1 In The 

### Court of Appeals Ninth District of Texas at Beaumont

____________________ NO. 09
- 14
- 00404
- C V



### ____________________

IN RE COMMITMENT OF RONALD GENE WATTS

________________________________________________________________________ On Appeal from the 435th District Court Montgomery County, Texas Trial Cause No. 14
- 03
- 03233 CV

________________________________________________________________________ MEMORANDUM OPINION The State of Texas filed a petition to commit Ronald Gene Watts (Watts) as a sexually violent predator. See Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §§ 841.001

- .151 (West 2010 & Supp. 2014) (SVP statute). A jury found appellant to be a sexually violent predator, and the trial court rendered a final judgment and an order of civil commitment. Watts appeals from the final judgment and challenges the legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence to support a finding that he suffers from a behavioral abnormality. We affir m.2 U NDERLYING F ACTS At the time of trial, Watts was fifty

- eight years old, and he was serving two
concurrent fifteen

- year sentence s for a ggravated s exual a ssault of a c hild and
f

ailure to r egister as a s ex o ffender. Watts was previously convicted of r ape ,

s olicitation of a m inor, i ndecency with a c hild by e xposure, and three counts of
i ndece ncy with a c hild by c ontact. His victims’ ages were six , eight, nine, and thirteen , and included child ren that were not related to him, two of his own children, a sister

- in

- law, a niece, and a granddaughter. Watts testified at trial that he believes he has sexually molested eight children, and he admit ted that he is a sex offender. Watts participated in two prior sex o ffender treatment programs after earlier offenses, but he reo ffended after receiving treatment. During his current incarceration, Watts was enrolled in an eighteen

- month sex offender treatment program (SOTP progra m). In his responses to Requests for Admiss ion, he admitted receiving major disciplinaries, and at least four minor disciplinaries, while in prison. In 1973, Watts testified that he was seventeen years old when he raped an eight

- year - old girl. Watts had been watching girls walk to and from school and planning to rape one of them, and he selected the eight

- year - old girl because she

was “ walking alone and she was vulnerable. ” Watts received a ten

- year probated3 sentence for the rape of the eight year old, and Watts entered into a four to six month sex offender treatment program, where he admits he learned that it was wrong for him to have sexual interest in children and that his actions hurt his victim

. In 1974, while he was on probation for rape, Watts offered a little girl money to lift up her blouse so he could see how she had developed and how she compared to his first victim. Watts testified that i n 1979 , he called his thirteen

year - old sister

- in

- law into t he bathroom and exposed himself to her. At trial, Watts admitted that he had also fondled the child’s breasts

. Watts was then convicted of indecency with a child by exposure and he again received a ten

- year probated sentence for that offense. While Watts was on probation for the offense of indecency by exposure, Watts committed another offense against an eight

- year - o ld girl that he met at the bowling alley. On that occasion, Watts offered the eight

- year - old child money to lift up her shirt. Watts admitted that at the time he had been having sexual thoughts about young girls, including thoughts about friends of his own daughter

. The court convicted Watts of solicitation of a child, revoked his probation , and sentenced
Watts to seven years in prison.4 Watts received early parole from the solicitation offense , and as part of his release he was ordered to attend sex offender treatment. During his treatment , he again learned about how much pain he was causing and that it was wrong for him to touch young gi rls. While he was on parole, Watts sexually offended against his eight

- and nine

- year - old daughters and against his six

- year - old niece on several occasions. For his offenses against his own children and his niece , Watts was convicted in 1987 of indecency wi th a child , and he received a ten

- year sentence. After being released from the 1987 indecency charges, i n 2002 Watts was arrested for failure to register as a sex offender. He had been driving to a local pool where he was playing with the children. The po ol management asked him to leave , and a couple of days later he went to another pool and began playing games with the children at that pool. He knew that because he was a sex offender it was a bad idea for him to be playing games with children at the pools , but he did it anyway.
Watts was arrested for failure to register as a sex offender after he left one of the pools

. While he was out on bond for the failure to register as a sex offender , Watts then committed an aggravated sexual assault against his eight

- year - old granddaughter. Watts was convicted of the aggravated sexual assault and the failure to register as a sex offender, and he was returned to prison on a fifteen

- year
sentence.5 Watts agreed that he is sexually attracted to young girls, that he still has sexual thoughts about his victims, and that he becomes sexually aroused by thoughts of his victims. Watts further testified as follows : [State’s Counsel:] And you believe that you need to be in sex offender treatment because your sex offending “ has to stop. ” Do you recall making that statement? [Watts:] Yes. [State’s Counsel:] Okay. You would agree that being around any children is a high

