Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
In April 2022, Justin Barrett Frazell pleaded guilty to sexual assault pursuant to a plea agreement under which the State waived an aggravated sexual assault charge. The trial court deferred a finding of guilt and placed Frazell on seven years of community supervision with conditions including drug testing, assuming responsibility for his offense, and completing sex-offender treatment within three years.
In February 2025, the State filed a petition to adjudicate, alleging seven categories of violations: two failed or diluted urine samples, multiple instances of failing to assume responsibility for his offense, and multiple treatment violations including poor participation, failure to meet treatment milestones, and unsuccessful discharge in December 2024. Before the revocation hearing, the State waived two specific treatment violations (allegations 7(g) and 7(h)). Frazell pleaded true to some allegations and not true to others. During the hearing, a therapist testified about the treatment program, including testimony about the two waived allegations. Frazell objected on relevance grounds, but the trial court admitted the testimony. The trial court ultimately found most allegations true and adjudicated Frazell guilty of sexual assault, sentencing him to six years in prison.
The Court’s Holding
The Second Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, holding that any error in admitting testimony regarding the waived allegations was harmless. The court applied Texas’s harmless-error standard for nonconstitutional evidentiary errors, which requires reversal only if the error affects an appellant’s substantial rights.
The court identified two independent bases for harmlessness. First, the same or substantially similar evidence regarding Frazell’s use of religion to avoid treatment was admitted without objection at multiple other points in the record, including testimony that Frazell skipped therapy to attend church, stated he had already made all necessary changes through Bible study, provided religious answers instead of addressing his offense, and used “magical thinking” to avoid treatment effort. Second, and more fundamentally, Frazell pled true to four violations and failed to challenge all grounds supporting the trial court’s judgment on appeal. In revocation proceedings, one proven violation is sufficient to support adjudication. Because the trial court found multiple non-waived violations true, and Frazell did not challenge all of them, the judgment was supported regardless of whether the trial court erred regarding the two waived allegations.
The court also declined to consider Frazell’s new argument raised in his reply brief claiming that admission of testimony about his religious beliefs violated the First Amendment and Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, holding that such arguments cannot be raised for the first time in a reply brief and were not preserved below because Frazell objected only on relevance grounds.
Key Takeaways
- In community supervision revocation proceedings, one proven violation is sufficient to support adjudication; an appellant must challenge all grounds supporting revocation to succeed on appeal.
- Erroneous admission of evidence is harmless when the same or similar evidence is admitted without objection elsewhere in the record.
- New constitutional arguments cannot be raised for the first time in an appellate reply brief and must be objected to at trial to be preserved.
- Testimony about a defendant’s approach to court-ordered treatment, including religious motivation, is relevant to assessing compliance with supervision conditions.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the appellate standard that makes revocation judgments difficult to overturn: once a trial court finds even one violation proven, the judgment stands unless the appellant challenges that specific violation. Here, the court held that Frazell’s attack on evidence related only to waived allegations could not succeed because other unwaived violations independently supported the sentence. For defendants and appellate practitioners, the case illustrates the importance of challenging all grounds for revocation, not selectively attacking the weakest portions of the State’s evidence.
The opinion also clarifies that trial courts have broad discretion to admit evidence about a defendant’s attitude toward court-ordered supervision conditions and treatment compliance, and that such evidence need not be confined to the specific alleged violations. While the court assumed without deciding that admitting testimony about waived violations might constitute error, it found that assumption immaterial given the cumulative strength of other admitted evidence and unchallenged violations.