Background
A Bowie County jury found Jashun R. Riley guilty of three counts of sexual assault of a child, each a second-degree felony. The jury sentenced him to twenty years’ imprisonment and imposed a $10,000 fine on each count, and the trial court ordered the prison sentences to run consecutively.
Before trial, the State moved to exclude evidence of alleged misconduct or bad acts by the complainant. Riley asked the trial court to review photographs and video recordings that he described as relevant to her credibility. After reviewing the explicitly sexual material in camera, the court excluded it under Texas Rule of Evidence 412. At trial, Riley renewed his request after arguing that testimony about prior sexual abuse had opened the door, but he did not explain why the evidence qualified for a Rule 412 exception or why the Constitution required its admission.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that Riley failed to preserve his sole appellate complaint—that excluding the evidence denied him the right to confront the complainant—because he did not present that specific constitutional basis for admission to the trial court.
The court explained that a party challenging excluded evidence must tell the trial judge why the evidence is admissible, and the ground raised at trial must correspond to the argument made on appeal. Riley’s assertion that the testimony had “opened the door” did not address Rule 412’s exceptions or invoke a constitutional right to admission. Because the trial court never had an opportunity to rule on the constitutional argument Riley later advanced, the appellate court overruled his issue without reaching the merits of whether the evidence should have been admitted.
Key Takeaways
- A general request to admit evidence does not preserve every possible ground for admissibility.
- A defendant challenging exclusion under Texas Rule of Evidence 412 must identify the applicable exception or other specific basis for admission in the trial court.
- A Confrontation Clause or other constitutional theory must be expressly presented at trial and cannot be raised for the first time on appeal.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that preservation rules apply even when an evidentiary ruling allegedly implicates a constitutional right. Criminal-defense counsel seeking to introduce evidence restricted by Rule 412 must make the precise statutory and constitutional arguments supporting admission while the trial court can still rule on them.
The court’s ruling was procedural, not a determination that the excluded photographs and recordings were necessarily inadmissible or that their exclusion complied with the Confrontation Clause.