Appellant Julian Antonio Castillo was charged by indictment with the felony offense of intentionally and knowingly causing serious bodily injury to a child. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.04(a)(1) (West 1994). The jury convicted appellant of the lesser included offense of reckless injury to a child and assessed his punishment at 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $10,-000.
ISSUES
Appellant advances three issues on appeal. First, appellant challenges the legal sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction. Second, appellant urges that the trial court egregiously erred by adding a theory of prosecution (“shaking”) that was not supported by the indictment when charging the jury on the lesser included offenses of reckless injury to a child and injury to a child by criminal negligent. Third, appellant argues that he was deprived of his constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel when counsel failed to object to the jury instructions.
THE ACCUSATION
Appellant was charged under section 22.04(a)(1) of the Penal Code, which provides in pertinent part:
(a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, by act or intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly by omission, causes to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual:
(1) serious bodily injury.
Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 22.04(a)(1) (West 1994). 1
The culpable mental states are statutorily defined.
See
Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 6.03 (West 1994). Moreover, culpable mental states are classified according to relative degrees, from highest to lowest as follows: (1) intentional; (2) knowing; (3) reckless; (4) criminal negligence.
See
Tex.Code Crim.Proc. Ann. § 6.02(d) (West 1994). “Reckless” or “recklessly” is a less
*255
er culpable mental state than “intentionally” and “knowingly.”
See Rocha v. State,
The one-count indictment alleged in pertinent part that appellant:
[d]id then and there intentionally and knowingly cause serious bodily injury to Tristón Castillo, a child 14 years or younger by then and there striking the child with a deadly weapon, to wit: the defendant’s hands or by striking the child’s head against a deadly weapon, to wit: a wall or a floor.
The indictment charged a first degree felony when it alleged the culpable mental states of intentionally and knowingly. The State was not required to plead the precise way in which appellant caused serious bodily injury to the child.
See Bohnet v. State,
FACTS
At the June 1998 trial, 22-year-old Christine Lopez, mother of the child victim, testified that she lived in Luling with her parents; that she met appellant at an Austin club in June or July 1996; that, when they began dating, he told her he was divorced; that she became pregnant and gave birth to Tristón Castillo on February 4, 1997, in Austin’s Seton Hospital; that the baby boy was born prematurely and remained in the hospital for two-and-a-half months; and that upon, release, the child was on an apnea monitor for approximately seven months.
Lopez reported that in October 1997 appellant wanted her and their child to visit him. He came to Luling and took them to his small apartment in Killeen. Appellant was in the United States Army and stationed at Fort Hood. On the evening of October 8, 1997, Lopez put Tristón down. She and appellant watched television. About 2:30 a.m. on October 9, 1997, Lopez took a shower before retiring. While showering, she heard Tristón cry out loudly. When she came out, she found appellant and Tristón on the living room couch. When she inquired what happened, appellant simply responded that Tristón had awakened. Tristón appeared to her to be in a daze. His eyes were open but he “wasn’t looking at anything.” Later, Triston’s mouth looked like it was “seizing” and he went limp. Appellant placed a bottle in Triston’s mouth and went to bed. He said that he did not know what was wrong with the child. Appellant declined to take the child to a hospital.
Later that morning, appellant reported for military duty. When he came home for lunch, Lopez demanded that they take Tristón to a hospital. They drove to King’s Daughters Hospital. There, upon Lopez’s insistence, appellant told her that Tristón stopped breathing the night before and that he (appellant) shook him (Tristón) “a little bit.” Tristón was later transferred to the Scott and White Hospital. There Lopez told Detective Scott Dickson that appellant had told her that the baby turned blue so he shook the baby. This was after the doctors told them that Tristón had shaken baby syndrome and wanted a reason for what happened. Lopez stated that at the time of the incident she saw no blood, knots, or other marks on Tristón, and did not hear any “slams” or loud noise in the small apartment indicating anything hitting the floor or the wall.
Detective Scott Dickson of the Killeen Police Department testified that appellant gave three separate statements. The first one, given on October 12, 1997, stated that while Lopez was showering, appellant tried *256 to move Tristón off of the bed, that Tristón became stiff and his mouth turned blue, that appellant shook the child two or three times to start his breathing, that the child went limp, let out a funny noise, that appellant pinched the child’s nose and blew into the child’s mouth. The child began crying and soon appeared normal in his movements.
