Fuller v. State

73 S.W.3d 250, 2002 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 68, 2002 WL 459834
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 27, 2002
Docket1283-98
StatusPublished
Cited by376 cases

This text of 73 S.W.3d 250 (Fuller 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
Fuller v. State, 73 S.W.3d 250, 2002 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 68, 2002 WL 459834 (Tex. 2002).

Opinions

OPINION

HERVEY, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court

in which MEYERS, PRICE, HOLCOMB and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

A jury convicted appellant of “injury to an elderly individual.” See Section 22.04(a), Texas Penal Code. The Court of Appeals acquitted appellant after deciding that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction. See Fuller v. State, slip op. at 2-3 (Tex.App.—Waco, No. 10-98-019-CR, delivered May 27, 1998, pet. granted) (nonpublished). We reverse.

The indictment alleged that appellant committed the offense against “Olen M. Fuller” who is appellant’s father. The prosecution proved that appellant injured his elderly father by hitting him in the face with his fist. During trial, however, appellant’s father was only referred to as “Mr. Fuller” or as “Buddy.” The prosecution presented no evidence that appellant’s father was “Olen M. Fuller.” Consistent with the indictment’s allegation, the charge instructed the jury to convict if it found appellant committed the offense against “Olen M. Fuller.”

Appellant claimed on direct appeal that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction because the prosecution failed to prove the victim’s name as alleged in the indictment. The Court of Appeals decided, as a matter of federal constitutional law under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), that the evidence was insufficient to support appellant’s conviction because “the name of the complaining witness is material to an indictment and must be alleged and proven.” See Fuller, slip op. at 2. The Court of Appeals also decided that a “hypothetically correct jury charge” required the prosecution to prove the victim’s name [252]*252as alleged in the indictment. Fuller, slip op. at 3 fn 3.

We granted the State Prosecuting Attorney’s discretionary review petition which claims this is not a Jackson v. Virginia case but, rather, a variance case. The State Prosecuting Attorney, therefore, argues that the Court of Appeals erred in reversing appellant’s conviction without first making a materiality inquiry into whether the variance between the indictment’s allegation of “Olen M. Fuller” and the proof at trial of “Mr. Fuller” or “Buddy” prejudiced appellant. Appellant claims the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction as a matter of federal constitutional law under Jackson v. Virginia. Appellant, therefore, argues that it is unnecessary to consider the State’s variance claim.

I.

Jackson v. Virginia sets out the federal constitutional due process standard by which to measure evidentiary sufficiency. This standard measures evidentiary sufficiency against the “substantive elements of the criminal offense as defined by state law.” See Jackson, 99 S.Ct. at 2792 fn. 16.

We recently decided in Gollihar v. State that under Malik v. State evidentiary sufficiency should be measured against the “elements of the offense as defined by the hypothetically correct jury charge for the case” in all sufficiency cases. See Gollihar v. State, 46 S.W.3d 243, 255-56 (Tex.Cr.App.2001); Malik v. State, 953 S.W.2d 234, 240 (Tex.Cr.App.1997). Gollihar rejected the view that Malik was a federal constitutional decision which adopted only the Jackson v. Virginia evidentiary sufficiency standard. See Gollihar, 46 S.W.3d at 252-57, 255-56 fn. 20, 255. Gollihar further rejected the notion that Malik’s “hypothetically correct jury charge for the case” language did not apply in a sufficiency analysis unless the case involved a jury charge error like the one in Malik. Compare Gollihar, 46 S.W.3d at 252-57, 255-56 fn. 20, 255 (.Malik’s “hypothetically correct jury charge for the case” language “controls sufficiency of the evidence analysis even in the absence of alleged jury charge error”) (emphasis in original), with Planter v. State, 9 S.W.3d 156, 159-61 (Tex.Cr.App.1999) (McCormick, P.J., dissenting) (setting out the view which Gollihar rejected).

Gollihar thus made Malik’s evidentiary sufficiency standard into a purely state law standard that is “foreign to federal constitutional norms.” Compare Malik, 953 S.W.2d at 238; Bledsue v. Johnson, 188 F.3d 250, 257-62 (5th Cir.1999) (characterizing Malik’s evidentiary sufficiency standard as a state law doctrine); Brown v. Collins, 937 F.2d 175, 182 (5th Cir.1991) (characterizing pre-Malik evi-dentiary sufficiency standard as a “state procedural nuance foreign to federal constitutional norms” even though our decisions claimed this standard was consistent with federal constitutional law). Gollihar’s standard of measuring evidentiary sufficiency against the “elements of the offense as defined by the hypothetically correct jury charge for the case” clearly is not the same as the Jackson v. Virginia standard of measuring evidentiary sufficiency against the “substantive elements of the criminal offense as defined by state law.” Compare Jackson, 99 S.Ct. at 2792 fn. 16, with, Gollihar, 46 S.W.3d at 255. Gollihar, therefore, does not apply to appellant’s Jackson v. Virginia evidentiary sufficiency claim.

The federal constitutional issue in this case is whether the victim’s name is a substantive element of the criminal offense as defined by state law. See Jackson, 99 S.Ct. at 2792 fn. 16. State law, in relevant part, defines “element of the offense” as [253]*253the forbidden conduct with the required culpability. See Section 1.07(a)(22)(A) & (B), Texas Penal Code. State law in Section 22.04(a)(3) further defines the offense as “injury to an elderly individual.”1 State law does not define the victim’s name as a substantive element of the offense by, for example, defining the offense as “injury to an elderly individual named Olen M. Fuller.”

The prosecution’s failure to prove the victim’s name exactly as alleged in the indictment does not, therefore, make the evidence insufficient to support appellant’s conviction under Jackson v. Virginia. The evidence that appellant injured the elderly victim by hitting him in the face with his fist satisfies the Jackson v. Virginia standard because it constitutes proof of every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged of “injury to an elderly individual.” See Section 1.07(a)(22); Section 22.04(a)(3); Gollihar, 46 S.W.3d at 246 (Jackson v. Virginia standard “protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged ”) (emphasis in original).

II.

We must now decide whether the evidence was sufficient to support appellant’s conviction under Gollihar’s state law sufficiency standard.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
73 S.W.3d 250, 2002 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 68, 2002 WL 459834, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fuller-v-state-texcrimapp-2002.