Opinion issued April 23, 2013.

In The

Court of Appeals 

For The 

First District of Texas 

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NOS. 01-12-00357-CR

 01-12-00358-CR

 01-12-00359-CR

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AMANDA SALINAS, Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

On Appeal from the 179th District Court

Harris County, Texas

Trial Court Case No. 1310368, 1310376, & 1310939

O P I N I O N

Amanda Salinas pleaded guilty, without an agreed recommendation on 

punishment, to a charge of the third-degree felony offense of injury to an elderly 
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individual1 and to two separate charges for the first-degree felony offense of 

aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.2 The trial court ordered the preparation 

of a presentence investigation report (PSI). After completion of the PSI, the trial 

court held a sentencing hearing. In addition to receiving the PSI into evidence, the 

trial court heard testimony from Salinas and her mother. At the conclusion of the 

hearing, the trial court sentenced Salinas to ten years’ imprisonment on the injuryto-an-elderly-individual charge and to fifteen years’ imprisonment on each of the 

aggravated robbery charges, ordering the sentences to run concurrently. Salinas 

appeals, asserting the trial court violated her due process rights by holding her 

criminally responsible for an extraneous offense when there is no evidence in the 

record to support such a conclusion. Finding no error, we affirm.

Background

On the morning of June 16, 2011, Salinas, her brother, and Quentin Mason 

were walking home from a convenience store. A van Salinas said was driving too 

fast came very close to her. She struck the van with her hand, beginning a 

confrontation with the driver, seventy-year old James Mundo, who got out of the 

 1 See TEX. PEN. CODE ANN. § 22.04 (West Supp. 2012). Trial court number 

1310368, appeal number 01-12-00357-CR.

2 See TEX. PEN. CODE ANN. § 29.03 (West 2010). Trial court number 1310376 and 

appeal number 01-12-00358-CR for aggravated robbery in the McDonald’s 

parking lot. Trial court number 1310939 and appeal number 01-12-00359-CR for 

aggravated robbery in the auto parts store.
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van. Mason told Mundo he had “five seconds to leave,” and Mundo tried to get 

back into the van. Salinas and Mason were standing so close to Mundo he could 

not shut the door. Salinas said Mundo kicked them from inside the van and was 

trying to get them away from the door. Salinas grabbed Mundo’s legs and began 

striking him, in response, she says, to Mundo’s striking her. With the 

confrontation escalating, Mason pulled out a butterfly knife and stabbed Mundo. 

Mundo fled in his van, but died a few minutes later, after crashing into the iron 

fence surrounding a nearby apartment complex. An autopsy revealed that Mundo 

died from a stab wound to the femoral artery.

Two days later, Salinas and Mason drove into a McDonald’s parking lot, 

where two young men were eating on the hood of a car. Salinas greeted them. 

One of the men, thinking he must know the people in the other car, began to 

approach. Mason pulled a gun and pointed it at the two men who immediately fled

on foot. Salinas then took a wallet containing cash, a debit card, an iPod, and a cell 

phone from the unattended car. 

A few hours later, Salinas and Mason entered an auto parts store. Mason 

pulled a gun and demanded money from the sole employee present. The employee 

said he did not have any money, and Mason began striking the employee with the 

handgun. Salinas then went through his pockets, taking his keys and checkbook. 
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The employee was able to escape, while Mason chased and threatened to shoot 

him. 

Salinas was charged with injury to an elderly individual for the assault on 

Mundo and with two counts of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon for her 

actions at the McDonald’s and the auto parts store, respectively. Salinas pleaded 

guilty to all three charges, without an agreed recommendation for punishment. 

The trial court ordered a PSI. Before the sentencing hearing, Salinas filed written 

objections to the PSI. Salinas objected to the inclusion of a statement from 

Mundo’s daughter because it addressed Mundo’s death, which resulted from 

Mason’s stabbing. According to Salinas’s objection, the trial court should not 

consider the fact of Mundo’s death because the State had not charged her with 

Mundo’s murder. The trial court overruled the objection on the record at the 

sentencing hearing. The State asked for a sentence of twenty-five years’ 

imprisonment on each of the aggravated robbery charges, although the range 

allowed by statute is five to ninety-nine years or life. The State also asked for a 

sentence of five to ten years’ imprisonment on the injury to an elderly individual 

charge, out of a possible two to ten years. The trial court sentenced Salinas to 

fifteen years’ imprisonment for each of the aggravated robbery charges and ten 

years’ imprisonment for the injury to an elderly charge, ordering the sentences to 

run concurrently. Salinas appeals.
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Analysis

In her sole issue on appeal, Salinas complains that the trial court improperly 

held her criminally responsible for causing Mundo’s death. She asserts that the 

trial court erred in considering Mundo’s death when sentencing Salinas because 

she was not charged with his murder and no evidence supports holding her 

criminally responsible for his death. She argues the trial court’s consideration of 

the fact that Mundo died violated her due process right to “accuracy in 

sentencing.” The State contends that Salinas did not preserve this issue for 

appellate review. We conclude that, even if Salinas properly preserved the issue, 

the trial court did not err in considering the fact that Mundo died in assessing

Salinas’s punishment.

