Court Opinion

ID: 9630469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:11:34.019898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:04.135588
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the majority that the evidence is legally insufficient to support the verdicts on Counts I, II, III, IV, V, and VI and that we should reverse the judgments as to those counts and enter an acquittal on each count. I also agree, regarding Counts VII and VIII, that the trial court reversibly erred in admitting the testimony of CPS investigator Dawn Todd and Officer Cory Cook and that we should *786reverse the judgment as to Counts VII and VIII and remand only those two counts to the trial court for a new trial. I disagree, however, that upon retrial of those counts, the State should be forced to rely on an outcry witness whose testimony, by the majority’s own assessment, is insufficient to show penetration.1 Because the majority’s opinion does not further the policy behind the outcry exception, I must respectfully dissent.
Historically, a rape conviction could not be had on the uncorroborated testimony of the adult female complainant unless the complainant had made an outcry within a prescribed time period after the rape.2 As the Reddick court pointed out in 1896,
Mr. Phillips says: “In prosecutions for rape or for assault with intent to commit rape, proof of the fact that the prosecu-trix made complaint soon after the commission of the alleged crime is admissible, and indeed is generally required; but the particulars of the complaint made cannot be admitted in evidence as to the truth of her statement. The particulars stated, as to the violence used or the person who committed the violence, cannot be received. The evidence should be confined to the bare proof of the fact that the complaint of personal violence was made, and that an individual was charged, without mentioning his name[.]”3
In 1990, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals addressed the policy and legislative intent behind article 38.07 of the Code of Criminal Procedure:
In 1975, House Bill 284 created the first version of section 38.07 of the current Code of Criminal Procedure. The “Bill Analysis” prepared for the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence, states that
It is felt that much of the problem associated with the reporting and prosecution of rape is that the present statutes discourage reporting and prosecution because of embarrassment to the victim and the difficulty in obtaining a conviction.
This statement evidences the intent of the Legislature to make rape convictions easier to obtain, not more difficult, a fact this Court recognized in Hernandez [v. State, 651 S.W.2d 746 (Tex.Crim.App. 1983)]. A hearing on House Bill 284, held at a joint session of the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence and the Senate Committee on Jurisprudence (February 18, 1975), also shows the intent of the bill’s drafters to facilitate rape prosecutions. As originally drafted, the bill called for a sexual offense conviction to be supportable on the uncorroborated testimony of the victim, with no outcry requirement whatsoever. However, concerns were voiced at the hearing that the then newly proposed restrictions on the admissibility of the victim’s past sexual history together with the new definition of consent (allowing a woman to withdraw her consent at any time before penetration) and the lack of any corroboration or outcry requirement would go too far in eviscerating defendant’s rights. Presumably in response to these concerns, the bill was amended so as to require corroboration or outcry from victims of sexual offenses without the addition of a proviso exempting minor victims of rape of a child from the new requirements. Despite this omission, we can find no evidence in *787the legislative history from 1975 of any intention to alter the longstanding rule that the testimony of a minor victim who cannot consent to sexual acts requires no corroboration or outcry in order to support a conviction.
Indeed, Texas courts construing the pre-1983 version of 38.07 declined to apply the statute to a prosecution in which consent was not an issue.
However, in spite of this long line of precedent, the legislature acted decisively to change the corroboration requirements for minor victims of sexual assault in 1983. Senate Bill 838 was passed by the sixty-eighth legislature almost simultaneously with this court’s Hernandez decision, and the two branches of government apparently came to different resolutions of the same problem. The legislative amendment to 38.07 clearly expresses the legislature’s intent to shield sexual assault victims under 14 from the normal outcry or corroboration requirements, but to require stricter proof when the sexual assault victim is 14 or older. The language added to Art. 38.07 in 1983 reads:
The requirement that the victim inform another person of an alleged offense does not apply if the victim was younger than 14 years of age at the time of the alleged offense.4
Today, article 38.07 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure provides,
(a) A conviction under Chapter 21, Section 22.011, or Section 22.021, Penal Code, is supportable on the uneorrob-orated testimony of the victim of the sexual offense if the victim informed any person, other than the defendant, of the alleged offense within one year after the date on which the offense is alleged to have occurred. ⅜
(b) The requirement that the victim inform another person of an alleged offense does not apply if at the time of the alleged offense the victim was a person:
(1) 17 years of age or younger;
(2) 65 years of age or older; or
(3) 18 years of age or older who by reason of age or physical or mental disease, defect, or injury was substantially unable to satisfy the person’s need for food, shelter, medical care, or protection from harm.5
Although the outcry/corroboration requirement remains for adults under the age of 65 who make a sexual assault complaint, the law is now gender neutral and follows the longtime Texas rule relieving those younger than eighteen years of age of the outcry/corroboration requirement.6
If minor complainants do make an outcry, however, article 38.072 makes the child’s outcry statement admissible as substantive evidence of the offense.7 The Court of Criminal Appeals has explained,
Under Art. 38.072, by both the terms of the statute and by the legislative history, outcry testimony admitted in compliance with Art. 38.072 is admitted as an exception to the hearsay rule, meaning it is considered substantive evidence, admissible for the truth of the matter asserted in the testimony.8
*788In promoting its policy of making conviction easier, the legislature limited those statements that constitute a 38.072 outcry to those statements that describe the offense charged.9 For an outcry statement to be admissible under article 38.072, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has held that the statement must describe the offense in some discernible manner and must be more than words which generally allude that something in the area of sexual abuse is occurring.10
In his third point, Appellant complains that the trial court erred by admitting the testimony of Valerie Batchelder, the alleged outcry witness, because the State provided insufficient notice of the evidence. Specifically, in relevant part, Appellant complains that the written summary of the outcry statement fails to describe any act for which Appellant was indicted.11 As the Garcia court explained after announcing this rule,
