## Facts

- Rodney Young Anderson and Timothy Sherber repeatedly sold methamphetamine to Jeffery Harmon, a paid confidential informant for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
- Harmon arranged a controlled buy in a parking lot; Sherber drove to the location with Anderson as the passenger.
- Anderson displayed the methamphetamine to Harmon, who signaled undercover officers to intervene.
- Officers approached with weapons drawn and ordered the occupants out; Sherber instead fled in the truck.
- During the escape, Sherber struck police vehicles and injured an officer seated in one of the vehicles; officers fired, and Anderson was shot in the chin.
- Police recovered more than eight grams of methamphetamine from the truck.
- Anderson was charged with (1) possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver (4–200 grams) and (2) aggravated assault of a public servant under a party-liability theory alleging use of the truck as a deadly weapon.
- A jury convicted Anderson on both counts and imposed 40 years’ imprisonment on the drug charge and life imprisonment on the aggravated-assault charge.
- On appeal, Anderson challenged only the aggravated-assault conviction, arguing legal insufficiency because he was not the driver.

## Issues

1. Whether evidence was legally sufficient to convict Anderson of aggravated assault of a public servant under Texas Penal Code § 7.02(b) when the assaultive driving was committed by his co-conspirator during flight from the drug transaction.

## Decision

- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment upholding Anderson’s aggravated-assault conviction.
- The court held the evidence was legally sufficient under the conspiracy theory of party liability in Texas Penal Code § 7.02(b).
- A rational jury could find Anderson conspired to deliver methamphetamine and that Sherber’s aggravated assault occurred during the attempt to carry out that conspiracy, in furtherance of it, and was an offense Anderson should have anticipated.

## Legal Principles

- Under Texas Penal Code § 7.02(b), a conspirator is criminally responsible for an additional felony committed by a co-conspirator if, in attempting to carry out the conspiracy, the additional felony is committed in furtherance of the unlawful purpose and is one that should have been anticipated as a result of executing the conspiracy.
- “Should have anticipated” is assessed by objective foreseeability, not a defendant’s claimed subjective expectations.
- In legal-sufficiency review, the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational factfinder could have found the essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt.
- A jury may reasonably infer that flight from police during a felony drug transaction, including dangerous vehicular conduct risking injury to officers, can be a foreseeable consequence of the conspiracy’s execution.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Anderson’s aggravated-assault-of-a-public-servant conviction because the jury could rationally find that the vehicular assault committed by his co-conspirator during escape was in furtherance of their drug-delivery conspiracy and was objectively foreseeable under Texas Penal Code § 7.02(b), even though Anderson was only a passenger and did not drive the vehicle.


Anderson v. State, 416 S.W.3d 884 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013)