Cortez v. Texas (original by judge alcala)
Annotate this CaseThe issue this case presented for the Court of Criminal Appeals' review centered on whether the application paragraph in jury instructions was properly phrased. In his petition for discretionary review, appellant Damien Cortez contended that the court of appeals erred in its determination that the application paragraph of the jury instructions for fraudulent use or possession of identifying information properly described the applicable law. In particular, appellant argued that the instructions were erroneous because they failed to instruct the jury that the term “item of identifying information” requires a “grouping of identifying information” such as is represented in a check, bank statement or credit card. Furthermore, appellant contended that he was egregiously harmed by the alleged error because, had the jury been properly instructed, he would have been subjected to a lower punishment range that would have permitted the jury to find that he possessed fewer items of identifying information by deciding, for example, that fraudulent possession of a check would be counted as one item rather than the identifying information on the check being considered as multiple items. After review, the Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed with the appellate court's reasoning, but agreed with the ultimate conclusion that the trial court’s instructions properly did not limit the jury with respect to the number of separate tangible documents on which the identifying information appears. The Court, therefore, affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals.
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