Speights v. State
PD-0543-14
Case Summary written by Jack Fulgham, Staff Member.
JUDGE YEARY delivered the opinion for a unanimous court.
Billy Wayne Speights was charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, indecency with a child by sexual contact, and indecency with a child for engaging in sexual acts with a child under seventeen. The record and testimony from the victim, the victim’s guardian, and the victim’s assault counselor indicate that Speights took the child into a bathroom, exposed himself, began masturbating, and then made the child touch his penis. The jury found Speights guilty of both indecency with a child by sexual contact and indecency with a child by exposure; Speights received twenty and ten year sentences respectively. On appeal, Speights contended that punishment for both the indecency by exposure and contact charges amounted to double jeopardy, because the exposure was in essence a consequence of the sexual contact. Although Speights never raised this issue at trial, the court of appeals heard his claim on the merits noting that “a double-jeopardy violation . . . can be raised for the first time on appeal.” The court of appeals ultimately agreed with Speights and held that “punishment for both indecency by exposure and indecency by contact was constitutionally intolerable.” The court subsequently acquitted Speights on the charge of indecency by exposure. The state prosecuting attorney petitioned for discretionary review on the grounds that the court of appeal’s holding conflicted with recent precedent.
Issue: Does receiving punishments for indecency by exposure and indecency by contact resulting from the same incident amount to double jeopardy?
The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas determined that in the context of double jeopardy this case was a matter of whether or not the defendant received multiple punishments for the same offense, and if the legislature intended multiple offenses to result from the same act. To answer these questions, the court applied a “units of prosecution” analysis derived form the recent decision in Ex parte Benson. The first part of the test is determining what the “allowable units of prosecution” are under the statute. The statute at issue in this case was § 21.11 of the Texas Penal Code subsections (a)(1) and (a)(2)(A). The court relied upon Loving v. State in determining that the legislature did intend to allow for a defendant to be charged with both indecency by contact and exposure even when stemming from the same incident and “the exposure precedes the contact.”
The court noted that the fact that exposure and contact are separated in the Indecency with a Child Statute further suggests that the legislature intended for them to be charged as separate offenses. The court analogized the separation of exposure and contact indecency offenses to the separation of sexual contact involving different parts of the body “i.e., anus, breasts, or genitals.” The court further rejected the court of appeals decision in holding that indecency by exposure is not necessarily subsumed by indecency by contact, again relying on Loving as the basis of its holding. Part two of the units of prosecution analysis asks how many units of prosecution have been shown, or in other words, how many separate offenses resulting from the same act can the accused be charged with. Noting that the defendant plainly committed both indecencies by exposure and contact, and that the legislature intended both indecencies to be separate offenses, the court concluded that more than one unit of prosecution existed in this case. Therefore, the defendant’s double jeopardy right had not been offended. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas reversed the court of appeals decision to acquit Speights of the indecency with a child by exposure conviction.