Febus v. State

542 S.W.3d 568
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 14, 2018
DocketNO. PD–1369–15
StatusPublished
Cited by179 cases

This text of 542 S.W.3d 568 (Febus v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Febus v. State, 542 S.W.3d 568 (Tex. 2018).

Opinion

The State introduced testimony from Lindsay Ulloa, the apartment manager at the La Hacienda Apartment complex. She explained that her office was located in the "6100 Glenmont" building, and she had never seen Appellant around the complex. She further explained that La Hacienda Apartments was a small complex where everyone knew everyone. She described Ayala as a man that everyone in the apartment complex knew because he picked up cans to live, even collecting cans from the various residents.

According to Ulloa, Ayala would have let her know if someone were living with him "just in case." As she stated, "he's pretty good letting me know, because like, his condition, so." Yet, Ayala had never mentioned to her that someone was sharing his apartment with him. She did agree that she would not have seen someone come and go from Ayala's apartment outside the hours of 9:00 in the morning and 6:00 in the afternoon. According to Ayala, Appellant was only in the apartment outside of those hours.

The trial court charged the jury that it was required to find not only that Appellant knew his duty to register as a sex offender, but also that he had intentionally or knowingly failed to comply with that duty. Appellant argued that he had actually complied with his duty to register a change of address and that he was living with Javier Ayala in his apartment at "6100 Glenmont." The failure to register was a clerical error on the part of law enforcement and not the result of Appellant intentionally supplying incorrect information. The State argued that Appellant did not live with Ayala at "6100 Glenmont,"

*572but allowed that if the jury believed that he did, Appellant had still failed to register because he provided the wrong address to law enforcement.

The jury found Appellant guilty. At punishment, Appellant pleaded true to two enhancement allegations that he had previously been convicted in Los Angeles of both robbery and possession of a firearm as a felon. The State also introduced evidence that Appellant had changed his name multiple times in his life as he moved from New York to Los Angeles to Houston. The jury found both enhancement allegations to be true and sentenced Appellant to thirty-five years in prison.

On appeal, Appellant argued that the evidence was legally insufficient to support a determination that Appellant had intentionally or knowingly failed to provide his new address to the Houston Police Department. Specifically, Appellant argued that the failure was due to a negligent mistake on either the part of the registering authority or Appellant himself. The court of appeals rejected this argument, simply holding that under this Court's opinion in Robinson v. State , the State was not required to prove that Appellant had a culpable mental state when failing to provide the correct address.4 The court of appeals affirmed the conviction, holding that the evidence was legally sufficient to support the jury's verdict. We granted review to determine the propriety of that holding. We will affirm.

Analysis

When addressing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we determine whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.5 We may not re-weigh the evidence or substitute our judgment for that of the factfinder.6 A jury may accept one version of the facts and reject another, and it may reject any part of a witness's testimony.7 We presume that the factfinder resolved any conflicting inferences from the evidence in favor of the verdict, and we defer to that resolution.8 This is because the jurors are the exclusive judges of the facts, the credibility of the witnesses, and the weight to be given to the testimony.9

The essential elements of an offense are determined by state law.10 Under Texas state law, we measure the sufficiency of the evidence by the elements of the offense as defined by the hypothetically correct jury charge for the case.11 Such a charge is 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 *573State's theories of liability, and adequately describes the particular offense for which the defendant was tried.12

We recently analyzed the elements of the offense of failure to comply with the requirements of registering as a sex offender under Chapter 62 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.13 In Robinson , we held that this offense is a "circumstances of the conduct" type of offense.14 The "circumstance" at issue is the duty to register and the culpable mental state of "knowledge and recklessness" applies only to the duty-to-register element, rather than the failure-to-comply element.15

Robinson claimed that he had intended to register a change of address, but he was rebuffed in his attempts by the police.16 Based upon our determination that the statute did not require a showing of an intentional failure to register, we rejected Robinson's argument that the evidence was insufficient to establish that he intentionally failed to report his prospective change of address in person.17 We affirmed the court of appeals and upheld the conviction noting that the evidence convincingly established that Robinson had failed to report an intended change of address in person.18

In this case, Appellant argued to the court of appeals that he did not intend "to evade his duties to properly register as a sex offender." But he further argued that "any discrepancies in [A]ppellant's last listed address and/or apartment number were merely a negligent mistake on the behalf of the registering authority and/or [A]ppellant." The State responded that Appellant's argument had been rendered moot by this Court's decision in Robinson . The court of appeals agreed and held that there was no need to analyze the proof surrounding Appellant's mental state when he failed to comply with his duty to register as a sex offender.19 We agree with the court of appeals' analysis that the evidence was sufficient to establish Appellant's awareness of the registration requirements and that the State was not required to prove an additional culpable mental state regarding his failure to register.

However, the court of appeals did not fully address Appellant's argument that the jury had irrationally determined that Appellant failed to comply with his duties to register as a sex offender. As Presiding Judge Keller observed in her concurring opinion in Robinson , when authorities rebuff attempts to register, the sex offender may not be criminally liable on the basis that his failure to register was involuntary.20 Though this rationale was not explicitly incorporated into the majority opinion in Robinson , we find the reasoning persuasive and incorporate it into the holding in this case. Appellant testified at trial, and argues on appeal, that he not *574

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Bluebook (online)
542 S.W.3d 568, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/febus-v-state-texcrimapp-2018.