Brief filed: 06/10/2025
Documents
Villarreal v. Texas
United States Supreme Court; Case No. 24-557
Prior Decision
Decision below 707 S.W.3d 138 (Tex. Ct. Crim. App. Oct. 9, 2024)
Argument(s)
The trial court violated the Sixth Amendment by prohibiting defense counsel from discussing the defendant’s testimony during an overnight recess during that testimony. First, the trial court’s order is incompatible with the Supreme Court’s decision in Geders v. United States, holding that a prohibition on attorney-defendant communications during an overnight break in trial violates the Sixth Amendment, because any meaningful discussion of trial strategy will inevitably also require discussion of the defendant’s testimony. Second, even if a narrow prohibition on discussion of testimony were theoretically compatible with the Sixth Amendment, defense attorneys and their clients will find it impossible to navigate such a confusing mandate by trying to distinguish between matters related and unrelated to testimony, and attorneys will be chilled from engaging in robust conferrals with clients at a key juncture in the trial. Third, the denial of meaningful contact with one’s attorney during an overnight recess is a structural error requiring automatic reversal without a harmless error inquiry. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Geders and later in Perry v. Leeke assume as much, and no other approach makes sense, given the diffuse nature of the error’s impact and the awkwardness of delving into confidential attorney-client communications to determine prejudice.
Author(s)
Andrea Roth, UC Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, CA; Barbara E. Bergman, NACDL, Tucson, AZ
