Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
No. WR-70,963-02 5/25/22
Issue:
Is the defendant entitled to post-conviction relief from his death sentence based on his subsequent allegations of intellectual disability?
Holding (per curiam):
Yes. Despite this Court’s previous rejection of the defendant’s intellectual disability claims, the facts presented in his subsequent habeas application establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant is a person with intellectual disability under current clinical diagnostic standards, in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Moore v. Texas, 137 S.Ct. 1039 (2017). Read opinion.
Concurrence (Newell, J., joined by Hervey and Keel, JJ.):
The U.S. Supreme Court’s test for determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases under Moore is no longer tethered to the original reason for excluding that category of offenders from the death penalty, but this Court is bound by that flawed opinion. Read opinion.
Dissent (Keller, P.J.):
Rather than a preponderance standard, this Court should employ an Elizondo-type standard and require proof by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror could find against the defendant’s intellectual disability claim. Read opinion.
Dissent (Yeary, J.):
The issue of intellectual disability should be remanded to the trial court for a jury determination of the issue; also, the rapidly evolving scientific diagnostic criteria for intellectual disability has resulted in a standard so substantively different from that originally relied upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins that it is unclear whether this current exemption from the death penalty still comports with our broader society’s consensus on the issue. Read opinion.
Commentary:
This opinion will be of interest primarily to appellate and writs prosecutors and secondarily to prosecutors who try death-penalty cases. The U.S. Supreme Court changed the landscape regarding intellectual disability in the Texas death penalty context when the Supreme Court held in Moore that the criteria for intellectual disability set out in Ex parte Briseno violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since then, some judges of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals have expressed consternation with the notion that the clinical psychological standards for assessing intellectual disability per Moore—which focus on the person’s ability to function in society, rather than on whether the person is less morally blameworthy because of the person’s intellectual limitations—have become “untethered” from the Supreme Court’s foundational premise in Atkins that intellectually disabled persons are exempt from the death penalty because “[t]heir deficiencies … diminish their personal culpability.” Nevertheless, the Court of Criminal Appeals is bound by the Supreme Court’s precedent in Moore unless and until the Supreme Court revisits and changes it.
Texas Courts of Appeals
No. 01-20-00739-CR 5/24/22
Issue:
Does Texas law require a person swearing to a complaint to have first-hand knowledge of the allegations in the complaint?
Holding:
No. The complainant is not required to sign the complaint. The trial judge should not have quashed an indictment where an administrative assistant in the prosecutor’s office swore to and signed a complaint based on an officer’s offense report accessed in the prosecutor office’s intake management system. Read opinion.
Commentary:
In addition to its central holding that the person swearing to and signing a complaint need not be the complainant/victim in the case and is not required to have first-hand knowledge of the facts of the offense, this opinion provides other noteworthy reminders, including: 1) if the State presents an information to charge a defendant with an offense (as opposed to an indictment), a complaint is also required as a prerequisite to that information; and 2) a complaint must be signed by a credible person who is not an attorney on the prosecution team (i.e., the same person cannot be both the accuser and the prosecutor). This opinion is thorough, founded on sound precedent, and consistent with the holdings of other intermediate appellate courts on these matters.
No. 10-20-00068-CR 05/18/22
Issue:
Is Code of Criminal Procedure Article 38.37, §2(b) unconstitutional as applied to the defendant because the protections to keep out prejudicial evidence provided by Texas Rule of Evidence 403 are merely “illusory” in that only one Texas court of appeals has excluded evidence offered under Article 38.37 on the basis of Rule 403?
Holding:
No. Rule 403 sufficiently protects a defendant’s interest through its balancing test. The trial court followed the statute’s requirements, and after hearing evidence and arguments of counsel, found the evidence sufficient under for a reasonable juror to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the extraneous offense and, per Rule 403, found its probative value was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Read opinion.
Commentary:
Virtually every Texas appellate court has previously held that Article 38.37, §2(b) is facially constitutional because the procedures established by Article 38.37, §§2-a and 3 suffice to protect defendants’ due process rights. In an effort to distinguish those rulings, the defendant here asserted an as-applied constitutionality challenge to Article 38.37 (though it was really still a facial challenge, if you distill it to its core). Regardless of the nature of the complaint, this opinion explains that when the statute at issue has protective procedures and the record evinces that the trial court properly employed those procedures, the provision is unlikely to be unconstitutional as applied to the defendant. Further, simply because trial and appellate courts rarely rule or act in defendants’ favor regarding the application of a particular statute does make that provision unconstitutional as applied to those defendants.
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