We believe that the statement must be more than words which give a general allusion that something in the area of child abuse was going on. In picking the particular wording of the “first person” requirement, the legislature was obviously striking a balance between the general prohibition against hearsay and the specific societal desire to curb the sexual abuse of children. That balance is the focal point of our analysis. The portion of the statute catering to the hearsay prohibition demands that only the “first person” is allowed to testify. But the societal interest in curbing child abuse would hardly be served if all that “first person” had to testify to was a general allegation from the child that something in the area of child abuse was going on at home. Thus we decline to read the statute as meaning that any statement that arguably relates to what later evolves into an allegation of child abuse against a particular person will satisfy the requisites of Sec. 2(a)(2). The statute demands more than a general allusion of sexual abuse.
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.... In order to be designated as the outcry witness by the trial court, one element that must be clearly shown by the evidence is that the victim described the offense to that witness.12
In Molina v. State,13 a case similar to the one before us, Molina was charged with aggravated sexual assault by penetration. The complainant’s mother entered their apartment and saw her husband’s reflection in a mirror as he was tying the drawstrings of his shorts and threatening the complainant. Suspicious, the mother invited friends over so she could question her daughter regarding what had happened. She was the first adult to whom the complainant spoke about the incident, she spoke to the complainant on the day of the incident, she asked her daughter if the appellant had pulled his pants and underwear down, and the complainant answered “yes” to both questions.14 Nevertheless, the appellate court held that the complainant’s mother was not an outcry witness because “the complainant’s mother did not ask the complainant whether penetration occurred and *789... the complainant did not tell her mother sexual penetration occurred.”15
In the case before us, Batchelder testified that the complainant told her,
• “things aren’t so good at home”;
• that her parents fought sometimes and that sometimes Appellant hit her too hard;
• “sometimes my dad messes with me”;
• that Appellant tickled her and sometimes touched her between her legs with his fingers, and sometimes he used his tongue;
• that she tried to wear zip-up pajamas;
• that her father “mess[ed] with her” most nights;
• that she had not told her mother; and
• that the events occurred while her mother was at a dance class.
The complainant was not asked whether penetration of her sexual organ occurred, nor did she volunteer that it did. Standing alone, her statements do not describe either the alleged offense of aggravated sexual assault by digital penetration or the alleged offense of aggravated sexual assault by oral-genital contaet/penetration in a discernible manner. Consequently, these statements are not more than general allusions that something in the area of sexual abuse occurred.16 Further, to the extent that the statements describe an un-indicted offense, such as simple assault, this court has already held that article 38.072 does not extend “to an outcry of a child respecting a collateral matter or an extraneous offense.”17
While it is not necessary that the outcry describe the offense with the specificity required by an indictment, it must describe the offense. An outcry that “something happened” is not an outcry as contemplated by article 38.072. Consequently, T would hold that the trial court erred in admitting Batchelder’s testimony under article 38.072, sustain Appellant’s third point, and not address the remainder of this point.18
In his fourth point, Appellant argues in relevant part that the trial court erred in admitting the testimony of Dawn Todd regarding the complainant’s prior statements because it was inadmissible impeachment evidence of the complainant. I agree with the majority’s holding that Todd’s testimony was admitted in error to the extent that it was admitted as impeachment evidence, but I disagree with the inescapable conclusion from the majority’s opinion that Todd’s testimony could not be admissible evidence for all purposes on retrial.
Under the outcry exception, only one adult witness can receive an outcry of a single offense.19 In this case, Todd is that witness for both live counts. Todd testified that the complainant “indicated that [Appellant] ... had touched her on her vagina [sic20] with his fingers and with his tongue.” The complainant told her that it happened many times during her mother’s Monday night dance class. Todd also tes*790tified that the complainant had indicated that the abuse had been going on for quite some time and that it had also occurred when the family had lived in Louisiana before moving to Texas. The following exchange took place regarding the location on the complainant’s body of the alleged touching:
Q. When she talked about being touched between her legs, did you ever ask her to clarify and say what she meant by that?
A. I did. She indicated her vagina. And then at one point she was talking about something, and she said — she referred to a body part as her butt. And I asked her to explain to me what her butt was, and she pointed to her genital area. And I said, okay, what is the — we talked about where pee comes out or where poop comes out. And where pee comes out she calls butt, and where poop comes out she called her rear.
Q. And the part where she said her dad touched her, what did she call that?
A. The butt.
Q. Did she ever call it anything else?
A. She called it vagina also.
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Q. Did you ever talk to her about where specifically he had put his finger? Did you talk about, like, inside versus outside?
A. We did. I asked her, and she said it was between the — I don’t know if she said flap parts. I don’t know if she was saying flap or flat parts, but she indicated it was on her vaginal area. We talked about inside-outside, and she, if I remember correctly, said it was inside but not all the way in or made some reference to that.
Q. So in between the flat or flap parts?
A. Right.
As the first adult to whom the complainant made a discernible outcry about the live counts, Todd could have testified in the trial about the complainant’s outcry without limitation under article 38.072 if the other requirements of that statute had been met.21 They were not. There is no indication in the record that the State provided the required notice or summary or that the trial court determined that the outcry to Todd is reliable.22 But I see no reason to bar the State from complying with the statute and introducing Todd’s testimony on retrial if the trial court determines that the outcry to Todd is reliable.23 This possibility upholds the policy behind the enactment of article 38.072 in the first place — curbing the sexual abuse of children in this State.24
Consequently, while I concur in the outcome of the appeal, I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that Batchelder is the proper outcry witness in this case.