- risk situation for you? [Watts:] If

-- any children that are

-- that are alone. [State’s Counsel:] Okay. And that’ s always been a high

- risk situation for you. Correct? [Watts:] Yes. [State’s Counsel:] Okay. But that is a situation you have not been able to avoid. Correct? [Watts:] Yes. Nevertheless, Watts testified that his current SOTP treatment program is different than his earlier two programs, that he has identified most of the things that contribute to the cycle of his sexual offending , that he feels remorse for his victims, and that he knows he has triggering events such as drinkin g excessively, reading pornography, going to public pools, seeing girls in bikinis, working “too hard[,]” his first wife not taking care of the children, and being under stress.6 Dr. David Self, a board

- certified psychiatrist , testified on behalf of the S tate. Self has been in practice since 1988, and he was previously employed as the Clinical Director at Rusk State Hospital. Self performed a forensic psychiat ric review of Watts, which Self explained means he brought “the knowledge base and the expertise o f psychiatry to a question of law in order to assist the trier of fact, the jury, in arriving at an answer to a question.” Dr. Self examined and evaluated Watts to determine whether Watts suffers from a behavioral abnormality. According to Dr. Self, a “be havioral abnormality” is a term that is defined in the Health and Safety Code, Chapter 841. Self paraphrased and explained to the jury that it includes a congenital or acquired co ndition that a person has :

a condition that by affecting a person ’ s volitional, which means their will, their ability to control their behavior or emotional capacities, the ability to control their emotional states, makes

-- predisposes them to commit acts of sexual violence to the extent that they become a menace to the h ealth and safety of another person.
Dr. Self has evaluated people for behavioral abnormalities since 2009, and he explained to the jury that his methodology is something he calls “ structured clinical judgment, ” which includes reviewing records and docume ntation, interviewing the person, reviewing test scores, and performing an evaluation. Self indicated that his methodology is the type used and relied on by others in his field performing behavioral abnormality evaluations. Self conducted an interview of7 W atts . The interview was performed in accordance with Self’s training as a psychiatrist and in accordance with the accepted standards in the field of forensic psychiatry. Self also described the records he reviewed and relied on for this case, as part of his standard methodology, which are the same type of records typically reviewed and relied upon in behavioral abnormality evaluations. Dr. Self diagnosed Watts with pedophilia and pedophilic disorder.
A ccording to Self , pedophilia persists through the entire life span, “ stronger than any other disorder of this sort.” Dr. Self reached the professional opinion, based upon his education, training, and experience and the methodology he used to evaluate Watts that Watts “has the behavioral abnormality described in Chapter
841.” Dr. Self explained that risk factors are “ things that have been found through empirical research to be associated with increased risk of re

- offense.” The first broad category of risk factors Self identified for Watts include s Watts’s sexual criminal history

. Watts has offended against prepubescent girls. While , according to Dr. Self, this puts Watts at less risk than persons who o ffend against little boys, Watts has offended against both famil y members and strangers . The fact Watts has offended against strangers places Watts at a higher risk to reoffend than someone who may only have offend ed against family members

. Watts has also displayed8 some child

- hunting behaviors, which also increase his risk. Watts’ s risk is further increased by the young age at which he started offending. The next risk category is sexual deviance. Watts has a sexual deviance in that he has committed sexual offenses against young children, which Dr. Self diagnosed as ped ophilic disorder. Watts also has “ attitudes tolerant of sexual assault .”
A nother risk category for Self addressed for Watts pertains to “ intimacy deficits. ” Watts has been married twice, and Watts describes himself as “feeling inadequate, rejected by the world of adult sexuality.” Dr. Self testified that Watts

“ identifies with children to an extent that’s really troublesome.” Self explained that
Watts ’ s belief that he can “control these children is very attractive and central to [Watts] . . . he more emotionally identifies with children than he does with adults. ”
A ccording to Dr. Self, another additional broad category or risk for Watts’s would be Watts’s response to treatment and supervision. Watts has had two rounds of sex offender treatment, and Watts reoffended “during the second outpatient
treatment.” Self testified that d uring Watts’s second outpatient treatment Watts was also reading child porn novels while he was going to treatment and “ was sexually offending against those three little girls for the months before the day they filed9 [charges] on him . . . s o we’ve got him flagrantly sex offending while he’s in
treatment.” Finally , Dr. Self looked at whether Watts had violations of his con ditional release, while on probation, parole , or bond. According to Dr. Self, “[Watts] has been given a lot of chances on probation and parole and he has botched all those chances by reoffending

