Proenza v. State

555 S.W.3d 389
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedAugust 2, 2018
DocketNUMBER 13-13-00172-CR
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 555 S.W.3d 389 (Proenza v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Proenza v. State, 555 S.W.3d 389 (Tex. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

OPINION ON REMAND

Opinion on Remand by Justice Rodriguez *392Appellant Abraham Jacob Proenza challenges his conviction for injury to a child, four-month-old A.J.V.,2 by omission, a first-degree felony. See TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 22.04(a)(1), (b)(2), (e) (West, Westlaw through 2017 1st C.S.). The jury returned a guilty verdict and assessed punishment at forty years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Institutional Division.

This case is now before us on remand from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. See Proenza v. State, 471 S.W.3d 35 (Tex. App.-Corpus Christi 2015), aff'd in part & rev'd & remanded in part , 541 S.W.3d 786, 788 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). The court of criminal appeals affirmed our judgment to the extent we concluded that Proenza's statutory judicial-comment challenge could be raised for the first time on appeal. Proenza v. State , 541 S.W.3d 786, 801 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017) ; see TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 38.05 (West, Westlaw through 2017 1st C.S.) (providing that the trial judge must not "make any remark calculated to convey to the jury his opinion of the case"). But because Proenza claimed only a statutory violation that called for a non-constitutional harm analysis, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that we "should have applied the harm analysis contained in Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 44.2(b)," not the constitutional-error harm standard under rule 44.2(a). Proenza , 541 S.W.3d at 801 ; see TEX. R. APP. P. 44.2. Noting that our "ultimate determination that Proenza was harmed was [not] incorrect per se," the court remanded the case to this Court with instructions to revisit our harm analysis. Proenza , 541 S.W.3d at 802. Following our nonconstitutional harm analysis, we reverse and remand.

I. BACKGROUND 3

Proenza and his wife Sandra testified that on April 2, 2008, A.J.V. was born in Minnesota to Sandra's sister. Hoping to adopt A.J.V., Proenza and Sandra drove to Minnesota and returned to Texas with the child.

When A.J.V. was three or four weeks old, Sandra and A.J.V.'s birth mother, who was in Texas at the time, took A.J.V. to Su Clinica. A.J.V.'s birth mother signed medical consent forms for A.J.V. but did not sign papers authorizing anyone else, including Proenza or Sandra, to take A.J.V. for medical care. Proenza testified that he and Sandra expected A.J.V.'s birth mother to sign the papers before she left Texas in June 2008 but she did not. Proenza also *393explained that on one occasion his father-in-law was asked to take one of his daughters to Su Clinica for a scheduled appointment "and he was denied because he wasn't on her slip on her folder." Proenza believed that, without the mother's permission, he would not be able to take A.J.V. to his next scheduled appointment at Su Clinica.4 Proenza thought that if he took A.J.V. for medical care they would not see the child because Proenza did not have proper documentation from A.J.V.'s birth mother.

Proenza and Sandra also testified that they raised A.J.V. together until Sandra went to Minnesota to work, leaving A.J.V. and their three-year-old daughter in Proenza's care and their one-year-old daughter in Sandra's mother's care. They enrolled their daughters in a daycare, but according to both Sandra and Proenza, they could not enroll A.J.V. there because they could not show legal guardianship or adoption and they did not have A.J.V.'s birth mother's signature on the daycare forms. According to Proenza, he and his wife could not reach A.J.V.'s mother because she would not answer their calls and later changed her phone number.5

Around this same time, J.S.M., Proenza and Sandra's fifteen-year-old nephew and the baby's half-brother, began staying with Proenza. According to Proenza, he showed J.S.M. how to care for A.J.V., and J.S.M. acknowledged that he understood. Proenza testified that J.S.M. cared for the baby when Proenza was not at home and when Proenza was there but "separate with [his] girls." Proenza also testified that on the Wednesday before A.J.V. passed away, he enrolled in a business school and asked J.S.M. to care for A.J.V. while he was attending classes.

According to Proenza, on August 11, 2008, when he returned home from school, J.S.M. told him that he had fed and bathed A.J.V. Later that evening, Proenza put A.J.V. to bed, but when he checked on him fifteen minutes later, A.J.V. was blue and purple in color and his mouth was open. Proenza began CPR, and J.S.M. called 911. The EMS transported A.J.V. to the hospital. Proenza later learned that A.J.V. had passed away.

Proenza testified that he never knew that J.S.M. had mishandled A.J.V. Proenza related that on August 11, 2008, A.J.V. did not look like he was dying "at all." He had been throwing up, but not a whole bottle of *394formula. Proenza explained that he did not take A.J.V. to the hospital or Su Clinica because he thought the medical facilities would turn him away without proper documentation.

Long-time friends of the Proenzas, Mandy Cantu and her husband Armando Vela Jr., testified for the defense. Cantu and Vela set out that they had seen A.J.V. on three different occasions and that "he looked fine." Proenza's parents, Ramon and Rosalinda Proenza, explained that when they saw A.J.V., although Rosalinda understood he was "throwing up a lot," both described him as either "fine" or "okay." Proenza's friend Aaron Villarreal testified that he saw A.J.V. in July and thought he was "real small" but agreed that he saw nothing wrong with the baby at that time. When he saw A.J.V. a month later, after Hurricane Dolly, he "looked a little bit skinnier," was "really frail," and looked like "a baby, who hadn't developed." Villarreal explained that, at the time, A.J.V. was "tired" and "cranky" like all the other kids. Finally, Helen Rodriguez, pastor of the church where Proenza was a member, testified that, on three occasions, she saw Proenza at church with his daughters and A.J.V. According to Rodriguez, Proenza cared for the baby at the church. When Rodriguez saw A.J.V., she thought he "looked perfectly." She had no concerns about A.J.V.'s health or welfare.

Norma Jean Farley, M.D., a forensic pathologist for Hidalgo County who conducted an autopsy on A.J.V., testified for the State.

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Bluebook (online)
555 S.W.3d 389, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/proenza-v-state-texapp-2018.