Rucker v. State

The plurality opinion accurately quotes the statutes, the construction of which is in issue in this case; likewise the plurality correctly reasons that “the Legislature intended that the threat of death or serious bodily injury contemplated something more than ‘force’ and ‘threat’ as used in V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 21.02 (ordinary rape).” The inflection, however, occurs in averting, without consideration or analysis, the question that the plurality opinion itself poses, that being:

When do actions and words constituting a threat become more than force (that overcomes such earnest resistance as…