COURT OF APPEALS

SECOND DISTRICT OF TEXAS

FORT WORTH

NO. 02-11-00091-CR

ISAAC SANDERS APPELLANT

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS STATE

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FROM THE 30TH DISTRICT COURT OF WICHITA COUNTY

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MEMORANDUM OPINION1

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I. Introduction

In one issue, Appellant Isaac Sanders appeals his conviction for evading 

arrest and detention using a vehicle, arguing that there is insufficient evidence to 

prove that his actions were not permissible under the necessity defense when he 

fled from the police. We affirm.

 

1See Tex. R. App. P. 47.4.
2

II. Factual and Procedural Background

On December 16, 2009, Wichita Falls Police Officer Donald Miller was 

patrolling in his marked patrol vehicle at around 11:30 p.m. when he thought he 

saw a blue Hyundai Sonata run a stop sign. He followed the Hyundai and saw it 

run another stop sign, so he engaged his emergency lights and pursued it, trying 

to initiate a traffic stop. The Hyundai’s driver ran through several stop signs

during the pursuit, refusing to stop even after Officer Miller engaged his siren. 

The pursuit ended at 1621 Oceola, where Sanders—the vehicle’s only 

occupant—exited the vehicle, and Officer Miller placed him in handcuffs. 

Sanders told Officer Miller that he had fled because he did not have a driver’s 

license, because he was intoxicated, and because he did not want the car 

impounded.

The State charged Sanders with evading arrest and detention using a 

vehicle. During the jury trial, Sanders pleaded not guilty and then admitted that 

he had driven without a license that night, that he had run six stop signs during 

the chase, that he had seen the police officer in pursuit, that he had known that 

the person pursuing him was a police officer, and that he had intentionally fled 

from the officer. Sanders claimed that when he had fled, it was simply to get the 

Hyundai back to 1621 Oceola. But Sanders also admitted that he had first told 

the officer that he had fled because he was drunk and also because he did not 

have a driver’s license, before he told the officer that he just wanted to get the 

car home.
3

Officer Miller testified that Sanders had driven at close to 100 miles per 

hour in the approximately 2.8 mile pursuit through a primarily residential area of 

town and that Sanders had turned off his headlights during the pursuit in an 

additional attempt to evade Officer Miller. During cross-examination, Officer 

Miller admitted that Sanders’s overriding interest appeared to have been to see 

that the Hyundai was not towed and impounded and that there was insufficient 

evidence to charge Sanders with driving while intoxicated.

Contrary to Officer Miller’s testimony, Sanders denied that he had turned 

off his headlights or that he had driven at almost 100 miles per hour, stating that 

he had driven roughly fifty to sixty miles per hour during the pursuit. State’s 

Exhibit 2, Officer Miller’s dashboard camera videotape, was admitted and 

published to the jury.

Rachel Humphrey, Sanders’s girlfriend, was the Hyundai’s registered 

owner and lived at 1621 Oceola. Humphrey testified that as of December 16, 

2009, she had just been hired as a medical assistant and that the Hyundai was 

her only transportation to get to work and to take her five-year-old child to school

and day care. She admitted that she had let Sanders drive the car even though 

she knew that he did not have a driver’s license.

Sanders did not request a jury instruction on the defense of necessity nor

object to the defense of necessity being omitted from the jury charge, and the 
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trial court did not instruct the jury on the defense of necessity.

2 However, during 

closing arguments, the State pointed out that there was no legal justification to 

disregard the law to get a vehicle home so that it would not be towed and that 

Sanders was not justified in running from the police just because he wanted to 

get home. Sanders responded that the jury had before it a question of fairness 

with regard to what was going on in his mind at the time of the offense.

The jury found Sanders guilty, and the trial court assessed his punishment 

at twelve months’ confinement in state jail. This appeal followed.

III. Necessity

In his sole issue, Sanders argues that the evidence is sufficient to show 

that his evasion of the police was permissible under the “necessity defense,”

which he refers to as a “legislatively-approved form of outlawry.” Sanders

specifically contends that the evidence to support his conviction is insufficient to 

override the defense he asserted at trial.

