Anyone felt any repercussions from the Karenev v. State decision out of the 2nd Court of Appeals? The COA found that the words "annoy" and "alarm" rendered the repeat electronic communication subsection of the harassment statute unconstitutionally vague. The COA opinion followed the logic of a 5th Circuit case dealing with the same language of a different statute. The logic behind the opinion seems like there may be storm clouds on the horizon for an "annoy or alarm" electronic harassment charge should the Court of Criminal Appeals hear an appeal. Just wanted to see what, if anything, was the fallout from this decision, especially for you Fort Worth prosecutors.

We have a particularly close case on intake right now and just wanted to know what you guys thought the future of this harassment subsection was going to be in Texas in light of this opinion. Any guidance would be appreciated.

I just addressed Karenev last week at the Advanced Criminal Law. My take is that since the Legislature inexplicably included the language in the e-harassment section that had previously been held to be unconstitutionally vague in Long v. State, 931 S.W.2d 285, I would be very surprised if the CCA grants PDR.
I would anticipate that the Legislature will tinker with the statute this next session, as they did with the rest of 42.07 after Long came out. But in the meantime, looks to me that you better find a way to charge someone under the other sections of 42.07 because subsection (7) is a goner.

On a personal note I feel like unwanted email or text messages are not as annoying or threatening as the other types of harassment in 42.07.

Perhaps spam has inured me to unwanted email.

Along the same lines I feel like it would be a LOT less disturbing to get 100 repeated copies of a spam email than 100 hang-up phone calls... just select all and DELETE!

Thank you very much, Lisa. I appreciate the insight. We will figure out an alternative means to charge. Is there any way I might procure your outline from the seminar? Thank you in advance.

Alexlayman, how about giving all of us your e-mail address and home phone number? After a couple of weeks, you can tell us if you still feel the same way.