Barnes v. State (Unpublished Memo): Victim of domestic violence was wishy-washy, but his testimony, together with that of law enforcement, supports a conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. By wishy-washy, I mean that the victim’s initial complaints that his girlfriend stabbed him dissolved under the power of “love” into an affidavit that he held her hands and forced her to stab him, but resolidified on the stand to a declaration that she had, in fact stabbed him. The deputy’s testimony strengthened the State’s case with: 1. a contemporaneous account of the victim’s first version, and 2. Barnes’ statement at the scene that she wanted to kill the victim because he was having an affair.
There was another reason she gave for wanting to kill the victim, but the deputy didn’t testify to that one. Barnes wanted to get into evidence an assertion that the victim had molested her daughter. All of the testimony on that point was admittedly hearsay. But Barnes jumped straight into the relevancy/Tex. R. Evid. 403 issues. The Tyler court doesn’t jump with her. Regardless of the arguments for relevance, the evidence is still hearsay, and still inadmissible.
Barnes got three years, probated to ten.