On October 30, 1997, appellant gave a second statement in which he stated that Tristón could have hit his head on the headboard of the bed when Tristón was being shaken, but appellant did not remember that happening or hearing the child hit anything.
On November 4, 1997, appellant gave a third statement in which he admitted that while he was shaking Tristón, the child slipped out of his hands, hit the headboard and fell to the floor limp.
The State’s last witness was Dr. Deborah Douty, associated with Scott and While Hospital for 17 years and board certified by the Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Douty saw Tristón at 6:00 p.m. on October 9, 1997, upon his arrival at Scott and White. The records received from the Kings’s Daughters Hospital reflected that Tristón was lethargic, had abnormal neurological findings, and had one eye that was deviated in an abnormal fashion. All of this was indicative of trauma to the brain. A CT scan had shown blood throughout the sub-dural space in the brain. A MRI performed at Scott and White showed that the blood was recent blood.
Dr. Douty stated that an examination of Tristón showed “no evidence of skin bruising or swelling,” but there were multiple small retinal hemorrhages in both eyes and other injuries consistent with a deceleration-type injury. The doctor explained that a deceleration is “where the head is moving in a fast accelerating pattern and suddenly stops.” Triston’s injuries were characteristic of the type of injury sustained when a child, usually under the age of a year, is shaken back and forth at a very rapid rate of speed. Dr. Douty explained that the injury does not require that the head actually hit a fixed object because the damage can “come from” the shaking mechanism. Dr. Douty found that Triston’s injuries were totally consistent with a shaking-type injury and found no evidence that his head actually hit an object. She admitted that finding no external injury did not rule out the head having hit an object.
The type of force necessary to have caused Triston’s injuries, Dr. Douty explained, would be the force of a child of that weight being dropped from a two or three-story window and hitting its head on the ground; that a fall down a flight of stairs or a fall from a one-story window would not have caused such injuries. Dr. Douty explained that a fall on his head would not have caused Triston’s injuries nor would a drop from the ceiling onto a bed frame have caused the deceleration needed to cause the injuries. The doctor’s opinion would be the same if Tristón had struck the headboard as appellant admitted. Dr. Douty stated that Triston’s injuries were serious bodily injuries in that they were life threatening, and that he would have died without medical intervention.
After the State rested, appellant called several defense witnesses including Michael Drake, appellant’s friend in the army. Drake testified that appellant told him that when the child had difficulty breathing, appellant became scared and administered CPR, and then everything seemed fine; that when the child’s breathing stopped, appellant shook the child and the child slipped out of his hands and hit the headboard.
The 23-year-old appellant testified again and again that he did not intentionally injure or harm his son. He related that he had not taken care of a baby enough to know a baby’s patterns; that Tristón, while asleep, appeared to try to cry and could not and started to turn blue; that he shook the child to get a response and to *257 start it breathing; that the child went limp and slipped out of his hands, hit the headboard and fell to the floor; and that he gave the child mouth to mouth resuscitation and the child “came to.” Appellant admitted that he shook the child back and forth three or four times before the child went limp and slipped or fell out of his hands. Appellant expressly denied that the child hit or struck a wall.
We turn first to appellant’s second issue — that the trial court fundamentally erred in enlarging the theory of prosecution to one unsupported by the indictment when it charged the jury on the lesser included offenses of reckless injury to a child and criminally negligent injury to a child.
THE JURY CHARGE
In the instant case, at the conclusion of the guilt/innocence stage' of the trial, appellant requested 2 jury instructions on the lesser included offenses of recklessly causing injury to a child and causing injury to a child by criminal negligence. 3 - The prosecutor objected to the inclusion of such jury instructions on the basis that the evidence did not raise the issues. When the trial court decided to include the requested instructions, the prosecutor acceded to the trial court’s request to have the prosecutor revise the charge and “put that in there for me.” The record later reveals that before the charge was read to the jury, both parties told the trial court they had “no objections” to the charge.
