Court Opinion

ID: 9630796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:20:55.703736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:43.854049
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
I write separately because this case is more difficult than it first appears. The sole issue is whether the trial court prop*834erly permitted the jury to convict Appellant of the unindicted offense of reckless injury to a child. The conviction is proper only if the jury charge was proper. The standard for determining when an instruction on a lesser included offense is proper is the same whether the instruction is requested by the State or by the defense.1
A person commits the offense of injury to a child if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence by act, or intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly by omission, causes bodily injury to a child.2 The indictment in this case charged that Appellant intentionally and knowingly caused bodily injury to the child “by using her hand to pinch and mash the face of’ the child.
Bodily injury means “physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition.” 3 This definition describes the three conditions that constitute bodily injury in the disjunctive. That is, if the actor causes physical pain, it is not necessary that he also cause impairment of the child’s physical condition. Similarly, if the actor causes impairment of the child’s physical condition, he is not required to cause physical pain as well.
The State’s theory of the case was that Appellant wanted to cover up bite marks on the child’s face, so she pinched or mashed the child’s face at the site of the bite marks to create a bruise that would hide the bite. The majority appears to say that although Appellant intended to cause a bruise to cover the bite mark, she assumed and consciously disregarded the risk that pain would occur. Therefore, the majority concludes, the instruction on reckless injury to a child was proper.
If pain were the only measure of bodily injury, the majority would be correct. But pain is only one of three independent measures of bodily injury. Causing the bruise is also a manner of causing bodily injury. A bruise “is a traumatic injury of the soft tissues which results in breakage of the local capillaries and leakage of red blood cells.”4 A person who causes a bruise causes physical impairment by causing the local capillaries to break, allowing red blood cells to leak into the surrounding tissue.
The State’s theory was that Appellant pinched or mashed the child’s cheek in order to cause a bruise, thereby obscuring the bite or causing the bite marks to “run together.” That is, the State’s theory was that Appellant intended to cause bodily injury, to wit, a bruise. I have examined State’s Exhibits 3 through 16, the photographs of the child’s cheek. The photographs show a bruise on top of the bite marks on the child’s cheek but no bruise around the older bite mark on the child’s arm.
For a party to be entitled to a charge on the lesser included offense of reckless injury to a child, there must be some evidence that, if guilty, Appellant is guilty only of the lesser included offense.5 In this case, *835there must be some evidence that Appellant did not intend to cause a bruise and did not intend to cause pain. If, as the State contended, Appellant intended to cause a bruise, Appellant intended to cause bodily injury. The majority does not direct us to any portion of the record that constitutes evidence that Appellant did not intend to cause a bruise, leaving as the only evidence of bodily injury the infliction of pain.
The majority appears to acknowledge that Appellant intended to cause a bruise because “it was [Appellant’s] intention to attempt to avoid civil litigation by concealing the bite wound that [the child] had already sustained.”6 The majority believes that Appellant acted recklessly
by consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that pain would result to [the child] from her pinching or rubbing and that the risk of inflicting pain on [the child] was of such a nature that disregarding it was a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor’s standpoint.7
If, as the majority appears to conclude, Appellant intended to cause the bruise and was reckless only about causing pain, then the majority is incorrect in holding that there is evidence that Appellant is guilty only of the lesser offense, a holding that is necessary to justify the charge. Indeed, the majority’s apparent conclusion that Appellant intended to cause the bruise and was reckless about causing pain seems to suggest that Appellant is guilty of injury to a child both by intentionally causing physical impairment (that is, the bruise) and by recklessly causing physical pain.
If there is not some evidence that Appellant, if guilty, is guilty only of the lesser included offense of recklessly causing injury to the child, then the trial court erred by permitting the jury to convict of the lesser offense, especially in light of Appellant’s objection to the jury charge.
Because the majority appears to hold that a person inflicts bodily injury only by causing pain and disregards the remainder of the statute describing bodily injury as illness or any impairment of physical condition, I must respectfully dissent.

. Arevalo v. State, 943 S.W.2d 887, 889-90 (Tex.Crim.App.1997).

. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.04 (Vernon Supp. 2006).

. Id. § 1.07(a)(8) (Vernon 2003).

. MedTerms Medical Dictionary, http://www. medterms .com/script/main /art. asp? article-key=2541 (last visited August 23, 2007).

. See Hall v. State, 225 S.W.3d 524, 536 (Tex.Crim.App.2007); Salinas v. State, 163 S.W.3d 734, 741 (Tex.Crim.App.2005); Rousseau v. State, 855 S.W.2d 666, 672-73 (Tex.Crim.App.), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 919, 114 S.Ct. 313, 126 L.Ed.2d 260 (1993).

. Majority op. at 883.

. Id. at 883.