Second Court of Appeals

Summaries of Civil Opinions and Published Criminal Opinions Issued - Week of January 20, 2025.

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.

Garcia v. State, No. 02-24-00149-CR (Jan. 23, 2025) (Birdwell, J., joined by Bassel and Womack, JJ.).

Held: A defendant does not suffer egregious harm from a punishment charge’s unpreserved erroneous inclusion of an outdated good-conduct-time instruction when the punishment charge also contains the standard curative language, with which the jury is presumed to have complied and the record does not show otherwise; the punishment-phase evidence makes it unlikely that the good-conduct-time reference caused any harm; and neither party mentions good-conduct time during closing arguments.