The charge first submitted the offense of injury to a child exactly as alleged in the indictment. After defining ‘recklessly, the charge then submitted to the jury the following:
Now bearing in the mind the foregoing instructions and definitions, if you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that on or about the 9th day of October, 1997, in Bell County, Texas, the defendant, JULIAN ANTONIO CASTILLO, did then and there recklessly engage in conduct that caused serious bodily injury to Tristón Castillo, a child younger than 14 years of age, by then and there shaking or striking the said Tristón Castillo with a deadly weapon, to wit: the defendant’s hands, or by striking the child’s head with a deadly weapon, to-wit: a wall or floor, then you will find the defendant guilty of the lesser offense of recklessly causing serious bodily injury to a child. But if you do not so believe, or if you have a reasonable doubt thereof, you will acquit the defendant and next consider whether the defendant is guilty of the lesser offense of causing serious bodily injury to a child by criminal negligence.
(Emphasis added.)
The foregoing submission involved the lesser included offense of which the jury convicted appellant. It is observed that the charge submitted the theory of “shaking” in the disjunctive as an additional manner and means of injuring the child to those means alleged in the indictment. 4 It is clear that “shaking” more closely conformed to the facts developed at trial than the manner and means specifically alleged in the State’s pleadings.
*258 ENLARGING THE INDICTMENT
A defendant is to be tried only on the felony crimes alleged in the indictment.
See Abdnor v. State,
Early on it was stated:
The rule is universal ... that the [jury] charge must be limited to the allegations in the indictment. A jury would not be authorized to convict appellant of any other offense than that specifically charged, and the court should confine the consideration of the jury in the charge to the allegations contained in the indictment.
Emerson v. State,
Morter v. State,
Barnes v. State,
Cumbie v. State,
Cumbie,
however, was overruled to the extent that it held that “fundamental” charge error required automatic reversal.
See Almanza v. State,
Daniels v. State,
Consistent with the rule prohibiting a jury charge from enlarging the offense alleged in the indictment is the rule that the defendant is not entitled to a charge on a lesser included offense unless it is within the proof necessary to establish the offense alleged or charged. This is the first prong of the two-step analysis established by
Royster v. State,
In
Brown v. State,
The defendant in
Bohnet,
We conclude that the trial court erred in enlarging the indictment by adding “shaking” as an additional manner and means of committing the charged offense when sub *260 mitting the lesser included offense instructions.
Having determined that there was error in the charge, we must now decide if sufficient harm was caused by the error to require a reversal, despite the lack of an objection.
See Hutch v. State,
In both situations, the actual degree of harm must be assayed in light of the entire jury charge, the state of the evidence, including the contested issues and weight of probative evidence, the argument of counsel and any other relevant information revealed by the record of the trial as a whole.
Almanza,
Because of the lack of objection, the instant case requires an egregious harm analysis. An examination of the charge shows that it tracked the exact allegations of the primary offense alleged in the indictment. The jury, in effect, acquitted the appellant of that offense. The charge also submitted the lesser included offense of recklessly injuring a child and injury to a child by criminal negligence. Under these lesser included offense instructions the trial court improperly authorized conviction by “shaking,” a different manner and means than alleged in the indictment. The overwhelming weight of the evidence by both the State and defense, including the medical testimony, showed that the injury to the child was by “shaking” not by “striking” in the manner described in the indictment. The State’s was not held to the burden of proving what was alleged in the indictment with regard to the lesser included offenses submitted.
In his opening statement, the prosecutor told the jury that the State’s medical evidence would show that the child “was severely, severely shaken and injured,” and that appellant in his three statements admitted “shaking” the child. The State knew early on that the evidence was going to show “shaking,” which was not alleged in the indictment. The evidence supported the prosecutor’s opening statement. After “shaking” was placed in the charge regarding the lesser included offenses, the State argued to the jury:
But I think the overwhelming best evidence in this case is the undisputed medical testimony from, you know, one of the leading physicians in the field in this area. And what she told you was what had occurred to that child was violent, repeated shaking of a magnitude that he will certainly will never admit to.. But yet, the evidence is medically there.
The record does not reveal just how or why “shaking” was inserted into the charge. The State makes no claim that it was requested by appellant and was invited error. The amendment of the charge was accomplished by the prosecutor at the *261 trial court’s request and obviously appellant’s counsel did not carefully scrutinize the charge as amended to include his request concerning lesser included offenses. Following the Almanza factors, we conclude that the error constituted egregious harm and that appellant was deprived of a fair and impartial trial. The second issue is sustained.
SUFFICIENCY OF EVIDENCE
Appellant in his first issue has challenged the legal sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his conviction for reckless injury to a child.
