concluding evidence supported conclusion that seven-year-old child appreciated need for veracity in interview by sexual-assault nurse examiner and considering fact that nurse interviews a child alone because child is more comfortable and likely to be truthful under such circumstance and child indicated to nurse she understood purpose of interview
How later courts described this case
- concluding evidence supported conclusion that seven-year-old child appreciated need for veracity in interview by sexual-assault nurse examiner and considering fact that nurse interviews a child alone because child is more comfortable and likely to be truthful under such circumstance and child indicated to nurse she understood purpose of interview
- stating that the object of a sexual assault exam is to ascertain whether a victim has been sexually abused and to determine whether further medical attention is needed, and therefore, the victim’s statements describing the acts of sexual abuse are pertinent to the victim’s medical diagnosis and treatment
- holding that because the record was devoid of anything that reflected the defense counsel’s reasoning for failing to request a limiting instruction on extraneous offenses, appellate court must defer to the Strickland presumption that defense counsel’s decisions were a part of a sound trial strategy
- holding that, because “[t]he object of a sexual assault exam is to ascertain whether the child has been sexually abused and to determine whether further medical attention is needed[,] . . . statements describing acts of sexual abuse are pertinent to the victim’s medical diagnosis and treatment”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result but write separately because I would hold that the trial court did not err in admitting Desmaris’s testimony regarding S.E.’s statements during her interview that (1) “It makes me want to puke”; (2) “it makes me want to puke”; (3) “[Appellant] is sick, so sick I can’t stand it”; and (4) “He makes me look at dirty magazines.” If the remaining statements from the interview are admissible, and I agree that they are, then these statements are merely same transaction contextual evidence and therefore are admissible. These statements are integral to a full description of the offense.
In Mayes v. State, the court of criminal appeals explained same transaction contextual evidence:
Same transaction contextual evidence is deemed admissible as a so-called exception to the propensity rule where “several crimes are intermixed, or blended with one another, or connected so that they form an indivisible criminal transaction, and full proof by testimony, whether direct or circumstantial, of any one of them cannot be given without showing the others.” The reason for its admission “is simply because in narrating the one it is impracticable to avoid describing the other, and not because the other has any evidential purpose.” Necessity, then, seems to be one of the reasons behind admitting evidence of the accused’s acts, words and conduct at the time of the commission of the offense. 5
For these reasons only, I write separately.
. Mayes v. State, 816 S.W.2d 79 , 86 n. 4 (Tex.Crim.App.1991) (citations omitted).