Brewington v. State
| Decision Date | 30 January 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 267-86,267-86 |
| Citation | 802 S.W.2d 691 |
| Parties | Charles Caswell BREWINGTON, Appellant, v. The STATE of Texas, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Bryan H. Hall, Jeffrey C. Brown, El Paso, for appellant.
Steve W. Simmons, Dist. Atty., & Karen Shook, Asst. Dist. Atty., Robert Huttash, State's Atty., Austin, for the State.
Before the court en banc.
OPINION ON APPELLANT'S PETITION FOR DISCRETIONARY REVIEW
Appellant was charged and convicted of sexually molesting his own eleven year old daughter. He received a sentence of twenty years' confinement. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. Brewington v. State, 702 S.W.2d 312 (Tex.App.--El Paso 1986). This Court granted appellant's petition for discretionary review to determine whether the Court of Appeals erred in affirming the trial court's decision to allow the jury to hear evidence of two extraneous offenses, and to hear that appellant was a "fixated pedophile." Because of our disposition of the second ground for review, we will not discuss the extraneous offense testimony. We will reverse the Court of Appeals' judgment due to the pedophile testimony.
Appellant never attempted to contest the merits of the allegations that he molested his daughter; his only defense to the prosecution was that the offense took place in Amarillo, not El Paso as alleged in the indictment. After it was revealed that this would be his defense, the prosecutor sought to introduce testimony that appellant was a pedophile, explaining:
Thus, it is clear from the record that the prosecutor sought to introduce testimony that appellant was a fixated pedophile solely to prove appellant's propensity to molest children and that he acted in conformity therewith when he committed the charged offense. Under both the common-law, see Bell v. State, 433 S.W.2d 443, 443-444 (Tex.Cr.App.1968); Compton v. Jay, 389 S.W.2d 639 (Tex.1965), and the new rules of evidence, see Tex.R.Crim.Evid. 404(a) 1, this type of character testimony is prohibited when it is sought to be introduced to prove that a person acted in conformity therewith. See generally, Goode, Wellborn and Sharlot, Texas Rules of Evidence: Civil and Criminal, Section 404.2, p. 104-105 and cases collected under note 8 (Tex. Practice 1988). Consequently, the trial court abused its discretion in allowing the jury to hear this evidence.
Moreover, we cannot say that the impermissible evidence did not contribute to the conviction. 2 As stated previously, appellant's only defense to the prosecution was lack of jurisdiction in El Paso County--he contended that the offense occurred in another county...
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State v. Nelson
...Smith, 617 N.E.2d at 1160 (error in admitting expert testimony on general pedophile characteristics); Brewington v. State, 802 S.W.2d 691, 692 (Tex.Crim.App.1991) (en banc) (reversing conviction because "it is clear from the record that the prosecutor sought to introduce testimony that appe......
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State v. Ford
...preference have specifically been held to fall within the character evidence prohibition of Rule 404(a)(1). In Brewington v. State (Tex.Crim.App.1991), 802 S.W.2d 691, 692, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that it was clear from the record that the prosecutor sought to introduce ......
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Reid v. State
...arising in the same transaction. In stating her argument, appellant primarily relies upon the rationale expressed in Brewington v. State, 802 S.W.2d 691 (Tex.Crim.App.1991). In Brewington, the appellant was charged with sexually molesting his own eleven-year-old daughter. At trial, the pros......
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