferred practice).
In another part of the opinion, the appellate court follows and reaffirms 1986 CCA precedent that explains an “electronic transfer of funds” is tantamount to “money” without the State needing to establish that any tangible legal tender was involved. Since online or app-based fraud or theft are commonplace now, this opinion will provide relevant, recent authority if the defense raises a similar complaint that an electronic transfer of some kind fails to equate to misappropriation of “money.”