. See majority op. at-,-.

. Reddick v. State, 35 Tex.Crim. 463, 34 S.W. 274, 275-76 (1896).

.Id. at 274 (citations omitted).

. Scoggan v. State, 799 S.W.2d 679, 682-83 (Tex.Crim.App.1990) (citations omitted).

. TexCode Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.07 (Vernon 2005).

. See Scoggan, 799 S.W.2d at 681 (citing Hindman v. State, 152 Tex.Crim. 75, 211 S.W.2d 182 (1948) for the typical analysis).

. TexCode Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.072 (Vernon 2005).

. Rodriguez v. State, 819 S.W.2d 871, 873 (Tex.Crim.App.1991).

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.072, § 2(a).

. Garcia v. State, 792 S.W.2d 88, 91 (Tex. Crim.App.1990).

. See TexCode Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.072, § 2(a).

. Garcia, 792 S.W.2d at 91.

. 971 S.W.2d 676 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 1998, pet. ref'd).

.Id. at 682-83.

. Mat 683.

. See id.

. Beckley v. State, 827 S.W.2d 74, 78-79 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1992, no pet.) (op. on reh’g).

. See Tex.R.App. P. 47.1.

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.072, § 2(a)(2).

. See Tyler v. State, 950 S.W.2d 787, 789 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1997, no pet.) ("We would point out ... that the vagina is an internal organ. It is a canal that leads from the uterus of a female mammal to the external orifice of the genital canal.”).

. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.072, § 2(b).

. See id.

. See id.

. Garcia, 792 S.W.2d at 91.