Opinion issued August 28, 2018 In The Court of Appeals For The First District of Texas ———————————— NO. 01-16-01009-CR ——————————— VINCENT ALUSHULA, Appellant V. THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee On Appeal from the County Criminal Court at Law No. 4 Harris County, Texas Trial Court Case No. 2040600 MEMORANDUM OPINION A jury found appellant, Vincent Alushula, guilty of the misdemeanor offense of assault of a family member.1 The trial court assessed his punishment at 1 See TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 22.01(a)(1), (b) (Vernon Supp. 2017); see also TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 42.013 (Vernon 2018); TEX. FAM. CODE ANN. §§ 71.003 (Vernon 2014), 71.004 (Vernon Supp. 2017). confinement for one year, suspended the sentence, placed him on community supervision for eighteen months, and assessed a fine of $300. In two issues, appellant contends that his trial counsel provided him with ineffective assistance by not advising him of the potential immigration consequences that would result if he pleaded not guilty and was convicted at trial. We affirm. Background Appellant, while represented by counsel, entered a plea of not guilty to the offense of assault of a family member, and his case proceeded to trial before a jury. At trial, Ashley Stakes, a paramedic, testified that at approximately 1:50 a.m. on August 5, 2015, she and her partner were dispatched to a home in Harris County. When they arrived, they found the complainant, appellant’s wife, who seemed frightened and was curled up on a couch in the garage. Complaining of pain in her rib-cage area, the complainant winced in pain during Stakes’s hands-on assessment, which revealed that other parts of her body were also injured. The complainant told Stakes and her partner that “around midnight, approximately two hours before [they] arrived, she and her husband got into an argument and it became physical. She said it began with hitting with a closed fist and then escalated to . . . kicking and stomping and she described it as jumping on her.” At this point, Stakes and her partner suspected that the complainant was a victim of 2 assault and called for assistance from law enforcement. Stakes further noted that the complainant did not want them to contact law enforcement because she was worried about her children. Harris County Sheriff’s Office Deputy W. Schreiber testified that on August 5, 2015, he was dispatched to a family disturbance. When he arrived at the scene, he saw the complainant in an ambulance. She was crying hysterically and appeared to be in a great deal of pain. The complainant was reluctant to explain what had happened, but she told Schreiber that appellant physically assaulted her. She explained that the altercation became physical after an initial verbal argument about appellant’s alleged infidelity. The complainant told Schreiber that appellant struck her several times on her head and face with a closed fist, and he kicked her after she had fallen to the floor. She described it “almost like a jump or a stomp, where he actually ...
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