## Facts

- In the early morning of November 4, 1990, an intruder broke into R.P.’s home in Austin, Texas, disabled the telephones, bound her, searched the house, and sexually assaulted her.
- R.P. could not identify her assailant, and the record lacked traditional identity evidence such as eyewitness identification or fingerprints.
- The State’s identity proof centered on semen recovered from R.P. and her clothing.
- RFLP DNA testing matched Roberson’s known blood and semen to semen found on R.P.’s nightgown, panty liner, and vaginal swabs.
- PCR-based testing also produced a match between Roberson’s known blood and semen found on a vaginal swab.
- Serological testing did not exclude Roberson as the semen donor.
- The reported frequency of the DNA profile occurring in another person was extremely low (including figures in the billions and higher, depending on population group).
- A jury convicted Roberson of aggravated sexual assault, and the trial court imposed a life sentence to run cumulatively with a prior life sentence in another aggravated sexual assault case.

## Issues

1. Whether DNA match evidence, standing alone, was legally sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Roberson was the perpetrator.
2. Whether the same evidence was factually sufficient under Texas criminal factual-sufficiency review (as then applied), given the lack of corroborating identity evidence.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the conviction and life sentence.
- The court overruled both sufficiency challenges.
- The court held that, in appropriate circumstances, DNA evidence alone may be legally and factually sufficient to establish identity beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The general verdict was valid because evidence supporting at least one submitted theory of aggravated sexual assault sufficed.

## Legal Principles

- Legal sufficiency: evidence is sufficient if, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, any rational factfinder could find each element beyond a reasonable doubt, including identity.
- Factual sufficiency (as then applied): a conviction may be reversed only if, after neutral review, the proof of guilt is so weak or so against the great weight of the evidence as to be clearly wrong or manifestly unjust.
- DNA evidence is substantive proof of identity; it is not categorically inadequate merely because it is expressed in statistical or probabilistic terms.
- A conviction may rest on a single type of evidence if that evidence meets the governing sufficiency standards.
- When alternative theories of an offense are submitted disjunctively, a general verdict stands if the evidence supports at least one theory.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Roberson’s conviction, concluding that multiple DNA tests producing an extremely rare matching profile constituted powerful identity evidence and, even without corroborating identification evidence, was legally and factually sufficient to support the jury’s verdict.


Roberson v. State, 16 S.W.3d 156 (Tex. App.—Austin 2000)