Court Opinion

ID: 9690845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:48:12.662126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:05.314149
License: Public Domain

TOM GRAY, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight.
A man enters a house after he has been told to leave. When the woman in the house confronts him in her kitchen she screams, telling him to get out. Instead of leaving, he drops his pants revealing his erect penis. The woman, being in the kitchen, grabs a knife (good for her). Rather than flee, the intruder grabs the end of the knife. The woman twists it in the intruder’s hand, he releases it, pulls up his pants and leaves.
And from these facts a person is not rationally justified in finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the intruder entered the home with the intent to sexually assault the woman? I guess my response to the majority opinion — ‘You have got to be kidding” — makes me irrational, along with 12 jurors and the trial court.
When I line up the same cases the majority does, I see the following:
1. Use of force against victim— grabbed the knife.
2. Failure to immediately retreat even after challenged — unlike Walls.
3. Exposed himself — unlike Baldwin or Hays.
I dissent.1

. The majority fails to comply with Goodman v. State, 66 S.W.3d 283, 286-87 (Tex.Crim.App.2001).