Owings, Richard Charles Jr., 541 S.W.3d 144

Richard Owings was indicted for a single count of aggravated sexual assault of a child alleging one instance of genital-to-genital contact; complainant K.M. testified the genital contact occurred repeatedly from ages 4–8 and described three separate occasions that also included forced oral sex.
The State presented K.M.’s detailed outcry and background testimony from her grandmother and mother about frequent locked-door episodes; the jury convicted and sentenced Owings to 30 years.
Defense requested, at the close of the State’s case, that the trial court require the State to elect which particular alleged incident it relied upon for conviction; the court denied the request.
The First Court of Appeals reversed, finding the trial court’s failure to require an election was harmful constitutional error and remanded for a new trial.
The State sought discretionary review; the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed the trial court erred in not ordering an election but held that, under the record, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and remanded the case back to the court of appeals to address other issues.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (State)	Defendant's Argument (Owings)	Held
Whether trial court erred by not requiring the State to elect the particular act when multiple same-type acts were alleged	Election not required to preserve conviction because complainant consistently described a repeated pattern and jury focus was on one type of act	Failure to elect deprived Owings of constitutional protections (notice, unanimity, and protection from aggregation of acts)	Court: Trial court erred in failing to require election (constitutional error)
Whether the erroneous failure to require an election was harmless under Rule 44.2(a)	Error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because (1) extraneous-act evidence was admissible and limited, (2) all incidents came from the same witness and described a consistent pattern, (3) no realistic risk of non-unanimity, (4) defendant’s defense was a blanket denial	Error was harmful and required reversal because the jury could have convicted by aggregating multiple incidents or different jurors could have relied on different incidents	Court: Error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt; conviction stands and case remanded to court of appeals for remaining issues

O’Neal v. State, 746 S.W.2d 769 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988) (established election requirement where multiple same-type acts are shown)
Phillips v. State, 193 S.W.3d 904 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006) (reaffirmed O’Neal and explained harm when jury may convict non‑unanimously on different detailed incidents)
Dixon v. State, 201 S.W.3d 731 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006) (found election error harmless where multiple incidents were recounted by the same child with consistent specificity)
Cosio v. State, 353 S.W.3d 766 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011) (discussed defense of complete denial across multiple allegations and relevance to unanimity/notice analysis)
Arrington v. State, 451 S.W.3d 834 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015) (illustrated circumstances where conviction reflects complete rejection of defendant’s blanket denial)