Steven Mayle v. the State of Texas

CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedSeptember 11, 2025
Docket02-24-00310-CR
StatusPublished

This text of Steven Mayle v. the State of Texas (Steven Mayle v. the State of Texas) 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
Steven Mayle v. the State of Texas, (Tex. Ct. App. 2025).

Opinion

In the Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth ___________________________

No. 02-24-00310-CR ___________________________

STEVEN MAYLE, Appellant

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS

On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 3 Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 1693326

Before Sudderth, C.J.; Birdwell and Wallach, JJ. Memorandum Opinion by Justice Wallach MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appellant Steven Mayle appeals his conviction for continuous sexual abuse of a

child. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 21.02(b). On appeal, Mayle contends that the trial

court abused its discretion by (1) refusing to grant a mistrial or to exclude the

testimony of two witnesses after the State failed to disclose as soon as practicable its

notes from a pretrial interview of these witnesses and (2) admitting certain out-of-

court statements made by the victim and her mother over his Confrontation Clause

and hearsay objections. We will affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Mother,1 who was then living in Louisiana, met Mayle through mutual

Facebook friends in early 2020, and they began an online relationship. In June 2020,

she and her four children—including the victim, M.T., who was then nine years old—

moved into Mayle’s home in Fort Worth. The children soon came to view Mayle as a

father figure and called him “dad” or “daddy.”

According to M.T., Mayle appeared to be “a kind, nice person” at first, but

then his behavior changed. In October 2020, he began sexually abusing her.

Mayle’s sexual abuse of M.T. came to light after an incident that occurred on

July 10, 2021. After coming home from work around midnight, Mayle settled into his

den. After her siblings and Mother went to sleep, M.T. went to the den to play a

1 Because the victim was a minor at the time of the offenses, we use aliases to refer to her and her family members. See Tex. R. App. P. 9.10(a)(3), (b).

2 videogame. Alone in the den with M.T., Mayle began to sexually abuse her. At some

point, Mother woke up and learned from another of her daughters that M.T. and

Mayle were in the den with the door locked. She burst into the den and found M.T.

standing and facing Mayle, who was seated in a chair. M.T. was clad only in her

underwear and a shirt and was cowering as if she had been assaulted. As soon as

Mother entered the room, M.T. stated, “[H]e’s sorry, he’s drunk, and it hurts down

there.”

Mother told M.T. to cover herself with a blanket and run across the street to a

neighbor’s house for help. According to Mother, Mayle had an “I got caught” look on

his face. Enraged, Mother grabbed a knife and stabbed Mayle nearly fifty times. When

Mother went to the door to look for the police, Mayle retrieved a gun from the gun

safe and asked Mother to kill him. Mother grabbed the gun away from him and waited

for the police to arrive.

When the police arrived, they found Mother sitting on the front steps and

temporarily placed her in a patrol car. Officers found Mayle lying on the den floor

with slash wounds all over his body and holding a pair of juvenile female underwear.

The responding officers called dispatch to have an ambulance and additional

investigators sent to the scene.

M.T. was examined by a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE), Nurse Maggie

Higgins. During the examination, M.T. told Nurse Higgins about Mayle’s sexual

behavior towards her. Specifically, she stated that Mayle had touched her vagina and

3 her anus with his penis and his finger, had made oral contact with her genitals, and

had engaged in acts of masturbation with her. M.T. said that the sexual abuse had

occurred multiple times since the previous October and explained that she had not

previously disclosed it because Mayle had threatened that he would no longer be her

dad if she told anyone.

Ultimately, Mayle was indicted for nine offenses, including continuous sexual

abuse of a child. He pled not guilty, and a jury trial was held. M.T. testified at trial

regarding Mayle’s various acts of sexual abuse. Mother and Nurse Higgins also

testified.

After hearing all the evidence, the jury convicted Mayle of continuous sexual

abuse of a child.2 Following the trial’s punishment phase, the jury assessed Mayle’s

punishment at ninety-nine years in prison. The trial court sentenced him accordingly.

This appeal followed.

II. DISCUSSION

On appeal, Mayle raises seven points, many of which are interrelated. We

address each of these points in turn below.

Per the jury charge’s instructions, the jury rendered no verdict regarding the 2

remaining alleged offenses. See Allen v. State, 620 S.W.3d 915, 919–22 (Tex. Crim. App. 2021) (holding that the continuous-sexual-abuse statute prohibits a defendant’s additional conviction of a predicate offense that “occurred [in]side the period in which the [continuous-sexual-abuse offense] was committed”); see also Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 21.02(e).

4 A. Points One and Two: The State’s Failure to Disclose Interview Notes

In his first two points, Mayle contends that the trial court abused its discretion

by declining either (1) to grant a mistrial or (2) to exclude Mother’s and M.T.’s

testimony after the State failed to disclose as soon as practicable its notes from a

pretrial interview of these witnesses. We disagree.

1. Relevant Background

The week before trial, prosecutors met with Mother and M.T. in Louisiana for

final trial preparation. During this meeting, Mother and M.T. changed certain details

of their accounts regarding the sexual abuse that occurred and Mother’s July 10, 2021

altercation with Mayle. The prosecutors did not discover until on the second day of

trial—shortly before Mother was supposed to testify—that their interview notes

reflecting these changed details had not been disclosed to Mayle’s trial counsel. 3 Upon

realizing their mistake,4 the prosecutors promptly provided defense counsel with a

three-page bullet-form set of notes. At Mayle’s request, the trial court granted him a

The record reflects—and the State does not dispute—that Mayle made 3

numerous requests for discovery pursuant to Article 39.14(a) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 39.14(a). 4 The trial court shared its view that the interview notes appeared to be work product, which the State would not be required to produce. See id.; In re State ex rel. Skurka, 512 S.W.3d 444, 453–54 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi–Edinburg 2016, no pet.); cf. Marshall v. Hall, 943 S.W.2d 180, 183 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1997, no writ) (concluding that attorney’s agent’s notes and summaries from witness interview were protected by the work-product privilege). The parties did not address this issue in their briefing, and we will assume for purposes of this appeal that the State was required to produce the interview notes.

5 twenty-two hour continuance to allow his attorneys time to review the newly provided

interview notes before Mother and M.T. testified.5 The trial court denied Mayle’s oral

request for a mistrial.

The following morning, Mayle filed a written motion requesting a mistrial or,

alternatively, the exclusion of Mother’s and M.T.’s testimony. After reviewing the

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