U.S. v. Rodriguez, 79 M.J. 1

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Crimes: Generally Pre-2019 offenses

1. that a crime is comprised of both an actus reus and a mens rea necessarily means both components must exist at the time an offense is committed if the offense is to amount to a crime at all; although a criminal actor must possess the requisite intent when he commits a criminal act, circumstantial evidence from before or after the act may be used to prove an actor had the requisite intent at the time of the act

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Crimes: Article 120b - Rape and Sexual Assault of a Child Pre-2019 offenses › (c) Sexual Abuse of a Child

1. per Article 120b(c), UCMJ, any person who commits a lewd act upon a child is guilty of sexual abuse of a child and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct; a lewd act means any sexual contact with a child; sexual contact is defined as any touching, or causing another person to touch, either directly or through the clothing, any body part of any person, if done with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person; touching may be accomplished by any part of the body; the statute clearly requires that the charged sexual act be accompanied by a specific intent
2. appellant’s conviction for sexual abuse of a child was legally sufficient because sufficient circumstantial evidence supported the conclusion that appellant kissed his child’s feet with the specific intent to arouse or gratify his sexual desires where he sent photographs of the child’s feet in sexually explicit text messages with his paramour, the paramour personally observed appellant kissing the child’s feet and she believed he was using them as sexual foreplay, and appellant shared his feet-based sexual fantasies with his paramour

Trial Stages: Appeals: Standards of Review, Burdens, etc.

1. an appellate court reviews questions of legal sufficiency de novo; to determine whether evidence is legally sufficient, an appellate court asks whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt; this determination is based on the evidence before the factfinder; this standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts, and preserves the factfinder’s role as weigher of the evidence; as such, the standard for legal sufficiency involves a very low threshold to sustain a conviction