In The 

Court of Appeals 

Seventh District of Texas at Amarillo 

 

No. 07-22-00372-CR 

 

JORGE PEREZ CASTANEDA, APPELLANT 

V. 

THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE 

On Appeal from the 222nd District Court 

Deaf Smith County, Texas 

Trial Court No. CR-2021L-199, Honorable Roland D. Saul, Presiding 

January 5, 2024 

MEMORANDUM OPINION 

Before QUINN, C.J. and PARKER and DOSS, JJ. 

Jorge Perez Castaneda appeals his three convictions, namely aggravated assault, 

tampering with physical evidence, and felon in possession of a firearm. Two issues pend 

for review. We affirm.

Issue One 

Appellant’s first issue concerns the admission into evidence of State’s Exhibit 209, 

a judgment manifesting his prior conviction for “Assault by Strangulation.” The trial court 

overruled his objection to the exhibit. Appellant believes that to be reversible error 

because the evidence “had no probative effect, and that it was highly prejudicial since it
2

was for a prior assault of a female by strangulation, i.e., a violent, possibly life-threatening 

means, and the current charge included aggravated assault of a female, but this time with 

something even more effective at causing death: a firearm.” We overrule the issue.

Were we to assume the trial court erred, it matters not. This is so because the trial 

court admitted the same or similar evidence of his prior strangulation of a female without 

objection. This occurred when appellant’s sister testified that he told her of his conviction 

for “assault/strangulation of Maribel Salazar.” The admission of this substantially similar 

evidence to that underlying appellant’s complaint renders harmless any supposed error 

involved in admitting Exhibit 209. Molina v. State, No. 07-22-00004-CR, 2023 Tex. App. 

LEXIS 728, at *11–12 (Tex. App.—Amarillo Feb. 6, 2023, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not 

designated for publication) (reiterating that the alleged improper admission of evidence is 

harmless if the same or similar evidence is admitted without objection at some other point 

during trial).

Issue Two

Through issue two, appellant accuses his trial attorney of providing him ineffective 

assistance of counsel. We overrule the issue.

The substance of the complaint generally revolves around the admission of Exhibit 

209 and the conviction mentioned therein. Defense counsel purportedly was ineffective 

because he failed to 1) request contemporaneous limiting instructions, 2) object to the 

trial court’s sua sponte limiting instruction included in the charge, 3) object to the question 

posed and the answer from appellant’s sister regarding the prior conviction for assault, 4) 

object to evidence of appellant’s delivering controlled substances to the complainant, and 

5) object to aspects of the State’s closing argument. 
3

An ineffective assistance claim consists of the complainant proving two elements: 

deficient performance and prejudice resulting therefrom. Rodriguez v. State, No. 07-22-

00194-CR, 2023 Tex. App. LEXIS 2335, at *2 (Tex. App.—Amarillo Apr. 11, 2023, no 

pet.) (mem. op., not designated for publication). The failure to address either element 

defeats the complaint. See Brown v. State, No. 07-22-00107-CR, 2023 Tex. App. LEXIS 

1028, at *3 (Tex. App.—Amarillo Feb. 16, 2023, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for 

publication). And, when addressing the matter of prejudice, the appellant must “establish 

a reasonable probability that but for the deficient performance, the result would have 

differed.” Rodriguez, 2023 Tex. App. LEXIS 2335, at *4. “In other words, he has to 

illustrate a reasonable probability of a different outcome, not merely conclude as much.” 

Id. The latter best describes appellant’s exposition on the second prong here. He 

describes the purported error, stacks each supposed mistake upon the other, and then 

concludes that “[a]ll of these combine to not only [] show constitutionally deficient 

performance but to make the prejudice under the second Strickland prong impossible to 

remove.” Missing, though, is any discussion of how either his conviction or sentence 

would have differed. The lack of such substantive explanation itself warrants our rejection 

of the complaint. See id. 

Having overruled appellant’s issues, we affirm the trial court’s judgment. 

Brian Quinn

Chief Justice

Do not publish.