Price v. State
No. PD–0383–14
Case Summary written by Adam J. Ondo, Staff Member.
JUDGE JOHNSON delivered the opinion of the court in which JUDGE KELLER, JUDGE KEASLER, JUDGE HERVEY, JUDGE ALCALÁ, JUDGE RICHARDSON, and JUDGE NEWELL joined.
Law-enforcement officials arrested the appellant for third-degree-felony family-violence assault after his girlfriend informed numerous medical personnel that he had struck and choked her. The girlfriend told the nurse that the appellant had choked her until she became unconscious several times. Because the indictment alleged family-violence assault by strangulation, the offense was raised from a Class A misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, which gave the district court jurisdiction over the case. A jury found the appellant guilty of third-degree-felony family-violence assault. The district court sentenced the appellant to fifty years’ imprisonment after he pled true to enhancement and habitual allegations.
The appellant appealed his conviction, claiming, inter alia, that “the trial court erred in failing to tailor the charge to connect the culpable mental state to the nature of the conduct.” The appellant asserted that he suffered an egregious harm due to this error. The court of appeals held that family-violence assault by strangulation was solely a result-of-conduct offense. Therefore, the trial court was correct in refusing to include nature-of-conduct language in the jury instruction.
The sole issue before the Court of Criminal Appeals was whether family-violence assault by strangulation “is both a result-oriented offense and a conduct-oriented offense.” If the offense is solely result-oriented, the law requires that a jury find that the defendant had a conscious objective to cause the victim’s breath to be impeded. If the offense is also conduct-oriented, the jury must additionally find that the defendant had a conscious objective to engage in conduct that would impede the victim’s breath. In determining whether a crime is result-oriented, conduct-oriented, or both, courts must look to the gravamen—the gist—of the offense. An offense can be both result-oriented and conduct-oriented if it has multiple gravamina focusing on both conduct and results. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the court of appeals, holding that the gravamen of third-degree-felony family-violence assault was solely conduct-oriented.
The Court of Criminal Appeals reasoned that because family-violence assault cannot be committed without engaging in conduct that results in bodily injury, the gravamen must be bodily injury. See Tex. Penal Code § 22.01(a)(1). Because bodily injury is the result of the assailant’s actions, the crime is thus result-oriented. According to the court, when the offense is heightened to a third-degree felony due to the assailant’s choking of the victim, the gravamen becomes bodily injury in the form of strangulation. The result of strangulation is the gravamen; the act of strangling is not the gravamen.
In coming to this determination, the court examined the wording of Texas Penal Code § 22.01(b)(2)(B). The statute provides that family-violence assault is raised to a third-degree felony in the event that the assailant “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly imped[ed] the normal breathing or circulation of the blood of the person by applying pressure to the person’s throat or neck or by blocking the person’s nose or mouth.” The court noted that the mental states “do not syntactically modify [the following] prepositional phrases.” In other words, the method by which breathing is impeded is not the gravamen of the offense. The inability to breathe, which results from “applying pressure to the person’s throat,” is the gravamen. The application of pressure is not the gravamen. Thus, family-violence assault by strangulation is solely result-oriented.
JUDGE YEARY, concurring.
Judge Yeary disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that family-violence assault by strangulation was not a conduct-oriented offense. Without the specific conduct of impeding the victim’s breath, the family-violence assault charge would not have been raised to a felony. The assailant’s conduct, namely choking the victim, is the main factor for enhancing the charge, while the result of bodily injury is the main factor for proving the base charge. Thus, the gravamina are both conduct-oriented and result-oriented.
However, in order for the appellant to prevail, he was required to prove that the error caused him egregious harm because he did not object to the jury instructions at trial. Judge Yeary did not believe that it mattered whether the impeding of breath was a “result-of-conduct element or a nature-of-conduct element.” He summed up his reasoning by bluntly stating, “Choking is choking . . . .”
JUDGE MEYERS, dissenting.
Judge Meyers dissented because he refused to ignore the fact that the element of “applying pressure to the person’s throat” is what caused the charge to be elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony. Thus, at least one of the gravamina was a nature-of-conduct element. He also would have reversed the court of appeals’ decision because, unlike Judge Yeary, he believed that egregious harm occurred because the error altered the basis of the case.