. ” Self explained that w hen a person “ can’t behave in that cir cumstance, you have a serious difficulty controlling your behavior , serious difficulty

. ”
Watts ’s age, fifty

- eight years old , along with the fact he is in s ex o ffende r
tr eatment at the p enitentiary , a ccording to Dr. Self, would be positive factors or weigh in his favor. However, due to the fact that Watts has “failed miserably” the sex offender treatment twice before by re

- offending , Dr. Self is not very hopeful that the current treatment will be successful.
L EGAL AND F ACTUAL S UFFICIENCY Watts contends the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to support the jury’s verdict because the State failed to present evidence demonstrating that
Watts suffers from a behavioral abnormality. Watts specifically argues that the evidence is legally insufficient to support a finding that he suffers from a behavioral abnormality because Dr. Self did not have any basis for his opinion10 other than his own conclusory testimony in that he never testified what research he relied upon for his testimony, and therefore Watts argues that Dr. Self’s opinion that Watts suffers from a behavioral abnormality is wholly conclusory, speculative, and legally insufficient. Watts also argues that the evidence is factually in sufficient because Dr. Self provided no basis other than his own “ ipse dixit

. ” Watts also argues that the great weight and preponderance of the evidence supports a finding that he has learned to control his behavior by learning and internalizing concepts
f

rom his current sex offender treatment program, and that the weak evidence against him in this case presents a risk of injustice strong enough to compel a new trial. Under a legal sufficiency review, we assess all the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether a rational trier of fact could find, beyond a reasonable doubt, the elements required for commitment under the SVP
statute. In re Commitment of Mullens , 92 S.W.3d 881, 885 (Tex. App.

— Beaumont 2002, pet. denied). It is th e factfinder’s responsibility to fairly resolve conflicts in the testimony, weigh the evidence, and draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. Id. at 887. Under a factual sufficiency review in an SVP commitment proceeding, we weigh all the evidence to determine “whether a verdict that is supported by legally sufficient evidence nevertheless reflects a risk11 of injustice that would compel ordering a new trial.” In re Commitment of Day , 342 S.W.3d 193, 213 (Tex. App.

— Beaumont 2011, pet. den ied). In an SVP civil commitment case, the State must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a person is a sexually violent predator. Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 841.062(a) (West 2010). A person is a “sexually violent predator” if he is a repeat sexu ally violent offender and suffers from a behavioral abnormality that makes him likely to engage in a predatory act of sexual violence. Id. § 841.003(a) (West Supp. 2014). A “behavioral abnormality” is “a congenital or acquired condition that, by affecting a person’s emotional or volitional capacity, predisposes the person to commit a sexually violent offense, to the extent that the person becomes a menace to the health and safety of another person.” Id. § 841.002(2) (West Supp. 2014). “A condition which aff ects either emotional capacity or volitional capacity to the extent a person is predisposed to threaten the health and safety of others with acts of sexual violence is an abnormality which causes serious difficulty in behavior control.” In re Commitment of Almaguer , 117 S.W.3d 500, 506 (Tex. App.

— Beaumont 2003, pet. denied). During trial, the jury heard Watt s ’s testimony that he committed his first sexual offense when he was seventeen years old. His victim was an eight

- year - old girl that he had been observ ing as she walked to school. Watts was convicted in12 2003 for aggravated sexual assault of a child. Furthermore, Dr. Self , a medical doctor, board certified in general psychiatry, testified that Watts has a behavioral abnormality that makes him likely to engage in a predatory act of sexual violence. Self testified that Watts has engaged in sexually deviant acts and suffers from pedophilia, a chronic condition. Watts has shown that, despite repeated cha nces and participation in different sex offender treatment programs, he cannot control his behavior. Dr. Self explained that the following factors increase Watts ’s risk of re

offense: his early age of the onset of sexual offending , his antisocial features , the fact that when he was young he offended while on probation, the number of victims and the fact that Watts had multiple acts with at least two of the victims, the age of the victims, the aggressive nature of his acts, his history of unstable relations hips, his need for further treatment, and his re - offense even while he was in the sex offender treatment program and while on parole or probation for his earlier offenses

