5th Circuit Court of Appeals
United States v. Texas; Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, et al. v. Martin, et al.
No. 24-50149 4/24/26
Issue:
Do the plaintiffs challenging Senate Bill 4 (which codified Chapter 51 of the Penal Code and Chapter 5B of the Code of Criminal Procedure) have standing to challenge the new statute after the recent U.S. Supreme Court case FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. 367 (2024)?
Holding:
“The answer is no. And the reason is evident: [The] plaintiffs have not suffered a cognizable Article III injury.” The Court divided the plaintiffs into two categories, the first being nonprofit organizations challenging the bill and the second being El Paso County. Using the reasoning and language of Alliance, the Court held that the voluntary diversion of an organization’s resources or mission in response to a defendant’s actions does not create standing. The Court then turned to El Paso County. The Court found that El Paso County’s “standing theories fare no better” than the nonprofit plaintiffs’. El Paso County challenged the law based on the belief that enforcement of SB 4 would damage the trust that the community has in the local government as well as add a financial burden on the county for buildings and personnel to house defendants arrested under SB 4. The Court found that ‘eroding the public trust’ is a non-cognizable reputational harm. And because El Paso County brought this challenge pre-enforcement, “any assumption about how the law will be enforced is highly speculative” and therefore any potential financial burdens were at this point conjectural. “Like the nonprofit plaintiffs, El Paso County does not have standing for one plain and obvious reason—’no injury’ means ‘no standing.”’ Read opinion.
Concurrence (Ho, J.):
“I agree that [the] [p]laintiffs lack standing to challenge SB 4, and thus concur in vacating the preliminary injunction on that ground. The State of Texas also presses a broader theory of relief, based on its power to engage in war in response to an invasion. I agree with that theory as well … In sum, exercising the war power to defend against an invasion is a quintessential judgment for chief executives, not federal judges.”
Concurrence (Oldham, J., joined by Elrod, Willett, Ho, Duncan, and Engelhardt, JJ.):
“[T]his opinion is limited to one merits issue: whether Texas Penal Code §51.02 is conflict-preempted. Section 51.02 is the arrest provision in Texas’s SB 4, and it is the particular focus of today’s dissents. Those dissents overlook three problems, however: I) the burden required to mount a facial conflict-preemption challenge, II) [the] plaintiffs’ failure to meet that burden as to Texas Penal Code §51.02, and III) the many ways Arizona is not to the contrary.”
Dissent (Richman, J., joined by Stewart, Southwick, Higginson and Ramirez, JJ. Graves and Douglas, JJ., joined as to Part II):
“I would reach the merits and affirm the district court’s preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the state laws that permit Texas to arrest and remove illegal immigrants. Federal laws on the books permit Texas to assist the federal government in apprehending illegal immigrants if the federal government so requests. But Texas cannot enact its own immigration regime.”
Dissent (Graves, J., joined by Stewart, Richman, Higginson, Douglas, and Ramirez, JJ.):
“No doubt, courts sometimes overcomplicate standing doctrine. But courts sometimes oversimplify it. Simplicity is the majority’s watchword—but also its error. We should not oversimplify a party’s injury, nor should we oversimplify controlling caselaw. The majority does both here, with troubling consequences. It allows a law that plainly frustrates the federal immigration scheme to take effect, disrupting the delicate balance between state interests and the firmly established federal power over immigration.”
Commentary:
This case, or another challenge to the viability of SB 4, is very likely to end up in the United States Supreme Court for a resolution of the conflict-preemption question discussed by the side opinions here (note that the majority opinion assesses only the plaintiffs’ standing and declines to address the merits of the plaintiffs’ conflict-preemption claim). As a constitutional law refresher, the conflict-preemption question that this case poses is whether the state-run immigration scheme created by SB 4 violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, which dictates that federal law controls over any conflicting state or local law. Unless and until the SCOTUS provides a final answer to that question, though, the importance of this decision is that it vacates the preliminary injunction that was blocking implementation of SB 4. So, Texas prosecutors need to familiarize themselves with the new immigration-related Penal Code offenses and removal provisions that SB 4 creates, especially prosecutors in counties closest to the Texas–Mexico border, barring subsequent litigation in this case that could further delay that implementation upon the court’s final mandate being issued in mid-May.
Texas Courts of Appeals
Davis v. State
No. 01-24-00301-CR 4/28/26
Issue:
Did the trial court violate the jury unanimity requirement by instructing the jury on two ways in which the defendant could be guilty of murder but submitting only a general verdict form?
Holding:
No. A guilty verdict must be unanimous in a felony criminal prosecution. But the unanimity requirement is not violated “by disjunctively instructing the jury on alternate ways of committing the same crime” as alleged in the indictment. Here, there was no error for the trial court to instruct the jury that the defendant could be guilty of murder if they so found that he 1) intentionally or knowingly caused the death of the victim or 2) intended to cause the victim serious bodily harm and committed an act clearly dangerous to human life that caused her death. Read opinion.
