In the Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth ___________________________ No. 02-17-00039-CR ___________________________ ROSA MARIA ORTEGA, Appellant V. THE STATE OF TEXAS On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 3 Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 1434155D Before Gabriel, Kerr, and Pittman, JJ. Memorandum Opinion by Justice Pittman MEMORANDUM OPINION A Tarrant County jury convicted Appellant Rosa Maria Ortega of two counts of illegal voting in Dallas County and assessed her punishment at eight years’ confinement and a $5,000 fine for each count. See Tex. Elec. Code Ann. § 64.012 (West Supp. 2018) (providing that a person commits a second-degree felony if he votes in an election in which he knows he is not eligible to vote), §§ 273.021(a), 273.024 (West 2010) (together allowing the Texas Attorney General (AG) to prosecute election offenses in “an adjoining county” to the county of the offense); Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 12.33 (West 2011) (providing range of punishment for second-degree felonies). The trial court sentenced Appellant accordingly, ordering the sentences to run concurrently. In two issues, Appellant contends that the trial court abused its discretion by denying her motion to suppress her statements and erred by overruling her objections to the State’s closing argument at punishment. Because Appellant forfeited both issues by failing to preserve them in the trial court, we affirm the trial court’s judgments. BACKGROUND FACTS Appellant came to the United States as a baby and obtained a “green” card as a child. At all pertinent times, she was a lawful permanent resident, not a United States citizen. On October 21, 2014, Appellant sent a completed voter registration application indicating she was not a United States citizen to the Tarrant County Elections Administration. On December 6, 2014, that office responded by sending 2 her a letter informing her that she was ineligible to vote because she was not a citizen. After receiving this letter, Appellant called the Elections Administration office and asked why she received the rejection letter. Appellant was then told that her voter registration application was rejected because she checked the “no” box for citizenship. In March 2015, Appellant filled in and mailed a second voter registration application, but this time Appellant checked the “yes” box regarding United States citizenship. This second application ultimately landed on the desk of Delores Stevens, the employee at the Elections Administration who had both written Appellant’s rejection letter and spoken with her by telephone. Despite the Election Administration’s concerns with the discrepancies in Appellant’s two applications, it registered her to vote. After the AG’s office received allegations that Appellant had voted illegally in two elections in Dallas County, Sergeant Joseph Boone Cadwell, an investigator with the AG’s office, began investigating her. He asked an analyst with his office to obtain Appellant’s voting records from the Dallas County Elections Administrator, her Texas Department of Public Safety records, and her customs and immigration records. His investigation revealed that Appellant had registered to vote four times in Dallas County and twice in ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals