Martina Vansice Stuhler, Appellant v. the State of Texas

Summary

The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the court of appeals' reversal of the appellant's injury-to-a-child conviction. It held the evidence legally insufficient to prove serious bodily injury because an injury's seriousness is measured as it was inflicted — not after medical intervention or absent continued abuse — and the pediatrician's testimony showed no substantial risk of death, no serious permanent disfigurement, and no protracted organ impairment as the injury presented. It further held that the single application paragraph allowing conviction alternatively for serious bodily injury or for serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury violated the constitutional right to a unanimous verdict because those statutory results are elemental in this result-of-conduct offense, and that the error was egregiously harmful even though no specific unanimity objection was made, since the bulk of the evidence and argument centered on serious bodily injury. Presiding Judge Keller, dissenting with Judges Womack, Keasler, and Hervey, would have found the evidence sufficient to prove serious bodily injury and no egregious harm from the unanimity defect.