Court Opinion

ID: 9367542
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-01 07:10:48.38673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:01.030047
License: Public Domain

AFFIRM AS MODIFIED; Opinion Filed January 30, 2023

                                    S  In The
                            Court of Appeals
                     Fifth District of Texas at Dallas
                                 No. 05-22-00370-CR

                  GERALD ALZONO JACKSON, Appellant
                                V.
                    THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

               On Appeal from the 195th Judicial District Court
                            Dallas County, Texas
                    Trial Court Cause No. F16-76031-N

                        MEMORANDUM OPINION
              Before Justices Partida-Kipness, Nowell, and Kennedy
                           Opinion by Justice Kennedy
      Gerald Jackson appeals his conviction for sexual assault of a child. In four

issues, appellant challenges the trial judge’s decision to admit evidence of

appellant’s prior conviction over his objection and further urges the judge’s

reasoning for that decision should be required to be articulated in order to permit

meaningful appellate review of same. The State argues in a cross-issue that the

judgment should be modified to reflect the correct degree of the offense. We affirm

as modified. Because all issues are settled in law, we issue this memorandum

opinion. TEX. R. APP. P. 47.4.
                                  BACKGROUND

      Appellant dated the mother of M.B. from the time M.B. was approximately

nine or ten years old until M.B. was approximately fifteen or sixteen years old.

Sometime after he and M.B.’s mother began dating, appellant moved in with M.B.,

his mother, and his younger brother. M.B.’s mother worked at night and slept during

the day, and appellant would be around the home during the day. When M.B. was

ten or eleven years old, appellant began brushing up against him and touching his

hip. Appellant soon thereafter escalated the behavior by telling M.B. to take off his

clothes and touching M.B. on his chest and butt. Appellant then further escalated

the behavior to pleasuring himself in front of M.B., paying M.B. to take off his

clothes and rub baby oil on himself, requiring M.B. to orally pleasure him, rubbing

baby oil on himself and M.B., and penetrating M.B. when he was twelve or thirteen

years old and again when M.B. was fourteen or fifteen years old. Appellant told

M.B. not to tell anyone about the abuse.

      When he was thirteen or fourteen years old, M.B. began staying the night at

his mother’s sister’s home, at first on the weekends and later “every chance I get.”

When he was thirteen or fourteen years old, M.B. told his aunt about what appellant

had done. M.B.’s aunt was the first adult he spoke to about appellant’s abuse

because he knew she had experienced trauma in her past and could therefore relate

to him and understand him. M.B.’s aunt called M.B.’s mother who then reported

appellant’s abuse of M.B. to the police and took M.B. for a forensic interview.

                                        –2–
      In 2018, a grand jury indicted appellant for the offense of sexual assault of a

child, enhanced with a prior conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a child. The

State filed a notice of intent to enhance the punishment range, seeking an automatic

life sentence pursuant to section 12.42(c)(2) of the penal code. See TEX. PENAL

CODE § 12.42(c)(2). Appellant pleaded not guilty to the charged offense and not true

to the enhancement paragraph, and the case proceeded to trial before a jury which

found appellant guilty of the charged offense and the enhancement paragraph to be

true. The trial judge pronounced appellant’s sentence of confinement for life.

                                     DISCUSSION

I.    Trial Judge Did Not Err by Admitting Prior Conviction Evidence

      In his first issue, appellant argues the trial court erred by admitting evidence

of his prior conviction for aggravated sexual assault of child over his objection that

the probative value of the evidence was substantially outweighed by the danger of

unfair prejudice.

      We review a trial judge’s decision to admit or exclude evidence under

an abuse of discretion standard. Henley v. State, 493 S.W.3d 77, 82–83 (Tex. Crim.

App. 2016). A trial judge abuses her discretion when her decision falls outside the

zone of reasonable disagreement. Id. Before a reviewing court may reverse the trial

court’s decision, “it must find the trial court’s ruling was so clearly wrong as to lie

outside the zone within which reasonable people might disagree.” Id.

                                         –3–
      Finding a piece of evidence to be relevant is the first step in a trial court

judge’s determination of whether the evidence should be admitted before the jury.

See Henley, 493 S.W.3d at 83. Relevant evidence is evidence having any tendency

to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the

action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. See id.

