Size Doesn't Matter: Conviction, Lawyer's Conduct OK'd in Exposure Case
A Texas doctor who sought to overturn his indecent exposure conviction, with the help of a well-known attorney and an unusual appellate argument supported by expert testimony, has lost the legal battle.
“The court rejected the argument by high-profile attorney Dick DeGuerin and his associate Neal Davis that the doctor could not have exposed himself to an undercover cop because that which is alleged to have been exposed is too small to have been seen,” reports the Houston Chronicle.
The appellate team apparently contended that a different lawyer, who represented the unnamed doctor at trial, should have defended him on this theory, according to the newspaper. The trial lawyer testified in a hearing that his client never told him about his physique. However, the doctor said that he did, and DeGuerin and Davis argued that the information was key evidence in an indecent exposure case, because their client is too embarrassed to undress with anyone except his wife.
In a 30-page opinion authored by Justice Wanda McFee Fowler, a unanimous three-judge panel of Houston’s 14th Court of Appeals held that, as the newspaper puts it, “the trial judge could reasonably have believed the trial lawyer that he was unaware of his client’s stature.” The panel also found that the trial lawyer had no duty to ask his client about his physique.
