# Fleming, Mark Alexander

> Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas · June 18, 2014 · 455 S.W.3d 577

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9812383

## Case

- **Full name:** Mark Alexander FLEMING, Appellant v. the STATE of Texas
- **Court:** Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
- **Decided:** June 18, 2014
- **Citations:** 455 S.W.3d 577; 2014 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1959; 2014 WL 8508552
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Cochran
- **Judges:** Meyers, Keasler, Hervey, Cochran, Alcala, Keller, Price, Johnson, Womack
- **Cited by:** 49 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9812383

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating belief that “Texas statutory mistake-of-fact defense already applies to the offense of consensual statutory rape” but “reluctantly” joining majority opinion and recognizing that her belief “is not a current state of the law in Texas”
- stating that she “would hold that, after Lawrence v. Texas, in a limited number of child sex cases, due process requires the submission of an affirmative defense of reasonable mistake of age”
- holding that there is no culpable mental state with respect to the child’s age in a prosecution for sexual assault of a child, which is a strict-liability offense
- affirming conviction for aggravated sexual assault and finding no constitutional violation in failure to require mens rea as to victim’s age

## Opinion text

COCHRAN, J.,
filed a concurring opinion.
For the reasons set out in my concurring opinions in Cells v. State 1 and Farmer v. State, 2 I believe that the Texas statutory mistake-of-fact defense already applies to the offense of consensual statutory rape. Nonetheless, I recognize that this is not the current state of the law in Texas, and therefore I reluctantly join the majority opinion.
. 416 S.W.3d 419, 441-58 (Tex.Crim.App.2013) (Cochran, J., concurring).
. 411 S.W.3d 901, 908-18 (Tex.Crim.App.2013) (Cochran, J., concurring).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9812383. Public record. Not legal advice.
