Crabtree v. State

• Decision Date: 16 January 2013
• Docket Number: No. PD–0645–11.,PD–0645–11.
• Citation: 389 S.W.3d 820
• Parties: Mark Alan CRABTREE, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

389 S.W.3d 820

Mark Alan CRABTREE, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas.

No. PD–0645–11.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Oct. 31, 2012.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 16, 2013.

Dissenting Opinion on Motion for Rehearing Jan. 16, 2013.

Austin Reeve Jackson, Tyler, for appellant.

Michael J. West, Asst. District Atty., Lisa C. McMinn, State's Attorney, for the State.

OPINION

KEASLER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KELLER, P.J., MEYERS, PRICE, WOMACK, and HERVEY, JJ., joined.

A jury found Mark Crabtree guilty of the second-degree felony offense of failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements. Crabtree claims that the evidence is legally insufficient to support his conviction because the evidence failed to demonstrate that the Department of Public Safety (DPS) determined his extra-jurisdictional conviction was substantially similar to a Texas offense requiring registration; therefore the State did not prove that he was required to register as a sex offender in Texas. We agree and render a judgment of acquittal.

I. BACKGROUND

In 1989, Crabtree was convicted of the following Washington offenses: rape of a child in the first degree, child molestation in the first degree, and statutory rape in the first degree. In January 2009, law enforcement officials in Smith County, where Crabtree resided, learned of these prior convictions. Concluding that Crabtree's previous Washington convictions required him to register as a sex offender in Texas and that he failed to do so, law enforcement officers arrested him for failure to comply with registration requirements. The grand jury returned a true bill of indictment which alleged

on or about the 12th day of January, 2009 ... MARK CRABTREE did then and there, while being a person required to register with the local law enforcement authority in the county where the defendant resided or intended to reside for more than seven days, to-wit: Smith County, because of a reportable conviction for Rape of a Child in the First Degree, intentionally or knowingly fail to register with the local law enforcement authority in said county.

Crabtree sought to quash the indictment alleging the indictment's language failed to give him sufficient notice of the charged offense's felony level under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 62.102 which defines separate offenses for a state-jail felony, third-degree felony, and second-degree felony. Crabtree also argued that the State failed to allege that his previous conviction was a reportable conviction as defined in article 62.001(5). The trial court denied his motion.

At trial, the State began its case-in-chief by introducing the judgment and charging instruments documenting Crabtree's Washington convictions for rape of a child in the first degree, child molestation in the first degree, and statutory rape in the first degree, for which he was sentenced to confinement for a term of 89 months, 41 months, and 61 months, respectively. The sponsoring witness, Noel Martin, a crime scene investigator with the Smith County Sheriff's Office who compared Crabtree's fingerprints to the documents, testified that the conduct described in the charging instrument for rape of a child in the first degree would be considered a first-degree felony aggravated sexual assault of a child in Texas.

The State then called Smith County Sheriff's Deputy Jeri Scott to establish Crabtree's registration requirement. Deputy Scott was in charge of the sex offender registration program in Smith County. In that capacity, Deputy Scott registered those required to register as sex offenders, received registrants' verifications, and performed residence and employment checks. She also provided guidance to other law enforcement officers on sex offender registration issues.

In January 2009, Deputy Scott received a call from Whitehouse Police Department Officer Bob Overman inquiring about Crabtree's sex offender status. After receiving the call, Deputy Scott ran Crabtree's criminal history by searching the TCIC/NCIC database. She also searched for Crabtree's name in a local database containing incident reports with suspect, victim, and witness information. There, she found Crabtree was identified as a witness in a 2008 burglary case which listed his address as being in Whitehouse, located in Smith County. Based on her discovery of Crabtree's conviction for the Washington offense of rape of a child in the first degree, she determined that Crabtree had a duty to register as a sex offender in Texas because, in her opinion, the offense was substantially similar to the Texas offense of aggravated sexual assault of a child. She stated rape of a child in the first degree was substantially similar to the Texas offense of aggravated sexual assault of a child and that child molestation in the first degree was substantially similar to a sexually violent offense, albeit without specifically identifying which sexually violent offense.