Commentary:
It is well-settled that when a charging instrument alleges alternative manners and means of committing the same crime against the same victim, the jurors need not agree on which particular manner and means is applicable, nor specify which legal theory they credited, so long as they unanimously agree that the accused committed the crime by either or any of the manners and means alleged. This opinion acknowledges these long-held principles in the context of murder and faithfully applies clear precedent by the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Faragoza v. State
No. 01-24-00522-CR 4/28/26
Issue:
Was the evidence sufficient to show that the defendant used a deadly weapon, namely, a motor vehicle, in her trial for recklessly causing serious bodily injury to a child?
Holding:
Yes. The Court thoroughly reviewed the history of deadly weapon findings in Texas jurisprudence. The Court curiously noted that the evidentiary review standard applied by the Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) to any non-firearm deadly weapon finding has always been a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, but there is no source in statute or case law for such a standard (other than when the CCA originally said that was the standard without any reference to preceding case law or statute). The Court showed confusion as to why the standard would be beyond a reasonable doubt when a deadly weapon finding is not an element of the offense, and in a case like this, does not alter the punishment range but alters only the defendant’s parole eligibility date. “No case from that Court has offered other explanations for applying the law’s highest evidentiary standard to a non-elemental finding that functions primarily as a prison classification.” Even applying the highest evidentiary standard to the case before it, the Court found that the defendant’s arguments—that she was not using the vehicle as a deadly weapon at the time of the crash because the vehicle was airborne and out of the defendant’s immediate control and that potentially a passenger in the vehicle could have grabbed the wheel causing the vehicle to lose control—were meritless. Read opinion.
Commentary:
Justice Morgan posits an interesting question here. However, unless the CCA directly considers the standard-of-review issue and retracts its precedent that declares that the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard applies in this context, or unless the legislature sees fit to add a different evidentiary standard to Art. 42A.054(c), prosecutors need to continue to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused used a non-firearm object as a deadly weapon. That fact aside, this case will be helpful to prosecutors with cases wherein they seek to prove that the defendant used a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon.
Jones v. State
No. 03-24-00463-CR 4/24/26
Issue:
Did the trial court commit jury-charge error by failing to include instructions on venue under CCP Art. 13.04?
Holding:
No. The defendant was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover officer in a parking lot that was split in the middle by the county lines of Williamson and Travis Counties. All the officers testified that they were familiar with the location of the county line and intentionally completed the transaction in Williamson County. The defendant claimed jury-charge error when the trial court failed to include language from CCP Art. 13.04, which states, “An offense committed on the boundaries of two or more counties, or within 400 yards thereof, may be prosecuted and punished in any one of such counties.” But the court disagreed. “The Court of Criminal Appeals has implicitly recognized … that the statute merely provided the State with the option to bring the prosecution in either county and that the State did not ‘exercise that option’ unless the indictment showed ‘that the offense was committed in one county and the prosecution conducted in another.’ Parr v. State, 299 S.W.2d 940, 941 (Tex. Crim. App. 1957). If an offense occurs within 400 yards of two or more counties and the trial is held in the same county as that in which the offense occurred, there is no need for an instruction at variance with the general rule, and an Article 13.04 instruction is both superfluous and potentially confusing to jurors.” Read opinion.
Commentary:
Recall that Art. 36.14 imposes upon the trial court a sua sponte obligation to instruct the jury on the “law applicable to the case.” However, as the CCA has explained, an instruction does not become law applicable to the case unless a statute or rule requires the instruction under the particular circumstances of the case. Applying these concepts in a straightforward and logical manner, the appellate court holds that an Art. 13.04 instruction was not law applicable to the case because the circumstances of the case did not raise an Art. 13.04 issue. That holding should withstand any attempt at further review by the defendant.
Meyer v. State
No. 04-24-00279-CR 4/29/26
Issue:
In a drug bust at a house occupied by multiple individuals, was the evidence sufficient to show that the homeowner was in possession of the drugs that were found in the master bathroom?
Holding:
No. The Court noted that there were at least seven individuals in the house at the time of the execution of the warrant, and a vehicle that contained drugs, cash, and paraphernalia had been stopped earlier leaving the house. The Court also noted that the house seemed to be in some state of remodel with construction tools (and junk) scattered throughout, and there was a large quantity of women’s clothing in the master bathroom and master bedroom. The Court used the “affirmative links rule” in Poindexter v. State, 153 S.W.3d 402 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005), which says that whether the evidence is direct or circumstantial, “it must establish the requisite level of confidence that the accused’s connection with the drug was more than just fortuitous.” The Court looked at the numerous factors that a court can consider in determining “affirmative links” from Tate v. State, 500 S.W.3d 410 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016). “We conclude that the combined and cumulative force of all the evidence, even when viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, does not support an inference that by his ownership of the home, [the defendant] knew about the methamphetamine in the master bathroom and exercised care, custody, control, or management over it.” Read opinion.
Commentary:
The appellate court here seems to focus on what the State did not prove, rather than whether the cumulative force of the evidence that the State did provide would support an inference that the defendant possessed—either exclusively or jointly—the methamphetamine discovered in the defendant’s ensuite primary bathroom. Though it can be difficult to get the CCA to overturn decisions like this, it is generally worthwhile to try, especially given the longstanding principle that it is the logical force of the affirmative links established, rather than the number of links, that is paramount.
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