This Blog Is Moving!

We have a website again! http://www.woodlandsappeals.com/ I'm not 100% clear whether the URL for this blog is going to stay the same, and I'm just going to post differently, or whether, instead, the URL for this blog will change and all the content will migrate with it. Still, new posts are going to be in the blog section of the new cite. There are already new posts there about sexually-violent-predator civil commitment, what to do if a peace officer pulls over your vehicle, Texas's carrying-a-weapon law, and the limits of the power of federal courts to overrule federal agencies. Hope you'll check it out.

Texarkana Court Holds That a Traveler Carrying a Weapon Ceases to Travel When Getting to the Destination before Getting Home

In a trial of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Texarkana Court of Appeals approved jury instructions that the defendant's use of deadly force was reasonable unless they found the defendant provoked the victim or that the defendant was unlawfully carrying a weapon at the time of the assault. The appeals court found that there was sufficient evidence to find (1) that the defendant did some act or used some words which provoked the attack on him, (2) that such act or words were reasonably calculated to provoke the attack, and (3) that the act was done or the words were used for the purpose and with the intent that the defendant would have a pretext for inflicting harm upon the other. Most interesting to me--a scholar of the traveling exception to Texas's carrying a weapon statute--was the court's holding that once the defendant reached his destination and had secured a place to stay, he had ceased to travel, as that to be traveling the defendant would have had to have shown that he was continuing on to another destination. The court also found that sufficient evidence supported the jury's rejection of the defendant's self-defense claim.

For Carrying a Weapon, the Plain Statutory Language Is Not Enough

For defense counsel, a most promising source of reversible error is the jury charge. The trial judge in the case of Hernandez v. State, No. 14-08-00787-CR, (Tex. App.-- Houston [14th Dist.], Mar. 16, 2010, no pet. h.)refused a self-defense instruction, apparently because defendant-appellant Hernandez's handgun possession was illegal. The proposed jury instruction seems to be to be a gross oversimplification of the law. The opinion states that Hernandez was trying to recover property stolen from his employer by a third person. The opinion neither indicates nor claims that Hernandez's attempt was illegal or improper. It is the defense lawyer's duty to provide the trial court with an accurate statement of the law. This does not appear to have been done, and appears to render any error harmless, though it might be a basis for a writ.