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In The

Court of Appeals

Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont

________________

NO. 09-23-00056-CR

________________

ELBERT JASON PIERCE, Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

________________________________________________________________________

On Appeal from the 359th District Court

Montgomery County, Texas

Trial Cause No. 20-09-11437-CR

________________________________________________________________________

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Elbert Jason Pierce argues that a misunderstanding of the facts deprived him 

of a fair hearing on the State’s motion to adjudicate his guilt and revoke his 

community supervision, and thus deprived him of due process and due course of 

law. Tex. Const. art. I, § 19. According to Pierce, this misunderstanding caused the 

trial court to erroneously believe that he was on community supervision for 

assaulting his mother in September 2020, when he was in fact on community 
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supervision for assaulting his mother’s domestic partner, a member of Pierce’s 

household.

1 Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.01(b)(2)(A); Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 71.005.

When the State moved to revoke Pierce’s community supervision, Pierce’s May 

2022 assault on his mother was one of the grounds alleged for revocation.

Finding no reversible error, we affirm the trial court’s judgment revoking 

Pierce’s community supervision and sentencing him to the statutory maximum: ten

years in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

I. Background

Pierce was charged with assaulting his mother’s domestic partner in 2020.2

Pierce pleaded “guilty” to that charge and was placed on deferred adjudication 

community supervision for four years. In 2022, the state alleged Pierce violated the 

terms of his community supervision by drinking alcohol, by failing to submit to 

several drug tests, and by assaulting his mother. He pleaded “true” to eight of the 

grounds for revocation but “not true” to the two grounds that referenced assaulting 

his mother. The State therefore moved to adjudicate Pierce’s guilt and revoke his 

community supervision. Four witnesses testified at the revocation hearing; their 

testimony is summarized below.

1 During cross-examination, however, Pierce testified that he was placed on 

probation for assaulting his mother.

2 Information in the record suggests that at that time, Pierce also assaulted his 

mother, but that that charge was dismissed as part of a plea bargain.
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A. Testimony of Pierce’s Mother

Pierce’s mother, “Madeline Knowles,” testified that Pierce was angry and 

intoxicated when, early one morning in May 2022, he was “banging” on her bedroom 

door and demanding to use her cell phone.3 Approximately two hours later, Pierce 

returned, seeking Knowles’ help in taping a sheet over a window because he had 

destroyed the blinds. At that time, Pierce was “yelling and screaming and cussing, 

cussing, cussing.” Pierce threw Knowles’ cell phone, breaking it, and then pushed 

her into a bedroom door.

Knowles recalled a recent conversation that became heated when she told 

Pierce that he could not live with her after his release, because she “wouldn’t go 

through this anymore[,]” and he responded by calling her a crude name. Knowles

further testified that Pierce repeatedly tried to get her to recant her complaint that he 

had pushed her, but she refused to do so.

B. Testimony of Elbert Jason Pierce

In his testimony at the revocation hearing, Pierce expressed his surprise at his 

mother’s testimony because, according to Pierce, she had planned to complete an 

3 We refer to Pierce’s mother by a pseudonym to conceal her identity. See 

Tex. Const. art. I, § 30 (granting crime victims “the right to be treated with fairness 

and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy throughout the criminal justice 

process[.]”). See Smith v. State, No. 09-17-00081-CR, 2018 WL 1321410, at *1 n.1 

(Tex. App.—Beaumont Mar. 14, 2018, no pet.) (mem op., not designated for 

publication).
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affidavit of non-prosecution. Pierce also denied having pushed her, and further 

sought to minimize the events of the night in question. Specifically, he denied 

kicking in his mother’s bedroom door, but acknowledged that he did push it with his 

foot to open it. Pierce also admitted that he broke his mother’s cell phone when he 

threw it against a beam, that he “put a few holes in a couple of walls[,]” and that he 

struck the coffee table against the floor.

In addition, Pierce testified that he was placed on community supervision for 

assaulting his mother, and that he pleaded “guilty” to that charge only because he 

thought he needed to do so to be eligible for deferred adjudication, which he 

characterized as baseless, stating that he was “on probation for really no reason.”

Pierce also recounted his mental health history, recalling that many years 

earlier, he took medication for depression, but was no longer doing so at the time of 

the revocation hearing.

C. Testimony of Susana Ochoa

Deputy Ochoa, of the Montgomery County sheriff’s department, responded 

to the call for service at Knowles’ residence in May 2022. When she arrived, she 

heard “loud banging” coming from inside the house. Upon entering, Ochoa saw 

Knowles sitting on the couch, a coffee table on its side, and holes in the walls. 

Knowles appeared frightened.
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Ochoa separated Pierce from Knowles to speak to each of them privately, and 

eventually charged Pierce with assaulting his mother.

D. Testimony of Destiny King

King, a court liaison officer, authenticated the documentation reflecting 

Pierce’s interactions with the probation department. Those records showed that 

Pierce had not only used alcohol in violation of his probation but had failed to submit 

to multiple scheduled drug tests. Because of Pierce’s failures to observe the 

conditions of his probation, his probation officer recommended that his probation be 

revoked.

II. Standard of Review

We review the trial court’s order revoking a defendant’s placement on 

community supervision for abuse of discretion. Rickels v. State, 202 S.W.3d 759, 

763 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). The State’s burden of proof in a revocation proceeding 

is by a preponderance of the evidence. Cobb v. State, 851 S.W.2d 871, 874 (Tex. 

Crim. App. 1993) (citation omitted). The State satisfies its burden when the greater 

weight of credible evidence before the trial court creates a reasonable belief 

demonstrating it is more probable than not that the defendant has violated a condition 

of his community supervision. Rickels, 202 S.W.3d at 763-64; Joseph v. State, 3 

S.W.3d 627, 640 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 1999, no pet.).
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III. Analysis

Pierce did not make the objection at his revocation hearing that he now makes 

on appeal. Therefore, he may not raise his complaint on appeal unless he can show 

that no complaint was necessary to preserve error. Tex. R. App. P. 33.1(a)(1)(A).

Although the record reflects that the trial court may have misunderstood the reason 

underlying Pierce’s community supervision, no objection to such misunderstanding 

was made at the hearing. See Aldrich v. State, 104 S.W.3d 890, 895 (Tex. Crim. App. 

2003) (negating the right to an error-free trial and explaining “[t]he rules that require 

a timely and specific objection, motion, or complaint do not apply to two relatively 

small categories of errors: violations of ‘rights which are waivable only’ and denials 

of ‘absolute systemic requirements.’”). At trial, not such objection was made. The 

Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the defendant’s argument, raised for the first 

time on appeal, that this misunderstanding necessitated reversal. Id. at 896. We are 

persuaded by the rationale of Aldrich and likewise reject Pierce’s analogous 

argument.

We overrule Pierce’s sole appellate argument.

IV. Conclusion

Finding no error, we therefore affirm the trial court’s judgment sentencing 

Pierce to ten years in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal 

Justice. 
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AFFIRMED.

 JAY WRIGHT

 Justice

 

Submitted on December 8, 2023

Opinion Delivered February 21, 2024

Do Not Publish 

Before Golemon, C.J., Horton and Wright, JJ.