Anthony Carter v. Texas

In 2015, the Texas Legislature made seeping revisions to how "controlled substances" are defined in the drug possession stat­ utes. Before the revisions, the statute implicated in this case— Section^:481.1031 of the Texas Health & Safety Code, which defines a Penalty Group 2-A substance—was a list of prohibited substances. The problem, however, was that chemists would slightly alter one of the listed substances, making it technically no longer the pro­ hibited substance but nevertheless a dangerous one. With the leg­ islature only meeting every two years, Texas lawvwas simply not able to keep up with clandestine chemists. The 2015 revisions were the legislature’s response. They did away with the list of drugs, choosing instead to list several chemicals and detailing which molecular structures of the various listed chemicals (as they re­ late to one another) are prohibited. Consequently, Section 481.- 1031, is now, by necessary design, extremely complicated. In a published opinion, the court below inferred a substance met the molecular structural requirements of Section 481.1031 even though (by the court’s admission), there was no direct evidence of that molecular structure in the record. This case, therefore, presents the following question: In a sufficiency analysis under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979), may a reviewing court uphold a conviction where the offense is defined by technical elements beyond the understand­ ing of an ordinary factfinder if no evidence on the elements was presented at trial?