(citing TEX. R. EVID. 401). But, even if evidence is relevant, it may be properly

excluded under Rule 403, which permits a trial judge to exclude relevant evidence

“if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the

following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay,

or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.” See TEX. R. EVID. 403. To be clear,

Rule 403 does not exclude all prejudicial evidence and instead focuses only on the

danger of “unfair” prejudice. See State v. Mechler, 153 S.W.3d 435, 440 (Tex. Crim.

App. 2005).

      In determining whether it was error to admit the evidence under Rule 403, we

balance the claimed probative force of the proffered evidence along with the

proponent’s asserted need for that evidence against (1) any tendency of the evidence

to suggest that the case would be decided on an improper basis; (2) any tendency of

the evidence to confuse or distract the jury from the main issues; (3) any tendency

of the evidence to be given undue weight by a jury that has not been equipped to

evaluate the probative force of the evidence; and (4) the likelihood that presentation

                                         –4–
of the evidence will consume an inordinate amount of time or merely repeat evidence

already admitted. See Henley, 493 S.W.3d at 93.

        At trial, the State offered evidence that a judgment of conviction had been

entered against appellant on July 24, 1994, for the offense of aggravated sexual

assault of a child. Defense counsel objected:

       [DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Judge, I object under [Rule] 403 . . . .1 At this
       point, this is not a properly certified document since three pages have
       been removed from the document as it was previously certified.

       THE COURT: Let the record reflect that the Court removed those
       documents and your objections are overruled. It is admitted.

Appellant urges that the evidence of appellant’s prior conviction was not probative

because the offense was against a victim of a different age and gender than M.B.,

was committed years before the current offense, and involved the penetration of a

different part of the victim’s body. He further urges that the evidence was less likely

to establish appellant’s guilt of committing the offense than it was to be seen by the

jurors as proof appellant was a criminal or bad person in general, an improper basis

for consideration. See Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 180–81 (1997)

(holding improper grounds “certainly include . . . generalizing a defendant’s earlier

bad act into bad character and taking that as raising the odds that he did the later bad

act now charged”); see also TEX. R. EVID. 404(b).

   1
      Defense counsel also objected Rule 608 of the rules of evidence and that the evidence was hearsay,
but appellant does not reurge those bases on appeal.
                                                 –5–
      We address the factors involved in the Rule 403 balancing test in turn. First,

we consider the claimed probative force of the proffered evidence along with the

proponent’s asserted need for that evidence. The State had no DNA evidence and

offered testimony from a pediatrician specializing in child abuse cases that, based

on her examination of his medical records, M.B. was examined “too late” after the

reported abuse to collect DNA evidence. Consequently, the State’s case against

appellant largely relied on testimony from M.B. Additionally, appellant testified

and denied the allegations thereby challenging M.B.’s credibility. The court of

criminal appeals has warned that excluding evidence under rule 403 in “he said, she

said cases” should be done “sparingly.” See Woodland v. State, No. 05-19-00174-

CR, 2020 WL 1862126, at *3 (Tex. App.—Dallas Apr. 14, 2020, no pet.) (mem. op.,

not designated for publication) (citing Hammer v. State, 296 S.W.3d 555, 561–62

(Tex. Crim. App. 2009) (discussing rule 403 generally before specifically reviewing

admission of prior false accusation evidence)). Appellant’s prior conviction made it

less probable that M.B. was lying because—despite the disparities appellant urges—

the offenses had factual similarities. Both involved the sexual assault of a child with

whom appellant was living and thus the prior conviction was probative to show

appellant’s propensity to sexually assault children living with him. Therefore, we

conclude the trial court could have found the probative force and the State’s need

for the evidence was great and weighed in favor of its admission.

                                         –6–
      Weighing the foregoing against the remaining factors of the requisite

balancing test, we conclude the trial court did not err. As the State concedes,

sexually related misconduct and misconduct involving children are inherently

inflammatory, which would mean this evidence had at least some tendency to

suggest that the case would be decided on an improper basis. See Montgomery v.

State, 810 S.W.2d 372, 397 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990) (en banc). Further, the prior

conviction involved a child under the age of five years, and M.B. testified appellant

began abusing him when he was approximately ten or eleven years old, which

arguably makes the offense in the prior conviction one of a more serious nature than

the charged offense. However, the other remaining factors weigh against exclusion

of this evidence. The trial court instructed the jury regarding the proper use of the

prior conviction as an extraneous offense, and we presume the jury followed those

instructions. See Beltran De La Torre v. State, 583 S.W.3d 613, 620 (Tex. Crim.

