Brooks v. State

OPINION HERVEY, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which KELLER, P.J., KEASLER, and COCHRAN, JJ., joined.

We granted discretionary review in this case to address, among other things, whether there is any meaningful distinction between a legal-sufficiency standard under Jackson v. Virginia[1] and a factual-sufficiency standard under Clewis v. State and whether there is a need to retain both standards.[2] Under the Jackson v. Virginia legal-sufficiency standard, a reviewing court is required to defer to a jury’s credibility and weight determinations.[3] In Clewis, this Court adopted a factual-sufficiency standard, which is supposed to be distinguished from a Jackson v. Virginia legal-sufficiency standard primarily by not requiring a reviewing court to defer to a jury’s credibility and weight determinations.[4] But then Clewis contradicted itself by also requiring a reviewing court to apply this standard with deference to these jury determinations “so as to avoid an appellate court’s substituting its judgment for that of the jury.”[5] After having made several attempts to “clarify” Clewis in part to resolve this fundamental contradiction, we eventually came to realize that the Clewis factual-sufficiency standard is “barely distinguishable” from the Jackson [*895] v. Virginia legal-sufficiency standard.[6] We now take the next small step in this progression and recognize that these two standards have become essentially the same standard and that there is no meaningful distinction between them that would justify retaining them both. We, therefore, overrule Clewis and decide that the Jackson v. Virginia legal-sufficiency standard is the only standard that a reviewing court should apply in determining whether the evidence is sufficient to support each element of a criminal offense that the State is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

The record reflects that, in cause number 10-07-00309-CR, a jury convicted appellant of possessing with intent to deliver more than four but less than 200 grams of crack cocaine and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Appellant claimed on direct appeal that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to support the intent-to-deliver element of this offense.