A. Applicable Law

Article 42.12, section 9, of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides, in 

pertinent part: 

[B]efore the imposition of sentence by a judge in a felony case, . . . 

the judge shall direct a supervision officer to report to the judge in 

writing on the circumstances of the offense with which the defendant 

is charged, the amount of restitution necessary to adequately 

compensate a victim of the offense, the criminal and social history of 

the defendant, and any other information relating to the defendant or 

the offense requested by the judge.

TEX. CRIM. PROC. CODE ANN. art. 42.12, § 9(a) (West Supp. 2012). Article 37.07 

expressly provides that a trial court may consider the PSI report in determining the 
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punishment to assess. TEX. CRIM. PROC. CODE ANN. art. 37.07 § 3(d) (West Supp. 

2012). A PSI does not necessarily have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that 

the defendant is responsible for extraneous misconduct before a court may consider 

it in assessing punishment. Smith v. State, 227 S.W.3d 753, 763 (Tex. Crim. App.

2007). Rather, the PSI need only provide the trial court “with some basis from 

which it can rationally infer that the defendant was responsible before using it to 

inform its normative judgment of what punishment to assess within the statutorily 

prescribed range.” Id. at 759 (emphasis in original). The Court of Criminal 

Appeals has held that consideration of extraneous misconduct included in a PSI 

report violates due process “if there was no evidence from any source from which 

it could be rationally inferred that the defendant had any criminal responsibility for 

that extraneous misconduct.” Id. at 764.

B. Analysis

The PSI states that Mundo died from a stab wound inflicted by Salinas’s 

armed companion, Mason, during an altercation that began when Salinas assaulted 

Mundo. The record also makes clear that the trial court considered the fact of 

Mundo’s death during sentencing. Early in the sentencing hearing, the trial court 

noted, “But for [Salinas] walking across the street, slamming her hand on the hood 

of the car, that man would probably still be alive.” Later, after the evidence and 
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arguments were presented at the sentencing hearing, the trial court commented to 

Salinas:

But for you responding to Mr. Mundo coming too close to you in the

crosswalk, he would be alive today. There is a dead man out there. 

You are not charged with that because I think it is reasonable that you 

didn’t know that Quentin was going to pull a butterfly knife and stab 

him in the femoral artery of his leg or his hip, but the man is dead.

The trial court also told Salinas that despite the fact that a man was dead and that 

she had participated in two separate aggravated robberies, “I didn’t see any 

remorse either. I saw attitude. I saw obfuscation that you weren’t telling the truth 

or you were avoiding telling the truth. I don’t see you taking any responsibility for 

this.”

Salinas argues the trial court’s comments about Mundo’s death show the 

trial court considered her criminally responsible for it. We disagree. The trial 

court’s comments indicate that it considered Salinas responsible for initiating the 

assault that led to Mundo’s death, but they also make clear that the trial court

understood Salinas was not charged with Mundo’s death and, indeed, “th[ought] it 

is reasonable [Salinas] didn’t know Quentin was going to . . . stab” Mundo during 

the altercation. The fact that Mundo died was clearly a “circumstance of the 

offense with which [Salinas] was charged” and thus is precisely the type of 

information the statute states should be included in a PSI, and which a trial court 

may consider in assessing punishment. See TEX CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 42.12 
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§ 9(a) (PSI to include “circumstances of the offense with which the defendant is 

charged”); TEX CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 37.07 §3(a)(1), (d) (trial court or jury 

may consider “circumstances of the offense for which [defendant] is being tried” 

and trial court may consider PSI in assessing punishment).

Because the record demonstrates that the trial court understood that Salinas 

did not inflict the stab wound that killed Mundo and could not otherwise be held 

criminally responsible for Mundo’s death, we reject Salinas’s contention that the 

trial court held her criminally responsible for it. The record demonstrates a causal 

and close temporal connection between Salinas’s assault on Mundo and the fatal

stabbing by her armed companion, and thus Mundo’s death is a “circumstance” of 

the offense that properly may have been considered by the trial court. 

Accordingly, we hold that the trial court did not violate Salinas’s due process 

rights by considering the fact that Mundo died shortly after Salinas assaulted him 

in assessing her punishment. Cf. Smith, 227 S.W.3d at 764 (record was ambiguous 

about whether appellant caused extraneous injuries and whether trial court

incorporated unsupported assertion that appellant caused those injuries into its 

punishment calculus).

We overrule Salinas’s sole issue.
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Conclusion

We affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Rebeca Huddle

Justice 

Panel consists of Justices Keyes, Sharp, and Huddle.

Publish. TEX. R. APP. P. 47.2(b).