Announcement
Beginning in July, TDCAA’s Weekly Case Summaries will be published on Monday mornings. The next edition of case summaries will be published on July 6.
U.S. Supreme Court
United States v. Hemani
No. 24-1234 6/18/26
Issue:
Does the federal firearms law (18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3)), which prohibits the possession of firearms by someone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” violate the Second Amendment as applied to the defendant?
Holding:
Yes. In a very narrow holding, the majority addressed only whether the law was unconstitutional as applied to the defendant. The Court noted that under New York State Rifle and Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), courts should uphold restrictions on gun rights only if there is a tradition of this type of regulation in early U.S. history. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the majority, noted that the government is not required to “point to a ‘historical twin’” from earlier laws, but whether “the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition.” The Court noted that while some early American laws targeted “habitual drunkards,” those laws were aimed at different issues. The federal firearms law “automatically divests an individual of his constitutional right to bear arms the moment he becomes an unlawful user and until he ends his drug use,” without a showing that the defendant was regularly incapacitated. “We do not address efforts to ban addicts … or those presently intoxicated, from bearing a firearm. We do not address other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms. We do not address 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1)’s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies (often including drug-related ones). We do not even address whether the government could bring a prosecution under §922(g)(3) accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant’s use of marijuana (or any other drug) renders him a danger to himself or others. Or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous because of its potency or for some other reason. None of those issues is before us and we do not pass on them either way.” Read opinion.
Concurrence (Thomas, J.):
“I write separately to call attention to another issue: As a matter of both original meaning and this Court’s precedents, §922(g)(3) appears to exceed Congress’s enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce. … So, while the issue was not presented in this case, the Court, and lower courts, should revisit the constitutionality of §922(g).”
Concurrence (Jackson, J., joined by Sotomayor, J.):
“As I and others have elsewhere explained, Bruen is unworkable. It imposes on judges the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of sifting through centuries-old evidence in order to answer ‘contested historical questions,’ and ‘applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems. 597 U.S. at 107 (Breyer, J., dissenting). Given those challenges, it is unsurprising that Bruen’s test is vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application, as judges draw different conclusions from the same historical evidence and reach divergent assessments of the same laws.”
Concurrence (Alito, J., joined by Kagan, J.):
The concurrence would “agree that nothing in the opinion of the Court should be read to cast doubt on the constitutionality of other provisions of §922(g), such as §§922(g)(1) and (4), the ‘prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,’ District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 626 (2008), which we have repeatedly said are “‘presumptively lawful’” (citations omitted).
Commentary:
This has become the Court’s most recent decision on the Second Amendment, but it should have no direct impact on the validity of any law in Chapter 46 of the Texas Penal Code. There is no Texas state law that “automatically bans an individual from possessing a gun from the moment he becomes an unlawful user of any controlled substance until he ceases being one.” This decision has no impact upon any Texas law that would prevent an intoxicated person or felon from possessing a firearm. This decision also does not address any hypothetical law that might prevent a person from possessing a firearm while he is a user of a particular dangerous drug. Prosecutors should keep watch for future decisions from the Supreme Court, as there will certainly be more while the Court continues to accept Second Amendment cases, as well as any decisions from Texas appellate courts and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Wolford, et al. v. Lopez
No. 24-1046 6/25/26
Issue:
Does Hawaii’s law prohibiting licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization violate the Second Amendment?
Holding:
Yes. “This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives. We hold that the law is unconstitutional.” The Court rejected the argument that analogous colonial and early state laws support the constitutionality of Hawaii’s default law. “These old rules … are vastly different than Hawaii’s new default rule. They consist almost entirely of laws that prohibit unauthorized hunting of deer or small game on someone else’s private property.” Read opinion.
Concurrence (Barrett, J., joined by Thomas and Gorsuch in Part II-B):
“Hawaii and the principal dissent insist that this is a case about property law, not the Second Amendment. The argument goes like this: No one has the right to enter private property—let alone to bring firearms onto it—without the owner’s consent. … Whether consent can be implied or must be express depends on local custom and property rules, which States have always had authority to modify. … By requiring express consent, Hawaii has simply modified a default rule of property law. And because the ‘pre-existing [Second Amendment] right’ did not require any particular default rule, Hawaii’s law does not even implicate the Second Amendment. Id., at 13 (quoting New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc.v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 20 (2022)); see post, at 6–13 (Jackson, J., dissenting). No further analysis is necessary. This argument misunderstands the role of historical evidence in a Second Amendment challenge. Bruen establishes a two-part test for assessing whether a law is consistent with the Second Amendment.”
