Garcia, Roberto

Garcia was charged with committing a 2019 family-violence assault, enhanced to a felony by a prior family-violence conviction against a different woman in 2004. At trial, the judgment from the prior conviction was introduced, but it contained no family-violence finding. To prove it nonetheless qualified as family violence, the State offered the charging instrument (an information) and a marriage license. The information listed the 2004 offense date and the victim’s name as O***** Garcia. The marriage license was dated six days before and listed Garcia as the intended husband and a woman named O***** L. as the intended wife. The first name of both the victim and the intended wife were identical. A fingerprint expert from the Sheriff’s Office testified that he linked Garcia to the set of fingerprints in the records of the prior conviction and that the information named O***** Garcia as the victim. When the prosecutor published the marriage license to the jury, she asked the fingerprint expert, “Are these the two people you identified earlier?” and the expert confirmed they were. Garcia was convicted of the enhanced felony.

On appeal, he argued the State failed to prove he had a family-violence prior because there was no evidence that the woman named in the information was the same person as listed on the marriage license. The court of appeals rejected that argument, relying on the fingerprint expert’s testimony that they were the same, as well as the information and the marriage license. It noted that, based on common knowledge that women often adopt their husbands’ names when they get married, the jury could have inferred that O***** L. was one and the same person as O***** Garcia.

Garcia argues that the six-day lapse in time between the offense date and the marriage license date and the coincidence in the women’s first names raises only a probability that they were the same person, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.