Court Opinion

ID: 9691366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:27:30.394206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:17.572946
License: Public Domain

Justice GASTILLO,
concurring.
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 *314(Tex.Crim.App.1997). The reference to bench trials was announced in Malik in 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). 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.”).
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. 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 bench trial case measures the evidence against the statutory elements of the offense as modified by the charging instrument, not against a “hypothetically correct jury charge.”