Anderson v. State

Rodney Anderson (defendant) and Timothy Sherber regularly sold methamphetamine to Jeffery Harmon, a paid informant for the Texas Department of Public Safety. One day, Harmon arranged to meet with Anderson and Sherber to buy methamphetamine, and Anderson and Sherber arrived in Sherber’s truck. Harmon approached the truck and asked for the drugs and then signaled to waiting police officers that the deal was underway. Officers approached Sherber and Anderson, and Sherber began to drive away. Officers fired at the truck, and Anderson was hit in the chin by a bullet. Sherber kept driving, hitting unmarked and marked police cars as he tried to flee and injuring one officer inside a police car. Anderson and Sherber were eventually caught and arrested. Police collected over eight grams of methamphetamine from the truck. Anderson was tried and convicted of possession with intent to deliver and aggravated assault on a public servant. He appealed, arguing that the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain his aggravated-assault conviction because Sherber was driving the truck when it crashed into a police car and injured an officer inside. The first appellate court upheld the conviction, finding that Anderson could be held criminally liable under a conspiracy theory and instructing the jury that if Sherber committed the aggravated assault in furtherance of his conspiracy with Anderson to deliver a controlled substance, Anderson could be found criminally liable because he should have anticipated that police officers would face injury due to Sherber’s attempt to flee. Anderson argued that he had no reason to anticipate that police officers would be injured because he and Sherber were conducting a drug transaction between friends that typically proceeded peacefully and amicably.