Butcher v. Texas (original by judge hervey)
Annotate this CaseIn the pre-dawn hours of a September day in 2009, the nine-year-old complainant (JG) was walking alone down a long, dark, desolate driveway by herself from her condominium complex to her school bus stop. Appellant approached her from behind, grabbed her around the waist with one arm, covered her mouth with his other hand, and threatened to cut her with a knife if she screamed. Appellant then put JG on the floorboard of his truck and drove her to his apartment. While she was in Appellant’s car, JG reached into her backpack claiming to look for a snack, but she grabbed her mobile phone to seek help. Because it was still dark outside, Appellant saw the light from JG’s phone when she activated it, and he took it from her. He then pried the battery out with a knife. Once at Appellant’s apartment, JG was put into a closet with her hands bound. After eight hours Appellant decided to release JG. He put her back on the floorboard of his truck and drove her to an apartment complex near where she lived. But when she told him that she did not know how to get home from where they were, Appellant took her back to the site of the kidnapping and released her there. JG returned home to an empty house: her mother was not there because she was at the police station. JG was unable to call anyone for help because Appellant still had her mobile phone, and JG and her mother did not have a home phone. JG walked to a neighbor’s house and used their telephone to call her mother. A little while later, her mother and police arrived. The punishment level for aggravated kidnapping is reduced from a first-degree felony to a second-degree felony if the kidnapper "voluntarily releases the victim in a safe place." The court of appeals concluded that the evidence was legally and factually sufficient to support the jury’s rejection of Appellant’s mitigating defense of release in a safe place. The Court of Criminal Appeals granted review to examine the court of appeals' holding, and because the Court agreed with the judgment of the court of appeals, it affirmed.
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