By her own admission, Deputy Scott based her substantial-similarity conclusion on the Washington offense's title: rape of a child in the first degree. She stated that she did not know the elements of Washington's rape of a child offense. She also conceded that DPS is ultimately responsible for determining whether an out-of-state conviction is substantially similar to a Texas offense. In fact, Deputy Scott testified that she submitted “paperwork” to DPS and was still waiting to hear back from them at the time of Crabtree's trial. This, according to Deputy Scott, indicated that “[the paperwork's] either fine or it's not been processed.” The State did not proffer any evidence at trial or notify the trial judge that DPS determined that Crabtree's Washington conviction was substantially similar to a Texas offense that required registration as either a “reportable conviction or adjudication.” The jury found Crabtree guilty of the second-degree felony offense and assessed a punishment of eighteen years' confinement and a $10,000 fine.

Crabtree appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion to quash the indictment and that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction and sentence. As to the sufficiency of the evidence, Crabtree claimed that Code of Criminal Procedure article 62.003 makes a DPS substantial-similarity determination necessary to prove that an individual is required to register due to an extra-jurisdictional conviction. The court of appeals disagreed and held that article 62.003 does not make the requirement to register for an extra-jurisdictional conviction dependent upon a DPS determination and, therefore, it is not an element of failure to comply with registration requirements.¹ The court further found the indictment adequate and the evidence sufficient to support the jury's determination that Crabtree was required to register because the State introduced into evidence the charging documents laying out the elements of Crabtree's prior convictions. ²

We granted Crabtree's petition for discretionary review to determine whether the court of appeals erred in finding that (1) a DPS determination is not an element of the offense and, as a result, the evidence was legally sufficient, and (2) the indictment was sufficient. In challenging the evidence's sufficiency, Crabtree limits his arguments to the State's alleged failure to prove that he had a “reportable conviction or adjudication” and that he was required to register as a sex offender. So our legal-sufficiency analysis and conclusion address only these arguments. Because we find the evidence insufficient to support Crabtree's conviction, we need not address the indictment's sufficiency.

II. Legal Sufficiency

In addressing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, a court must determine whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.³ The essential elements of the crime are determined by state law.⁴ “Under Texas state law, we measure the sufficiency of the evidence ‘by the elements of the offense as defined by the hypothetically correct jury charge for the case.’ ” ⁵ The hypothetically correct jury charge is “one that accurately sets out the law, is authorized by the indictment, does not unnecessarily increase the State's burden of proof or unnecessarily restrict the State's theories of liability, and adequately describes the particular offense for which the defendant was tried.” ⁶

The court of appeals stated that the hypothetically correct jury charge in this case requires the State's evidence to show that (1) Crabtree was required to register, (2) he failed to comply with that requirement, (3) his duty to register would expire under article 62.101(a), and (4) he was required to verify his registration once every 90 days.⁷ We disagree that this completely describes all of the necessary elements of the hypothetically correct jury charge. The court of appeals's conclusion, based on its statutory interpretation, omittedan essential element that defines Crabtree's duty to register—that his extra-jurisdictional conviction was a “reportable conviction or adjudication” because DPS determined it was substantially similar to a Texas offense requiring registration.

A. Interpretation of Chapter 62

The Legislature defines the elements of an offense as the forbidden conduct, the required culpability, any required result, and the negation of any exception to the offense.⁸ When interpreting statutes, “we seek to effectuate the ‘collective’ intent or purpose of the legislators who enacted the legislation.” ⁹ We do this by focusing on the statute's literal text in an “attempt to discern the fair, objective meaning of that text at the time of its enactment.” ¹⁰ And to this end, we presume that (1) “every word has been used for a purpose and that each word, phrase, clause, and sentence should be given effect if reasonably...