After a defendant has introduced some evidence supporting a defense, the 

State bears the burden not to introduce evidence disproving the defense but 

rather to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Zuliani v. State, 97 S.W.3d 

589, 594 (Tex. Crim. App. 2003); Saxton v. State, 804 S.W.2d 910, 913–14 (Tex. 

Crim. App. 1991). To determine the sufficiency of the evidence to disprove the 

necessity defense here, we ask whether, after viewing all the evidence in the 

 

2Sanders does not complain about error in the jury charge in his appellate 

brief.
5

light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact would have found 

the essential elements of evading arrest or detention with a motor vehicle beyond 

a reasonable doubt and also would have found against appellant on the 

necessity issue beyond a reasonable doubt. See Saxton, 804 S.W.2d at 914.

The trier of fact is the sole judge of the weight and credibility of the 

evidence. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.04 (West 1979); Brown v. 

State, 270 S.W.3d 564, 568 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 2075 

(2009). Thus, when performing an evidentiary sufficiency review, we may not reevaluate the weight and credibility of the evidence and substitute our judgment 

for that of the factfinder. Williams v. State, 235 S.W.3d 742, 750 (Tex. Crim. 

App. 2007). Instead, we Adetermine whether the necessary inferences are 

reasonable based upon the combined and cumulative force of all the evidence 

when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict.@ Hooper v. State, 214 

S.W.3d 9, 16–17 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). We must presume that the factfinder 

resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the verdict and defer to that 

resolution. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 326, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2793 (1979); 

Isassi v. State, 330 S.W.3d 633, 638 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010).

A person commits the offense of evading arrest or detention if that person 

1) intentionally flees 2) from a person he knows is a peace officer 3) lawfully 

attempting to arrest or detain him. Act of May 29, 1993, 73rd Leg., R.S., ch. 900, 

§ 1.01, sec. 38.04(a), 1993 Tex. Gen. Laws 3586, 3667, amended by Act of May 

24, 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., ch. 839, § 4, 2011 Tex. Sess. Law Serv. 2110, 2111 
6

(West) (to be codified at Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 38.04(a)) (adding “or federal 

special investigator” but making no other substantive change to subsection (a)).

Here, Officer Miller’s testimony and Sanders’s admissions—that Sanders

ran a series of stop signs while pursued by a police car with flashing lights and 

sirens—and Sanders’s additional admissions that he saw the police officer in 

pursuit, knew the person pursuing him was a police officer, and intentionally fled 

from the police officer all support the jury’s conclusion that Sanders indeed 

intentionally fled from Officer Miller while using a vehicle. See id.

Sanders argues that he was justified in evading arrest and detention under 

the necessity defense because he did not want the car impounded as it was his 

girlfriend’s sole means of transportation. The necessity defense justifies conduct 

if:

(1) the actor reasonably believes the conduct is immediately 

necessary to avoid imminent harm;

(2) the desirability and urgency of avoiding the harm clearly 

outweigh, according to ordinary standards of reasonableness, the 

harm sought to be prevented by the law proscribing the conduct; and 

(3) a legislative purpose to exclude the justification claimed for the 

conduct does not otherwise plainly appear.

Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 9.22 (West 2011). Before Sanders told Officer Miller 

that he did not want the car impounded, he also told Officer Miller that he had 

fled because he did not have a driver’s license and because he was intoxicated. 

Even if the jury had been given the necessity defense to consider in the charge—

instead of just considering the defense in light of the evidence and arguments of 
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counsel—viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we hold 

that the jury could have determined beyond a reasonable doubt that none of the

reasons Sanders gave justified his commission of evading arrest or detention 

using a vehicle, and we overrule Sanders’s sole issue.

IV. Conclusion

Having overruled Sanders’s sole issue, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.

PER CURIAM

PANEL: MCCOY, WALKER, and MEIER, JJ.

DO NOT PUBLISH

Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)

DELIVERED: July 5, 2012