App. 2019). Moreover, nothing in the record suggests the evidence of appellant’s

prior conviction was likely to confuse or distract the jury from the main issues in the

case, that it was likely to be given undue weight, or that the jury was ill-equipped to

evaluate its probative force. Finally, the evidence itself was a certified judgment and

testimony regarding the expert witness’s experience and the process by which he

established appellant’s fingerprints matched those of the prior conviction, the

introduction of which did not take an inordinate amount of time.

                                         –7–
        We conclude the trial judge did not err by admitting the evidence of

appellant’s prior conviction. Accordingly, we overrule appellant’s first issue.

II.     Remaining Issues

        Appellant’s remaining three issues all relate to his first. In his second issue,

appellant urges the trial court erred by failing to conduct a balancing test weighing

the potential probative value of the proffered evidence against the potential unfair

prejudice that may result from admission of the evidence before the jury. In his third

issue, appellant challenges binding precedent, which presumes a trial court

conducted the requisite balancing test without requiring the record evidence as

much, as essentially eliminating effective appellate review. In his fourth and final

issue, he argues that without any explicit application of the balancing test in the

record, there can be no meaningful appellate review, and thus the case must be

abated and remanded to the trial court for findings regarding the requisite balancing

test.

        The court of criminal appeals has explicitly held that “a judge is presumed to

engage in the required balancing test once Rule 403 is invoked” and further explicitly

“refuse[d] to hold that silence of the record implies otherwise.” See Williams v.

State, 958 S.W.2d 186, 195–96 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997) (en banc). As we are bound

by the holdings of the higher court, we overrule appellant’s second and third issues.

        In his fourth issue, appellant argues that the trial judge’s alleged error in not

conducting a Rule 403 balancing test on the record is a remediable error requiring

                                           –8–
abatement pursuant to appellate rule 44.4.2 See TEX. R. App. P. 44.4. However,

because we have overruled his second and third issue, we need not address

appellant’s fourth issue. See TEX. R. App. P. 44.1.

                               MODIFICATION OF THE JUDGMENT

       In a single cross-issue, the State requests the judgment be modified to reflect

that appellant was convicted of a second-degree felony instead of a first-degree

felony. The record reflects appellant was charged with and convicted of sexual

assault of a child, a second-degree felony and that the judgment identifies the offense

as a first-degree felony. See TEX. PENAL CODE § 22.011.

       We may modify a trial court’s written judgment if the necessary information

to do so is contained in the record. TEX. R. APP. P. 43.2(b); Bigley v. State, 865

S.W.2d 26, 27–28 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993); Asberry v. State, 813 S.W.2d 526, 529–

30 (Tex. App.—Dallas 1991, pet. ref’d). We have concluded that there is a sufficient

basis in the record to support the modifications of the judgment requested by the

State. Accordingly, we modify the judgment where it reads “Degree of Offense” to

say “2nd degree felony” instead of “1st degree felony.”

   2
       (a) Generally. A court of appeals must not affirm or reverse a judgment or dismiss an
       appeal if:
       (1) the trial court's erroneous action or failure or refusal to act prevents the proper
       presentation of a case to the court of appeals; and
       (2) the trial court can correct its action or failure to act.
       (b) Court of Appeals Direction if Error Remediable. If the circumstances described in (a)
       exist, the court of appeals must direct the trial court to correct the error. The court of appeals
       will then proceed as if the erroneous action or failure to act had not occurred.
TEX. R. App. P. 44.4.
                                                      –9–
                                  CONCLUSION

      As modified, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.

                                          /Nancy Kennedy/
                                          NANCY KENNEDY
                                          JUSTICE

DO NOT PUBLISH
TEX. R. APP. P. 47
220370F.U05

                                      –10–
                                  S
                           Court of Appeals
                    Fifth District of Texas at Dallas
                                 JUDGMENT

GERALD ALZONO JACKSON,                       On Appeal from the 195th Judicial
Appellant                                    District Court, Dallas County, Texas
                                             Trial Court Cause No. F-1676031-N.
No. 05-22-00370-CR         V.                Opinion delivered by Justice
                                             Kennedy. Justices Partida-Kipness
THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee                 and Nowell participating.

        Based on the Court’s opinion of this date, we the MODIFY judgment of the
trial court as follows:

      where it reads “Degree of Offense” to say “2nd degree felony” instead
      of “1st degree felony.”

As REFORMED, the judgment is AFFIRMED.

Judgment entered this 30th day of January, 2023.

                                      –11–