The standard for reviewing the legal sufficiency of evidence is whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, any rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt the essential elements of the offense charged.
See Jackson v. Virginia,
The sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction should no longer be measured by the jury charge actually given, but rather, should be measured by the elements of the offense as defined by a hypothetically correct jury charge for the case.
See Curry v. State,
Moreover, the jury is the exclusive judge of the facts proved, the weight to be given the testimony, and the credibility of the witnesses.
See
Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.04 (West 1979);
Adelman v. State,
In the instant case, appellant was convicted of the lesser included offense of reckless injury to a child. In looking to a hypothetically correct charge as required by Malik, we would disregard the jury charge actually given including the improperly submitted means of “shaking.” We must determine the sufficiency of the evidence to show beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant recklessly injured the child by causing serious bodily “by striking the child with a deadly weapon, to wit: the defendant’s hands or by striking the child’s head against a deadly weapon: to wit: a wall or floor.”
There is no evidence to show that appellant struck the child with his hands. Moreover, there was no evidence to support the allegation that appellant struck the child’s head against a wall and appellant expressly denied that allegation. There was some evidence that appellant shook the child and that the child went limp and slipped out of appellant’s hands or that appellant let go; that the child’s head may have hit a headboard or dresser; and that the child then fell to the floor. If the child fell to the floor, there is no evidence to show that the child fell on its head. There is no direct evidence that *262 appellant struck the child’s head directly against the floor. The record does not reveal the composition of the floor and whether it was carpeted.
The mother of the child related that there were no external marks or bruises on the child’s body after the incident. This was confirmed by Dr. Douty who found no medical evidence that the child’s head hit an object. She explained that the injuries suffered would not have resulted simply from a fall on the child’s head, being dropped from the ceiling onto a bed frame, or from a fall down a flight of stairs, or being dropped from a one-story window. The doctor related that the injuries were characteristic of and consistent with the forceful shaking of a child of the age in question.
We have carefully examined all the evidence and conclude that in viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, a rational trier of fact could not have found beyond a reasonable doubt all of the essential elements of the offense of which appellant was convicted, under a hypothetically correct charge.
We are aware, of course, of the cases holding that a defendant who requests a jury charge on a lesser-included offense and does not object to that charge is es-topped from challenging the sufficiency of the evidence where the jury has convicted him of the lesser included offense.
See Reaves v. State,
THE THIRD ISSUE
In view of our disposition of this appeal on jury charge error, we do not reach the third issue — the ineffective assistance of counsel claim. If there was no jury charge error, this ineffective assistance claim would loom large on the scene, given the failure to move for an instructed verdict and to object to the charge which enlarged the indictment.
The judgment is reversed and an acquittal is ordered.
See Burks v. United States,
Notes
. An offense under section 22.04(a)(1) is a felony of the first degree when the conduct is committed intentionally or knowingly. When the conduct engaged in is "recklessly” it shall be a second degree felony. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. § 22.04(e) (West 1994). An offense under section 22.04(a) committed with criminal negligence is a state jail felony. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. § 22.04(g) (West 1994).
.Appellant did not present written requested charges nor dictate the requested charges to the court reporter in the presence of the trial court.
See
Tex.Code Crim.Proc. Ann. art. 36.15 (West Supp.1999). He did "request” the jury charges in the form of a complaint . about their omission from the trial court’s proposed charge. We conclude that this was a sufficient objection to the charge.
See
Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 36.14 (West Supp.1999);
Bohnet,
. “An offense is a lesser included offense if: ... (3) it differs from the offense charged only in the respect that a less culpable mental state suffices to establish its commission.” Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 37.09(3) (West 1981).
. The jury charge on the lesser included offense of injury to a child by criminal negligence also included "shaking” in the same manner.
. Even if a defendant admits his guilt, the admission must conform to the allegations in the indictment.
See Thornton v. State,
. The second prong of the
Royster
test requires that there be "some evidence” in the record that would permit the jury rationally to find that if the defendant is guilty, he is guilty only of the lesser offense.
See Rousseau,
. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 36.19 (West 1981). Article 36.19 is applicable to any violation of the requirements of articles 36.14 to 36.18 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Article 36.14 requires the trial court to deliver to the jury “a written charge distinctly setting forth the law applicable to the case." Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 36.14 (West Supp.1999).
