## Facts

- Ray Edwin Billingslea lived in Dallas with his 94-year-old mother, Hazel Billingslea, along with his wife and son.
- Hazel became bedridden and dependent on others for care.
- Family members reported being denied access to Hazel and being told she was “asleep”; one witness testified Billingslea threatened to kill her if she interfered.
- Authorities entered the home and detected a strong odor of rotting flesh.
- Hazel was found upstairs in a severely neglected condition, including extensive bedsores and injuries; she was taken to a hospital and later died.
- The State prosecuted Billingslea for injury to an elderly individual, alleging he caused serious bodily injury by failing to provide or obtain medical care.

## Issues

1. Whether an indictment alleging injury to an elderly individual by omission is fundamentally defective if it does not allege the statutory source of the defendant’s duty to act.
2. Whether the evidence is legally sufficient to support conviction for an omission where no statute imposed a duty on the defendant to obtain medical care for the elderly victim.

## Decision

- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the court of appeals’ reversal and judgment of acquittal.
- The court held the indictment was fundamentally defective because it alleged an omission but did not plead any statutory duty requiring Billingslea to obtain medical care.
- The court held the evidence was legally insufficient because criminal liability for an omission requires a legal duty imposed by statute, and no such duty was shown under the statute in effect at the time.
- Because the defect and insufficiency were dispositive, the acquittal remained in place.

## Legal Principles

- Under Texas Penal Code § 6.01(c), an omission is criminal only when the actor has a legal duty to perform the omitted act, and that duty must be imposed by statute.
- When the State relies on an omission theory, the charging instrument must allege the source of the statutory duty that makes the failure to act criminal.
- A statute must provide clear notice of conduct required or prohibited; moral or familial expectations do not create criminal liability without statutory authorization.
- Statutory amendments expanding or clarifying omission-based liability cannot be applied retroactively to conduct occurring before the amendment.

## Conclusion

The court held that omission-based criminal liability for injury to an elderly individual required pleading and proving a statutory duty to act; because neither the indictment nor the proof identified such a duty under the law then in effect, the conviction could not stand and an acquittal was required.


Billingslea v. State, 780 S.W.2d 271 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989)