In The 

Court of Appeals 

Seventh District of Texas at Amarillo

No. 07-18-00423-CR 

MEGAN DAWN MASON, APPELLANT 

 

V. 

 

THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE 

 

On Appeal from the 100th District Court 

Donley County, Texas 

Trial Court No. 4024, Honorable Stuart Messer, Presiding 

 

August 28, 2019 

 

MEMORANDUM OPINION 

 

Before QUINN, C.J., and CAMPBELL and PIRTLE, JJ. 

Appellant Megan Dawn Mason appeals from the trial court’s order revoking her 

deferred adjudication community supervision, adjudicating her guilty of the seconddegree felony of burglary of a habitation,1 and sentencing her to serve ten years of 

1 TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 30.02 (West 2011).
2

imprisonment.2 Appellant challenges her sentence as being grossly disproportionate to 

her crime. We will affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Background

Because appellant does not challenge the ground on which the trial court based 

its revocation of her community supervision and adjudication of her guilt, we will relate 

only those facts necessary to disposition of her appellate issue. TEX. R. APP. P. 47.1.

In August 2018, appellant pled guilty to the second-degree felony offense of 

burglary of a habitation, the offense occurring in June 2018. The trial court placed 

appellant on deferred adjudication community supervision for a period of three years. The 

next month, in September 2018, the State filed a motion to adjudicate appellant’s guilt, 

citing as grounds appellant’s commission of the new offense of criminal trespass. The 

trial court held a hearing in November 2018. Appellant pled “true” to the allegation. The 

State presented other evidence to support its motion.

Appellant testified, explaining her version of the events that led to her commission 

of the criminal trespass. Her testimony included the admission that several days after her 

plea to the burglary charge, she went to her mother’s home even though she had signed 

a criminal trespass warning stating that entry on her mother’s property was forbidden.

2 Burglary of a habitation is a second-degree felony, punishable by imprisonment 

for any term of not more than twenty years or less than two years and a fine not to exceed 

$10,000. TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 12.33 (West 2011).
3

At the close of the motion, the trial court revoked appellant’s community 

supervision, adjudicated her guilty of the offense, and sentenced her to ten years of 

imprisonment. It is this sentence appellant challenges in this appeal.

Analysis

By her sole appellate issue, appellant contends the trial court abused its discretion 

by assessing a sentence that was unconstitutionally excessive. The State responds that 

the sentence was within the applicable statutory range and was not grossly 

disproportionate to appellant’s offense. We agree with the State’s contention.

Our evaluation of a challenge to the term of imprisonment imposed in an individual 

case based on all its circumstances begins with a comparison of the gravity of the offense 

with the severity of the sentence. Noyes v. State, No. 07-16-00229-CR, 2018 Tex. App. 

LEXIS 3572, at *6 (Tex. App.—Amarillo May 21, 2018, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated 

for publication) (citing Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 60, 130 S. Ct. 2011, 176 L. Ed. 2d 

825 (2010)). We consider the harm caused or threatened to the victim, the offender’s 

culpability, and the offender’s prior adjudicated and unadjudicated offenses. State v. 

Simpson, 488 S.W.3d 318, 323 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016) (citing Graham, id.) It is only if 

we are able to infer a sentence is grossly disproportionate to an offense that we will

compare appellant’s sentence with the sentences received for similar crimes in this 

jurisdiction or sentences received in other jurisdictions. Winchester v. State, 246 S.W.3d 

386, 388 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 2008, pet. ref’d); Noyes, 2018 Tex. App. LEXIS 3572, at 

*6.
4

Normally, a sentence within the statutory range of punishment for an offense is not 

excessive, cruel, or unusual punishment. Winchester, 246 S.W.3d at 389. The Court of 

Criminal Appeals has described “the sentencer’s discretion to impose any punishment 

within the prescribed range to be essentially ‘unfettered.’ Subject only to a very limited, 

‘exceedingly rare,’ and somewhat amorphous Eighth Amendment grossdisproportionality review, a punishment that falls within the legislatively prescribed range, 

and that is based upon the sentencer’s informed normative judgment, is unassailable on 

appeal.” Ex parte Chavez, 213 S.W.3d 320, 323-24 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006).

We find appellant’s ten-year sentence was not grossly disproportionate to her 

crime. Appellant’s sentence fell well within the statutory range of two to twenty years. 

TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 12.33 (providing punishment for second-degree felony offense). 

While appellant concedes that burglary of a habitation is a serious offense, she argues 

on appeal she was not given any opportunities for rehabilitation but was instead 

sentenced to prison. This, she says, makes her punishment grossly disproportionate to 

her offense. But we are not cited to authority holding that such reasoning demonstrates 

an unconstitutionally gross disparity between a ten-year sentence and a second-degree 

felony burglary offense. See Simpson, 488 S.W.3d at 323 (setting forth considerations 

for determination whether sentence for term of years is grossly disproportionate to

particular defendant’s crime).

At the hearing on the motion to adjudicate appellant’s guilt, the sheriff testified that

at the time appellant committed the burglary offense, she also took the victim’s car. The 

stolen-car charge was dismissed as part of appellant’s plea to the home burglary. Only 

ten days after appellant was placed on deferred adjudication community supervision, she 
5

trespassed on her mother’s property despite her knowledge of the criminal trespass 

warning.

Despite her plea of “true” to the criminal trespass community-supervision violation, 

appellant’s testimony at the hearing consisted largely of assertions the court could have 

seen as attempts to minimize and excuse her trespass. But as the State pointed out at 

the hearing, appellant was being sentenced for the burglary of a habitation, not the 

trespass. And, despite her earlier plea of guilty to the burglary, appellant at this hearing 

again engaged in comments minimizing the significance of that offense. And she 

asserted she merely “borrowed” the vehicle she took.

In our view, the evidence permitted the trial court to conclude that appellant had 

not taken either her burglary offense or her community supervision seriously. The record 

does not, however, permit us to find this is one of those “rare” cases in which the sentence 

is grossly disproportionate to the offense. Simpson, 488 S.W.3d at 323. Accordingly, we 

resolve appellant’s issue against her.

Conclusion

Having overruled appellant’s sole issue on appeal, we affirm the judgment of the 

trial court.

James T. Campbell

 Justice

Do not publish.