EX PARTE BARTHOLOMEW ANTONIO GUZMAN v. << (2026)

Reconsideration Denied.

CONCURRING OPINION

Bartholomew Antonio Guzman, Applicant, was convicted of intentionally or knowingly causing serious bodily injury to a child in 2006. A jury assessed his punishment at ninety years’ confinement. In 2009, he filed his initial application for a writ of habeas corpus. This Court denied relief about eight years after he filed the application. In 2022, Guzman filed a subsequent application for a writ of habeas corpus, which we denied in 2023. Shortly thereafter, he filed a motion to reconsider on the court's own motion, which we also denied.

Now, Guzman has filed another motion suggesting this Court reconsider, on its own motion, his 2022 writ application. He claims he is entitled to relief under Ex parte Roark, 707 S.W.3d 157 (Tex. Crim. App. 2024), and Ex parte Roberson, 726 S.W.3d 290 (Tex. Crim. App. 2025), because his conviction involved the theory of shaken baby syndrome (“SBS”) implicated in those decisions.

While SBS has been a relevant topic in the period since Guzman's conviction, an invitation for the Court to reconsider, on its own motion, reopening a writ is not a proper mechanism for a claimant to press claims of entitlement to relief based on subsequent development of the legal landscape. Such claims are proper if and to the extent they fall within the rules permitting renewed resort to the writ. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 11.07 § 4. I thus concur in the Court's disposition of the present motion.

CONCURRING OPINION

The Rules of Appellate Procedure clearly provide that “[a] motion for rehearing an order that denies habeas corpus relief or dismisses a habeas corpus application under Code of Criminal Procedure, articles 11.07 or 11.071, may not be filed. The Court may on its own initiative reconsider the case.” Tex. R. App. P. 79.2(d) (emphasis added). There is nothing to reconsider in this case. See Ex parte Ricks, No. WR-85,278-01, slip op. at 3–7 (Tex. Crim. App. Mar. 4, 2026) (Yeary, J., concurring).

With that said, Applicant may have meritorious claims. And Applicant has a potential avenue for relief. Applicant's instant motion to reconsider asserts that he is entitled to relief under this Court's decisions in Ex parte Roark, 707 S.W.3d 157 (Tex. Crim. App. 2024) and Ex parte Roberson, 726 S.W.3d 290 (Tex. Crim. App. 2025), because he was convicted based on a shaken baby syndrome theory that he claims is now unreliable. That sounds like a claim that could be raised in an Article 11.073 habeas application. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 11.073. Article 11.073 provides:

(b) A court may grant a convicted person relief on an application for a writ of habeas corpus if:

(1) the convicted person files an application, in the manner provided by Article 11.07, 11.071, or 11.072, containing specific facts indicating that:

(A) relevant scientific evidence is currently available and was not available at the time of the convicted person's trial because the evidence was not ascertainable through the exercise of reasonable diligence by the convicted person before the date of or during the convicted person's trial; and

(B) the scientific evidence would be admissible under the Texas Rules of Evidence at a trial held on the date of the application; and

(2) the court makes the findings described by Subdivisions (1)(A) and (B) and also finds that, had the scientific evidence been presented at trial, on the preponderance of the evidence the person would not have been convicted.

Id. art. 11.073(b).

As the Presiding Judge correctly points out, any subsequent writ, even a subsequent Article 11.073 application, would need to meet the bar to subsequent habeas applications. Ante at 2 (Schenck, P.J., concurring); see also id. art. 11.07, § 4(a)(1); and id. art. 11.073(c). Because Roark (and Roberson, to an extent) are “new law” for purposes of the writ bar, this Court is unlikely to dismiss as subsequent an Article 11.073 habeas application that Applicant may bring (if he does) based on them. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. art. 11.07, § 4(a)(1) (“the current claims and issues have not been and could not have been presented previously in an original application or in a previously considered application filed under this article because the ․ legal basis for the claim was unavailable on the date the applicant filed the previous application.”) (emphasis added).

Nothing in this opinion should be taken to comment on the ultimate success of any such habeas application that Applicant may file. But that is a question for another day. The issue here is Applicant's second motion to reconsider. The Court is correct to deny it. But Applicant still has the ability to file another habeas application and have the merits of his claims considered by this Court.

With these thoughts, I join the Court's order.