Second Court of Appeals
Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued - Week of June 13, 2022.
NOTE: Summaries are prepared by the court's staff attorneys and law clerks for public information only and reflect his or her interpretation alone of the facts and legal issues. The summaries are not part of the court's opinion in the case and should not be cited to, quoted, or relied upon as the opinion of the court.
Links to full text of opinions (PDF version) can be accessed by clicking the cause number.
Hallman v. State, No. 02-18-00434-CR (June 16, 2022) (Wallach, J.; Walker, J., concurs with opinion; Womack, J., dissents with opinion) (op. on remand).
Held: When different judges hear different portions of a case that turns entirely on witness credibility, the State’s failure to disclose impeachment evidence under Code of Criminal Procedure Article 39.14(h) until the trial’s punishment phase may require a mistrial if the record shows that the punishment-phase judge took no steps to familiarize himself or herself with the guilt–innocence proceedings or to mitigate the harm from the belated disclosure when ruling on the defense’s motion for mistrial and if the record fails to show the conviction’s certainty absent the State’s misconduct. Under the circumstances presented by this classic he-said, she-said child-sexual-abuse case, the elected judge, who heard only the trial’s punishment phase, abused her discretion by denying Appellant’s request for a mistrial. The State disclosed impeachment evidence for the first time during the trial’s punishment phase—after Appellant had been acquitted of the most serious sexual-abuse count but had been found guilty of the remaining six counts—in a case that turned entirely on witness credibility. At that stage of trial, a continuance to assess the evidence’s use was too late, and any subsequent cross-examination of the State’s key witness using that impeachment evidence would have been pointless.
Concurrence: Because Appellant specifically requested the impeachment evidence at issue, the State was required to produce the offense report and the family-violence packet under Article 39.14(a) if the evidence was material or under Article 39.14(h) if the evidence tended to negate Appellant’s guilt. Thus, the definitions of “material” and “tends” in Watkins v. State, 619 S.W.3d 265 (Tex. Crim. App. 2021), are relevant to a determination of whether the State erred by failing to disclose the evidence. Further, the denial-of-mistrial reversibility standard is a poor fit for the procedural posture of this case. Any error here should be assayed under Rule 44.2(b), not the mistrial standard. Even so, the record reflects that the State erred by not producing the materials under Article 39.14 and Watkins’s guidance. And that error was reversible under Rule 44.2(b).
Dissent: Whether analyzing the case under Rule 44.2(b) or using the standard for the denial of a mistrial in Mosley v. State, 983 S.W.2d 249, 259 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998), the trial court’s judgment should be affirmed. The State’s violation of Article 39.14(h) did not violate Appellant’s substantial rights under Rule 44.2(b) where there was substantial evidence tending to prove Appellant’s conviction and where the timely production of the complained-of evidence would have had nothing more than a slight effect on the jury. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Appellant’s motion for mistrial where the complained-of evidence did not have a prejudicial effect on Appellant and where the great weight of the evidence supported Appellant’s conviction.