This page of Baker's Legal Pages contains casenotes from recent decisions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This information is made available as a free public service for your personal, non-commercial use. While every effort has been made to provide accurate material at this site, it is provided "as is" and no representations are made that it is free of mistakes or inaccuracies. If you inform me of any mistake or inaccuracy that you find here, I will make every effort to determine what corrections are required and to make those changes.

Below are casenotes from recent opinions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, supplementing Baker's Texas Criminal Evidence Handbook. Each casenote is linked to the text of the opinion from which it was derived.

For links to other casesnote pages supplementing Baker's Texas Criminal Evidence Handbook, see the Criminal Evidence Handbook Casenotes Listing.

For links to casesnote pages for other handbooks, see the Main Casenotes Listing.

If you already know the name of a particular recent case of interest, you may go directly to that opinion from the Table of Recent Opinions.

rules (Rule 201. Judicial Notice of Adjudicative Facts)

• When a trial judge takes judicial notice of adjudicative facts, he authorizes the fact-finder to accept the truth or existence of those specific facts without requiring formal proof. Adjudicative facts which may be judicially noticed are relevant to the ultimate issue in dispute, but are not themselves the subject of any controversy. Such facts may be judicially noticed only if they are not subject to reasonable disagreement. For instance, in a criminal case, for purposes of establishing venue, a trial or appellate judge might take judicial notice that the City of Austin, where the offense allegedly occurred, is located in Travis County. The parties might dispute the fact that the offense occurred at all, or if it did, that it occurred in Austin, but not that the City of Austin is in Travis County. To insist that a party prove the commonly known (or at least, readily ascertainable) fact of the city's location would waste limited judicial resources and defy common sense. Rule 201 of the Texas Rules of Evidence governs judicial notice of these adjudicative facts. Watts v State (March 12, 2003, No. 2115-01)

• Judicial notice of state law is not governed by Article II, but by individual statutes and cases. Texas courts can take judicial notice of the laws of this State. In determining the content, scope, and meaning of the applicable law, the judge may look to statutes, rules, case law, and legislative history. The judge is not restricted in his investigation into the content or applicability of the laws of the forum; he may make an independent search for persuasive data or rest content with the materials the parties provide. Watts v State (March 12, 2003, No. 2115-01)

• A trial judge might be requested to rule on a defendant's motion for directed verdict, alleging that the State had failed to prove an essential element of its case. In that case, the trial judge might well take judicial notice of the existence, content, and applicability of a published decision of the court of criminal appeals in ruling upon that motion for directed verdict. That is a perfectly appropriate exercise of judicial notice of law. But this type of judicial notice is always taken outside the presence of the jury. The jury, however, determines questions of fact in light of the law as it is finally determined and given to it by the court in the written jury charge. All of the applicable law is contained within that written jury charge. The jury charge does not contain excerpts from judicial decisions or any statements that an appellate court has held that proof of "X" fact fulfills "Y" legal requirement. Watts v State (March 12, 2003, No. 2115-01)

matters judicially noticed (Rule 201. Judicial Notice of Adjudicative Facts)

• Appeals court may take judicial notice of scientific literature not presented by either party at trial or on appeal. Mata v State (June 6, 2001, No. 133-00)

• Court of criminal appeals took judicial notice that Tenuate is an appetite suppressant and Valium is a tranquilizer, citing D. Sifton (ed.), et al., The PDR Family Guide to Prescription Drugs, pp. 569 & 616 (5th ed. 1997). Wright v State, 981 S.W.2d 197 (Dec. 9, 1998)

matter not judicially noticed (Rule 201. Judicial Notice of Adjudicative Facts)

• Nothing presented for review on claim that use of pancuronium bromide to impose death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment; resolution of issue requires a fact-intensive inquiry and issue was not litigated in trial court; novel nature of the claim counseled against resolution through judicial notice without benefit of litigation before a fact-finder. Bible v State (May 4, 2005, No. AP-74,713)