# Dewberry v. State

> Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · October 20, 1999 · 4 S.W.3d 735

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9748924

## Case

- **Full name:** John Curtis DEWBERRY, Appellant, v. the STATE of Texas
- **Court:** Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
- **Decided:** October 20, 1999
- **Citations:** 4 S.W.3d 735; 1999 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 115; 1999 WL 955921
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Womack
- **Judges:** Holland, McCormick, Meyers, Mansfield, Keller, Keasler, Price, Womack, Johnson
- **Cited by:** 2,661 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Declined to follow by Christopher S. Grimes v. State (2005).
- Negative treatments: 2
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9748924

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that because defendant failed to distinguish his rights under the Texas Constitution from those under the federal constitution and combined all four points into one argument, court would address only whether defendant's rights under the United States Constitution were …
- holding that three oral motions for continuance during trial preserved nothing for appellate review
- holding statement admissible under against-penal- interest exception where, among other circumstances indicating reliability, the statements incriminating the defendant were made before declarant became a suspect and were “spontaneous” to friends and acquaintances unconnected …
- stating the rule that, when conducting a legal sufficiency review of a conviction, a court should evaluate all of the evidence in the record, whether direct or circumstantial, admissible or not
- noting that because appellant failed to distinguish his rights under the Texas constitution from that of the federal Constitution and combined his points based on the state and federal constitutions into one argument, “we only address whether appellant’s rights under the Unite…

## Opinion text

WOMACK, J.,
filed a concurring opinion in which, JOHNSON, J., joined.
I join the judgment of the Court.
I agree that the admission of the hearsay statement of Chris Dewberry to Mark Bilfifano did not violate the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, as the appellant argues in point of error eight. I base my conclusion on the statement’s particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. I do not agree that the reliability of this statement can be analogized to the reliability factors in White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346 , 112 S.Ct. 736 (1992), see ante at 753, or that the hearsay exception for statements against penal interest is firmly rooted, see ante at 753.
I also believe that, if the statement were inadmissible, the error in its admission would be harmless. The only fact in this declarant’s statement to Bilfafano that was not in his other statements, which were admitted without a constitutional objection, was that “they had to tie him up.”

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9748924. Public record. Not legal advice.