## Facts

- A street fight occurred between two rival gangs.
- During the altercation, Enil Lopez fought with Jose Manuel Morales’s brother, Juan.
- Morales shot and killed Lopez.
- Witness testimony conflicted on whether Lopez was unarmed or attacked Juan with a metal pipe, and on whether Juan participated in beating Lopez or was helpless on the ground.
- Morales was indicted for murder and claimed he acted in defense of his brother (defense of a third person).
- The jury charge included defense-of-third-person instructions incorporating aspects of Texas self-defense law.
- Over objection, the trial court included language requiring the jury to consider whether “a person in the defendant’s situation would not have had a duty to retreat.”
- The trial court did not include an instruction on the statutory presumption that the defendant’s use of deadly force was reasonable.

## Issues

1. Whether, after the 2007 amendments to Texas self-defense law, the trial court erred by instructing the jury using “duty to retreat” language not authorized by statute in a defense-of-third-person charge.
2. Whether the trial court erred by omitting an instruction on the statutory presumption that the defendant’s use of deadly force was reasonable, and whether the intermediate appellate court properly analyzed entitlement to that presumption.

## Decision

- The Court of Criminal Appeals held the trial court erred by submitting the complained-of duty-to-retreat language.
- The court held the duty-to-retreat instruction was not authorized by statute and constituted a comment on the weight of the evidence.
- The court held the court of appeals’ analysis denying a presumption-of-reasonableness instruction was incomplete.
- The court reversed the court of appeals’ judgment and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

## Legal Principles

- When statutory prerequisites for “no duty to retreat” are satisfied, a jury charge may not reintroduce retreat as a required element by asking whether a person in the defendant’s situation “would not have had a duty to retreat.”
- Jury instructions not authorized by statute that emphasize a particular evidentiary consideration in a way that may influence the jury’s factfinding can constitute improper comments on the weight of the evidence.
- Entitlement to a presumption-of-reasonableness instruction under Texas Penal Code § 9.32(b) requires analysis of the statute’s conditions (including lack of provocation and not being engaged in criminal activity) and whether the evidence raises the presumption.
- An appellate court may not deny the presumption instruction based on a categorical characterization of the event as “criminal activity” without analyzing the statutory criteria against the evidentiary record.

## Conclusion

The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed because the jury charge improperly injected an unauthorized duty-to-retreat requirement into the justification instructions, and it required a fuller, statute-focused analysis of whether the evidence entitled Morales to a presumption-of-reasonableness instruction.


Morales v. State, 357 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011)