Dissent (Kagan, J.):
“I would uphold the challenged Hawaii law because as Justice Jackson shows in Part III of her opinion, it is a modern-day analogue of colonial and founding era law that similarly prohibited carrying firearms onto private property without the owner’s affirmative consent.”
Dissent (Jackson, J., joined by Sotomayor, J.):
“Today the Court declares unconstitutional Hawaii’s efforts to protect the rights of its residents—both those who wish to carry guns and those who prefer that guns are not carried on their private property without their express permission. To hear the majority tell it, Hawaii’s law is a blatant attempt to end-run our Second Amendment precedents. But the statute at issue does no such thing. Instead, it fairly applies a first principle of property law—the right to exclude—and does no harm to the Second Amendment.”
Commentary:
This decision deals specifically with Hawaii’s law prohibiting concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization. But the majority opinion spends a great deal of time noting how all of Hawaii’s laws passed after Bruen adversely impact upon Second Amendment rights. The majority opens with the statement that, prior to Bruen, Hawaii made it almost impossible to obtain a license to carry a firearm. (From 2000 to 2018, only four such permits had been obtained in the state.) Although not directly affected by the Court’s decision, the majority notes that Hawaii’s new laws achieved a similar result to its pre-Bruen laws. On a large portion of the land within the state’s boundaries, possession of a firearm is flatly prohibited. To bring its point home, the majority opinion presents on pages 14–16 the plight of a single woman with a lawful concealed-carry permit in Hawaii and the number of times in a single day that she would violate the specific law with which this decision deals. Hawaii is clearly going to have to go back to the drawing board to make its guns law comply with current Supreme Court jurisprudence on the Second Amendment. This decision should not adversely affect the validity of Texas laws. Penal Code §§30.06 and 30.07 make it a crime to carry a gun onto to someone’s property, but only if the carrier of the gun receives notice to depart. Section 46.03 prohibits carrying handguns on various premises, but there are provisions for most of those properties that would make §46.03 inapplicable if the gun carrier received notice to depart and did not. Prosecutors should already be wary of filing charges against a person who is accused of committing an offense under §46.03 if any of those non-applicability provisions or defenses apply. The default in Texas is essentially that a person can carry a handgun onto private property that is open to the public, which is the opposite of the default that existed in Hawaii.
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Dudas v. State
No. PD-0221-25 6/25/26
Issue:
Does a jury instruction on self-defense using deadly force preclude an instruction on necessity?
Holding:
Yes. “To instruct a jury on necessity when a defendant obtained a deadly force self-defense instruction would … undermine the Legislature’s purpose of allowing a person to use deadly force in self-defense only under the specific circumstances enumerated in subsections (A) and (B) of Section 9.32. … Therefore, when the conduct claimed to be justified is the use of deadly force in self-defense under Section 9.32, a legislative purpose to exclude reliance on the necessity defense plainly appears for purposes of 9.22(3).” Read opinion.
Concurrence (Parker, J., joined by Yeary and Finley, JJ):
“Is a defendant entitled to submission of a necessity defense when his claim is that he was defending against the victim’s unlawful use of deadly force? As the Court’s opinion amply shows, the answer is ‘no.’ While the defendant’s request for a deadly force instruction should estop him from claiming a necessity defense, he also should not get a necessity defense when the evidence raises only deadly-force self-defense. The evidence in this case supports only the claim that [the defendant] was defending himself against the victim’s unlawful use of deadly force. That evidence raises only deadly-force self-defense; it does not raise necessity.” Read concurrence.
Commentary:
This decision builds upon what the court had previously held in Navarro v. State, 726 S.W.3d 436 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005): that a defendant who cannot rely upon self-defense cannot attempt to justify his conduct by relying upon the necessity defense. If it was in doubt before, it is no longer in doubt. This decision definitively—if briefly—states that a defendant who has received a deadly-force self-defense instruction is not entitled to an additional instruction on the necessity defense.
Columbus v. State
No. PD-0538-25 6/25/26
Issue:
May a trial judge enter a finding for family violence in the written judgment if the judge has not pronounced the finding in open court?
Holding:
Yes. Although Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 42A.504(b) imposes a mandatory fine in certain family violence cases, this “does not convert that affirmative finding into part of the sentence,” and therefore, the family violence finding is not a part of a defendant’s sentence that the judge must pronounce orally before it may be entered into the judgment. Read opinion.
