Court Opinion

ID: 9635190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:40:52.686931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:21.066142
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Justice CASTILLO.
I concur in the result and agree that the analytical construct defined by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in reviewing legal-and factual-sufficiency challenges in jury trials applies equally to nonjury trials. See Malik v. State, 953 S.W.2d 234, 240 (Tex.Crim.App.1997). I disagree that Ma-lik mandates grafting the language “hypothetically correct jury charge” into nonjury sufficiency analyses. Mechanical repetí*275tion of the term has no place in the context of a bench trial.
The court of criminal appeals coined the term “hypothetically correct jury charge” as shorthand for Malik’s cure for a specific ill: a defendant’s acquittal on sufficiency grounds for charge error. See id. (“Moreover, the standard we formulate today ensures that a judgment of acquittal is reserved for those situations in which there is an actual failure in the State’s proof of the crime rather than a mere error in the jury charge submitted.”). The mischief began, not with the standard announced in Malik, but with one sentence:
Hence, sufficiency of the evidence should be measured by the elements of the offense as defined by the hypothetically correct jury charge for the case. Such a charge would be one that accurately sets out the law, is authorized by the indictment, does not unnecessarily increase the State’s burden of proof or unnecessarily restrict the State’s theories of liability, and adequately describes the particular offense for which the defendant was tried. This standard can uniformly be applied to all trials, whether to the bench or to the jury, whether or not the indictment is facially complete, and regardless of the specific wording of the jury charge actually given.
Id. (emphasis added) (footnote omitted). This single statement should not be read in a vacuum. After Malik, the court of criminal appeals refined what it meant by the term “authorized by the indictment.” Curry v. State, 30 S.W.3d 394, 404 (Tex.Crim.App.2000). Curry held that “authorized by the indictment” means “that a sufficiency review must encompass ‘the statutory elements of the offense ... as modified by the charging instrument.’ ” Fuller v. State, 73 S.W.3d 250, 255 (Tex.Crim.App.2002) (Keller, P.J., concurring) (quoting Curry, 30 S.W.3d at 404).
I conclude that in jury and nonjury cases alike, we measure the sufficiency of the evidence against the statutory elements of the offense as modified by the charging instrument. See Curry, 30 S.W.3d at 404. When reviewing the evidence presented to a jury, we refer to this analytical construct as a “hypothetically correct jury charge.” In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence presented in a nonjury trial, however, I would not use the term “hypothetically correct jury charge.” The reference is unnecessary, given the fact that there is no jury charge in the case, hypothetical or otherwise. It would make as much sense to refer to the fact finder in a nonjury trial as the jury. The role is the same, but the name is different. Yet, the majority does not refer to a jury anywhere in this opinion except in the sufficiency analysis. I do not believe Ma-lik mandates reference to a jury in the sufficiency analysis, either.
Accordingly, I concur in the result in this case because my analysis is the same as the majority’s; only my use of language differs. I do not read Malik and Curry as mandating use of the term “hypothetically correct jury charge” in nonjury cases, only the analysis described by the two cases. See Westfall v. State, 970 S.W.2d 590, 595 (Tex.App.-Waco 1998, pet. ref'd) (“For the time being, we do not presume that this ‘hypothetically correct jury charge’ is applicable in bench trials.”). Thus, my sufficiency review in this case would measure the evidence against the statutory elements of the offense as modified by the charging instrument, not against a “hypothetically correct jury charge.”