. Dr. Self explained that he reviewed the actuarial testing referenced in the multidis ciplinary team report prepared for the case. Watts scored a “ [s]ix ” on the Static

- 99R, which indicated a “ high” risk of reoffending. On appeal, Watts argues Dr. Self’s testimony has no stated basis in his field and it is too conclusory to support the jury’ s verdict. We disagree. Dr. Self is board certified in general13 psychiatry. In reaching his conclusions, Dr. Self testified that he applied training and experience related to evaluating whether a person has a behavioral abnormality, as well as the informati on he reviewed in Watts ’s ca s e in forming his opinions. The testimony shows that Dr. Self interviewed Watts , reviewed records that are relevant to Watts ’s criminal history, and he reviewed the details of Watts ’s offenses involving sexually violent crimes. The records Dr. Self reviewed are the type of records that experts in Self’s fiel d rely on in forming opinions. Self also explained that he performed his assessment of Watts i n a manner that is consistent with the accepted standards in the field of forensic psychiatry. After Dr. Self explained his methodology and how he applied that methodology to Watts , the jury heard that in his professional opinion Watts has a behavioral abnormality that makes Watts likely to e ngage in predatory acts of sexual violence. The jury heard evidence of Watts ’s risk factors, sexual offenses, and diagnoses. The jury heard Watts ’s testimony and admissions and Dr. Self’s testimony that there is a significant risk that Watts will reoffend. We conclude that Dr. Self’s testimony was not baseless nor was it too conclusory to support a finding that Watts suffers from a behavioral abnormality.
Watts also argues that Dr. Self failed to demonstrate that Watts is likely to reoffend sexually. Accord ing to Watts , Self failed to cite the specific research14 supporting the risk factors he considered. The record indicates that Dr. Self explained to the jury that pedophilia is a chronic condition, he discussed Watts ’s risk factors for reoffending, and he st ated that, based on his experience and training, Watts suffers from a behavioral abnormality and that he has a serious difficulty controlling his behavior. Dr. Self’s testimony and conclusions represent “a reasoned judgment based upon established research and techniques for his profession and [were] not the mere ipse dixit of a credentialed witness.” Day , 342 S.W.3d at 206. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we conclude that a rational jury could have found, beyond a reasonabl e doubt, that Watts is a sexually violent predator , and the evidence is legally sufficient to support the jury’s finding

. See Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 841.062(a); see also Kansas v.
Crane , 534 U.S. 407, 413 (2002); Mullens , 92 S.W.3d at 885. On this record, the evidence allowed the jury to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to determine ultimate issues and to resolve conflicts and contradiction sin the evidence by believing all, part or none of the testimony. See In re Commitment of
B urnett , No. 09

- 09

- 00009

- CV, 2009 Tex. App. LEXIS 9930, at *13 (Tex. App.

— Beaumont Dec. 31, 2009, no pet.) (mem. op.); In re Commitment of Grinstead , N o . 09

- 07

- 00412

- CV, 2009 Tex. App. LEXIS 228, at *20 (T e x. App.

— Beaumont Jan.15 15, 2009, no pet.) (mem. op.) . We further conclude that, as sole judge of the weight and credibility of the evidence, the jury could reasonably conclude that Watts suffers from a behavioral abnormality that makes him likely to engage in a predatory act of sexual violence. See In re Co mmitment of Muzz y , No. 09

- 13

- 00496

- CV, 2014 Te x. App. LEXIS 4750, a t *8 (Te x. A pp.

— Beaumont May 1, 2014, pet denied) (mem. op.); see also Mullens , 92 S.W.3d at 887 . Based on the jury’s findings, the jury implicitly determined that Watts has serious difficu lty controlling his behavior and is likely to commit predatory acts of sexual violence directed toward individuals for the primary purpose of victimization. See Muzzy , 2014 Te x. A pp. LEXIS 4750, at **8

- 9. Th e jury could infer serious difficu lty controlling behavior based not only on the expert’s testimony, but also on Watt s ’s past behavior and testimony. See id. Weighing all of the evidence, we also conclude the verdict does not reflect a risk of injustice that compels ordering a new trial. See Day , 342 S.W .3d at 213. We overrule both issues raised by Watts , and w e affirm the trial court’s judgment.
AFFIRMED.

_________________________ LEANNE JOHNSON Justice16 Submitted on March 26, 2015 Opinion Delivered August 13, 2015 Before McKeithen, C.J., Kreger and Johnson, JJ.