Concurrence (Schenck, P.J.):
The concurrence discussed whether the appeals court should have addressed an issue that the majority found the defendant had waived: whether the lower court should have addressed the defendant’s argument that Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 42.013 requires an oral pronouncement to give the defendant a chance to object to an affirmative finding. “I agree that lower courts are not required to reach and address arguments that are not properly or timely presented, but they are responsible for the decisions and judgments they render. They are thus free to address any legal argument within the issue before it.” Read concurrence.
Concurrence (Parker, J.):
“The Court does not say today that it ‘cannot’ consider that ground. Rather, the Court merely declines to consider that ground. That declination rests firmly on this Court’s general prudential practice of not addressing issues that were not resolved by the court of appeals. We deviate from that general rule only in exceptional situations. ‘We are a discretionary review court. It is not our practice to conduct an ‘appeal de novo’ and review appellate issues from scratch.’” Read concurrence.
Dissent (Finley, J.):
The dissent would hold that a trial court must orally pronounce an affirmative finding of family violence during sentencing. “The plain text of Article 42A.504 supports the conclusion that the $100 fine operates outside of the conditions of a defendant’s community supervision and instead as part of the defendant’s sentence.” Read dissent.
Commentary:
Apart from noting that Art. 42.013 does not impose a sentence upon a defendant, the majority opinion begins its analysis by making a distinction between references to a sentence in Art. 42.01, §1 and the rest of Art. 42.01. Family violence affirmative findings are mentioned in Art. 42.01, §5. The majority opinion also drew a distinction between the “fine” required by Art. 42A.504(b) and a fine imposed by Chapter 12 of the Penal Code. There are various mentions of “fines”—mandatory or otherwise—in places other than Chapter 12. Perhaps this language from the majority opinion can be used in the future to foreclose an argument that the failure to impose a non-Chapter-12 “fine” renders a judgment void. Footnote 9 of the court’s opinion seems to support that conclusion by noting that a defendant should object to the absence of a non-Chapter-12 “fine” before being able to complain about it on appeal.
Garcia v. State
No. PD-0556-25 6/25/26
Issue:
Was the evidence sufficient to prove a prior assault involving family violence for the defendant’s assault–family violence conviction?
Holding:
Yes. Even though the victim did not testify, testimony by an officer on fingerprint evidence and other documentary evidence established the victim’s and defendant’s marriage and was sufficient to prove the prior assault. While the name of the victim on a 2004 charging instrument (Olivia Garcia) was different from that on the marriage license and a 2019 indictment (Olivia Lopez), the jury could have reasonably inferred that the person named in these documents was the same person. Read opinion.
Dissent (Finley, J.):
“I would conclude that the evidence is insufficient to show that the prior conviction was a domestic violence conviction. The State’s evidence only proves that someone named Roberto Garcia married someone named Olivia Lopez, and that six days later, [the defendant] committed aggravated assault against someone named Olivia Garcia. Something is missing. The evidence admitted requires a jury to make two unsupported inferences.” Read dissent.
Commentary:
This is an imminently reasonable decision. It stands for the proposition that a jury can use circumstantial evidence and its own common sense in finding that the State has established an element of an offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The State does not have to present the testimony of a defendant’s spouse to prove that the two were married. That is a good thing because domestic-violence prosecutors know that spouses are often not willing or available to testify in domestic-violence prosecutions.
Texas Court of Appeals
Williams v. State
No. 13-24-00487-CR 6/11/26
Issue:
Did the trial court correctly allow an adult victim of sexual assault to testify with her service dog by her side?
Holding:
Perhaps not, but any error was harmless. While Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 38.074 applies only to child victims—and no case law or trial court ruling addresses whether Tex. Gov’t Code §21.012 allows the presence of a service dog for an adult witness during court proceedings— any error in allowing the victim to testify with her service dog did not affect the defendant’s substantive rights. Read opinion.
Commentary:
Because this decision is about whether the defendant was harmed, it should not be relied upon to decide whether an adult victim of a serious crime can testify with a service animal. As appellate courts often do, this court assumed—without actually holding—that the trial court erred. Prosecutors who wish to have a vulnerable adult witness testify with a service animal may still want to review the facts of this case to determine (apart from the requirements of Art. 38.074 and §21.012) if a service animal should be permitted in court.