Schlittler v. State
| Decision Date | 27 April 2016 |
| Docket Number | NO. PD–1505–14,PD–1505–14 |
| Citation | 488 S.W.3d 306 |
| Parties | David Schlittler, Appellant v. The State of Texas |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Kenneth D. Nash, Huntsville, for Appellant.
Melinda Fletcher, Special Prosecution Unit, Amarillo, Lisa C. McMinn, State's Attorney, Austin, for State.
Alcala
, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
In this opinion, we determine that the statute under which David Schlittler, appellant, was convicted is not unconstitutional as applied to him. Appellant challenges the statute defining the offense of Improper Contact with a Victim under Texas Penal Code Section 38.111
, which prohibits a person confined in a correctional facility after being convicted of certain sex offenses from contacting the minor victim of the offense or a minor member of the victim's family.1 He explains that he was convicted under that statute for contacting his biological son while imprisoned for the aggravated sexual assault of his former step-daughter, who is also his son's half-sister. Appellant argues that, because it prohibits contact between him and his biological son, the statute, as applied, infringes upon his fundamental liberty interest in the care, custody, and management of his son, in violation of his rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. We disagree. With respect to appellant's due-process challenge, we conclude that, under the particular facts of this case that show that appellant's right to privately communicate with his son had already been permanently enjoined as a result of a separate civil-court order, appellant has failed to show that he had a protected liberty interest that was infringed upon by the statute, and thus his constitutional rights were not violated on that basis. With respect to appellant's equal-protection complaint, we further conclude that Section 38.111
is neither based on a suspect classification, nor does it unduly infringe upon a fundamental liberty interest under the facts of this case, and, therefore, its application to appellant's circumstances does not result in a constitutional violation. We, therefore, affirm the court of appeals's judgment upholding appellant's conviction.
In 1994, appellant was married to L.M., and in 1995, they had a child together, B.S. At the time of her marriage to appellant, L.M. also had a five-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, B.M. In 1998, appellant and L.M. divorced, and, from then on, B.S. primarily resided with L.M. In 2005, B.M. made an outcry against appellant for having sexually abused her during the period from 1994 to 1998, when L.M. was married to appellant. Appellant was subsequently indicted for the aggravated sexual assault of B.M. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to that offense and was placed on deferred adjudication community supervision.
Following appellant's plea of guilty, L.M. petitioned the family court to modify the parent-child relationship between appellant and B.S., who was by that time around twelve years old. After a hearing at which L.M. and appellant both appeared and were represented by counsel, the family-court judge rendered an “Order in Suit to Modify Parent–Child Relationship.”2 Amongst other modifications to appellant's parental rights, that order determined that, in light of the facts of the offense, it was in B.S.'s best interest for appellant to be “permanently enjoined ... from having any contact at all with [B.S.] except during periods of possession.” More specifically, the order stated that appellant was “permanently enjoined from any contact with [B.S.], direct or indirect, including without limitation, communication through Bonita Ralston, or anyone acting in concert with [appellant] and through any means, including, but not limited to telephonic, Instant Messaging, Email, Chatroom, Text Messaging, written communication, or in person communication except for those periods of possession granted herein.”3 The order further specified that any periods of possession must be supervised by a third party, and it ordered appellant to refrain from discussing certain topics with B.S. during those periods of possession, including L.M., B.M., and the aggravated-sexual-assault charges to which appellant had pleaded guilty.4
In 2008, the State filed a motion to revoke appellant's community supervision.
The trial court subsequently adjudicated appellant's guilt and ordered him to serve a twenty-year sentence in prison. While he was in prison, appellant communicated with B.S. through online social-media web sites for about two years, from 2008 to 2010, with the messages being relayed by a third party, appellant's friend Bonita Ralston. In 2010, L.M. became aware of the communications between appellant and B.S., and she alerted prison officials. As a result of his contact with B.S., appellant was charged and convicted of the offense of Improper Contact with a Victim, and he was sentenced to an additional eight years' imprisonment.
On appeal to the Twelfth Court of Appeals, appellant challenged his conviction on the basis that Section 38.111
was unconstitutional as applied to him. In particular, he asserted that the statute unconstitutionally infringed upon his fundamental liberty interest in parenting his child, in violation of the federal Due Process Clause. He further asserted that the statute violated his right to equal protection due to its singling out of persons confined in a correctional facility after being charged with certain sexual offenses and due to the fact that the governmental interest at stake—protecting minor sexual-assault victims from further victimization—was unrelated to suppression of his fundamental parental rights. Rejecting these arguments, the court of appeals upheld appellant's conviction. Schlittler v. State, 476 S.W.3d 496, 500 (Tex.App.–Tyler 2014).
With respect to appellant's due-process complaint, the court of appeals reasoned that, although parents ordinarily have a “fundamental interest in the care, custody and management of their children,” the rights of natural parents are “not absolute” and may be infringed upon in order to protect the child. Id. at 499
(). The court further reasoned that the State has a “compelling interest in protecting victims of criminal activity, and their families, even if they are all members of the same family.” Id. Applying those principles, the court explained that the statute, which was “triggered by Appellant's criminal behavior, protects B.M. and her family members from Appellant.” Id. It further noted that the facts in this case showed that appellant was “attempting to communicate with B.M. through B.S., a situation the statute helps guard against.” Id.5 The court accordingly concluded that the statute, as applied, “did not deprive Appellant of a fundamental interest capriciously or arbitrarily” and, thus, did not violate his due-process rights. Id. at 499–500.
With respect to appellant's equal-protection complaint, the court of appeals also rejected that argument, explaining that the statute's singling out of a certain class of offenders was justified by the government's substantial interest in protecting child victims of sex crimes. Id. at 500
. In particular, the court reasoned that the “class created [by Section 38.111 ] is defined by the particular crime committed,” and the crimes carved out by the statute “all involve physical and emotional harm of a particularly sensitive nature.” Id. Given these considerations, the court determined that the “need to protect victims of these particular crimes, as well as their families, justifies the classification.” Id. Moreover, the court observed that, because the statute applies equally to all class members, it “provides equal treatment for all class members' fundamental rights of parenting.” Id.
This Court granted appellant's petition for discretionary review to assess his complaint that the court of appeals erred by concluding that the improper-contact statute, as applied to him, did not violate his rights to due process and equal protection.6
In his brief to this Court on discretionary review, appellant asserts that the court of appeals erred in its analysis by failing to subject the improper-contact statute to meaningful strict-scrutiny review, as is required whenever a statute infringes upon a fundamental liberty interest, or whenever a statute classifies persons in such a way that the classification interferes with a fundamental right. In particular, he urges that the court of appeals failed to recognize that, because his son was not the victim of any sexual offense but was instead merely a member of the victim's family, the statute “swept much too broadly” by cutting off all contact between him and his son, and thus it is not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. In response to this contention, the State asserts that, because appellant had already been civilly deprived of any right to communicate with his son outside of periods of supervised visitation, he has not demonstrated that the statute infringed upon any fundamental right actually possessed by him.
Although we reach our conclusion through different reasoning, we agree with the court of appeals's ultimate determination that the improper-contact statute, as applied, does not violate appellant's rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. With respect to appellant's due-process complaint, we conclude that appellant has failed to demonstrate that he had a protected liberty interest in communicating with his son in the manner at issue in this case, in light of the family-court order that had permanently enjoined appellant from engaging in such unsupervised communications with his son. We, therefore, need not reach the broader...
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