Ignacio Martin Gonzalez v. State, 455 S.W.3d 198

Ignacio Martin Gonzalez lived with the complainant (B.R.), a seven-year-old boy, and B.R.’s mother; B.R.’s mother discovered Gonzalez next to B.R. with his pants unzipped and B.R. salivating, and accused Gonzalez of sexual assault.
B.R. testified at trial describing repeated sexual assaults by Gonzalez; B.R.’s mother and emergency-room personnel also testified that B.R. reported abuse.
Dr. William Schmidt, a psychotherapist who diagnosed B.R. with PTSD, treated B.R.; his treatment records described revisiting sexual-abuse experiences and included an entry mentioning B.R. seeing mating dogs that reminded him of Gonzalez.
The State sought to admit Dr. Schmidt’s treatment records (with redactions by agreement); Gonzalez objected on relevance and Rule 403 prejudice grounds and separately to the specific dog-entry. The trial court admitted the records.
During defense testimony, Gonzalez’s son testified as a character witness and was improperly impeached with prior misdemeanor marijuana convictions; the court sustained the objection, twice instructed the jury to disregard, and denied Gonzalez’s motion for mistrial.
A jury convicted Gonzalez on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child; Gonzalez appealed raising three issues: admission of Dr. Schmidt’s records, ineffective assistance for any failure to preserve objections, and denial of mistrial after improper impeachment.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of Dr. Schmidt’s treatment records	Records were irrelevant or unfairly prejudicial under Rules 401–403; the dog-entry was especially prejudicial	Records were relevant to whether sexual abuse (not maternal abuse) caused B.R.’s trauma; probative value outweighed prejudice	Court affirmed admission: records were probative of contested issue (cause of trauma) and not substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice; dog-entry error, if any, was harmless
Ineffective assistance of counsel for failure to preserve record objection	Counsel failed to preserve appellate complaint about records, so performance was deficient and prejudicial	Counsel did object; regardless, admission of records was not reversible error, so no Strickland prejudice	Denied: even assuming performance issues, Gonzalez cannot show a reasonable probability of a different outcome on appeal because no reversible error in admission
Denial of mistrial after improper impeachment of defense witness	Improper impeachment with misdemeanor marijuana convictions left an indelible mark that jury instructions could not cure; mistrial required	Trial court promptly sustained objection, instructed jury twice to disregard and explained law; conviction would likely occur absent the error	Denied: although prosecutor’s conduct was improper and magnified, prompt curative instructions and high likelihood of conviction made denial within trial court’s discretion

Tillman v. State, 354 S.W.3d 425 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011) (standard for appellate review of evidentiary rulings)
Brown v. State, 757 S.W.2d 739 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988) (limits on admitting victim’s psychological-injury evidence when injury and cause are not disputed)
Yatalese v. State, 991 S.W.2d 509 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1998) (psychological-trauma evidence admissible when occurrence of assault is disputed)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (U.S. 1984) (two-prong ineffective-assistance standard)
Casey v. State, 215 S.W.3d 870 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007) (Rule 403 unfair-prejudice explanation)
Gigliobianco v. State, 210 S.W.3d 637 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006) (factors for balancing probative value vs. unfair prejudice)
Mosley v. State, 983 S.W.2d 249 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998) (three-factor test for mistrial analysis)
Archie v. State, 340 S.W.3d 734 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011) (application of Mosley factors to improper impeachment and mistrial requests)