The Fourth Court of Appeals sits in San Antonio and covers Atascosa, Bandera, Bexar, Brooks, Dimmit, Duval, Edwards, Frio, Gillespie, Guadalupe, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Karnes, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Kinney, LaSalle, McMullen, Mason, Maverick, Medina, Menard, Real, Starr, Sutton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Webb, Wilson, Zapata, and Zavala counties.
After a court of appeals decision, either party can file a Petition for Discretionary Review (PDR) asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider the outcome. The CCA grants about 7.6% of PDRs from Fourth Court decisions and, when it takes a case, rules against the lower court in about 88% of those. The district runs from San Antonio south to the Rio Grande, covering Webb County (Laredo) and a broad border corridor where immigration consequences compound the stakes of any criminal conviction.
This Court hears appeals from pretrial habeas denials (articles 11.08 and 11.09) and from 11.072 rulings (community supervision). Habeas under article 11.07—the main felony route—is filed with the convicting court and decided by the Court of Criminal Appeals. See Direct Appeals and Postconviction Relief for the full map.
Fourth Court of Appeals—Cases
- Williams v. State, No. 04-20-00486-CR (direct appeal). Aggravated promotion of prostitution after an undercover sting. We argued that the indictment, which tracked section 43.04(a) of the Texas Penal Code by alleging the defendant “owns, invests in, finances, controls, supervises, or manages a prostitution enterprise,” used undefined terms of variable meaning, so the trial court should have granted the motion to quash and required the State to plead which method it intended to prove.
- Ex parte Owens, No. 04-21-00412-CR (pretrial habeas). Charged under the stalking statute, section 42.072 of the Texas Penal Code. We argued that the statute is substantially overbroad under the First Amendment and an impermissible content-based regulation of pure speech, because deciding whether it is violated requires examining the content of the communication.
- Ex parte Metzger, Nos. 04-19-00438-CR & 04-19-00450-CR (pretrial habeas, consolidated across two counties). Multiple counts under the invasive-visual-recording statute, sections 21.15(b)(1) and (b)(2) of the Texas Penal Code. We argued that photography and the transmission of images are inherently expressive activity protected by the First Amendment, that the statute is a content-based restriction reaching far more protected expression than the narrow band of obscenity and child pornography, and is therefore overbroad.