diff --git a/falcon/testing/test_case.py b/falcon/testing/test_case.py
index ff51fa8..457c6d8 100644
--- a/falcon/testing/test_case.py
+++ b/falcon/testing/test_case.py
@@ -55,8 +55,8 @@ class Result(object):
             response body was empty.
         text (str): Decoded response body of type ``unicode``
             under Python 2.6 and 2.7, and of type ``str`` otherwise.
-            Raises an error if the response encoding can not be
-            determined.
+            If the content type does not specify an encoding, UTF-8 is
+            assumed.
         json (dict): Deserialized JSON body. Raises an error if the
             response is not JSON.
     """
@@ -101,10 +101,11 @@ class Result(object):
                 self._text = u''
             else:
                 if self.encoding is None:
-                    msg = 'Response did not specify a content encoding'
-                    raise RuntimeError(msg)
+                    encoding = 'UTF-8'
+                else:
+                    encoding = self.encoding
 
-                self._text = self.content.decode(self.encoding)
+                self._text = self.content.decode(encoding)
 
         return self._text
 
diff --git a/tests/test_headers.py b/tests/test_headers.py
index 838755d..3244f22 100644
--- a/tests/test_headers.py
+++ b/tests/test_headers.py
@@ -268,15 +268,16 @@ class TestHeaders(testing.TestCase):
         self.assertEqual(result.headers['Content-Type'], content_type)
 
     def test_override_default_media_type_missing_encoding(self):
-        body = b'{}'
+        body = u'{"msg": "Hello Unicode! \U0001F638"}'
 
         self.api = falcon.API(media_type='application/json')
         self.api.add_route('/', testing.SimpleTestResource(body=body))
         result = self.simulate_get()
 
-        self.assertEqual(result.content, body)
-        self.assertRaises(RuntimeError, lambda: result.text)
-        self.assertRaises(RuntimeError, lambda: result.json)
+        self.assertEqual(result.content, body.encode('utf-8'))
+        self.assertIsInstance(result.text, six.text_type)
+        self.assertEqual(result.text, body)
+        self.assertEqual(result.json, {u'msg': u'Hello Unicode! \U0001F638'})
 
     def test_response_header_helpers_on_get(self):
         last_modified = datetime(2013, 1, 1, 10, 30, 30)