Court Opinion

ID: 9766487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:51:15.674688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:23.275584
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
Salinas v. State, 644 S.W.2d 744 (Tex.Cr. App.1983), on which the proposed opinion partly relies, is an unusual one. Indictment alleged murder, and the jury convicted him of that. The trial court also charged on criminally negligent homicide and “accident.” Accused complained that the charge should have included involuntary manslaughter. A panel composed of only two judges agreed and reversed the judgment; rehearing was not sought. After reciting certain facts the opinion says:
“The distinction between involuntary manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide is simply of degree, the difference between recklessness and negligence. * * * Here, we may presume that appellant was aware of the risk of injury or death by having a loaded, cocked pistol and exhibiting it,1 although at the time it discharged he was not specifically aware of shooting the deceased. Therefore, appellant having been aware of the risk, his conduct was reckless and a charge on involuntary manslaughter should have been given. See, Giles v. State, 617 S.W.2d at 691 (Tex.Cr.App.1981). [my emphasis here and throughout unless otherwise indicated]
Of course, § 22.05(b) presumes recklessness and danger from knowingly pointing a firearm at or in the direction of another— regardless of whether the subject “believed the firearm to be loaded.” From a puristic point of view, however, § 22.05(b) is not even applicable to involuntary manslaughter. Yet, Salinas seems to say not only is § 22.05(b) applicable, but also that the facts there are more than the minimal required for the presumption to come into play.
If Salinas is correct, then it is not necessary for the majority opinion critically to analyze earlier opinions by the Court or to search for “other evidence raising the issue of ... [awareness] of the risk.” P. 849. Since appellant here pointed a pistol at Bishop, under Salinas his awareness of the risk is presumed. We are left to wonder whether the rationale of Salinas has lost its vitality.
Nevertheless, the real question raised by the majority opinion for this Court is whether the fact that involuntary manslaughter is raised by evidence means ipso facto that criminally negligent homicide is not, and thus a charge on the latter is not required.
Since Dockery v. State, 542 S.W.2d 644 (Tex.Cr.App.1976) (Opinion on Motion for Rehearing), the Court has held that pointing a loaded pistol at another person is “sufficient to indicate” that one “ought to be aware” that his act creates a risk of “such a nature and degree that it constitute[s] a gross deviation from the standard of care prescribed by Sec. 6.03(d),” id., at 648. Accord: London v. State, 547 S.W.2d 27, 28 (Tex.Cr.App.1977). Therefore, if the weapon discharges and death results as in, e.g., Giles v. State, 617 S.W.2d 690 (Tex.Cr.App.1981), and Schoelman v. State, 644 S.W.2d 727 (Tex.Cr.App.1983), evidence of that act raises the issue of criminally negligent homicide.1
*856Prior holdings of the Court in Dockery and London, supra, left little for Judge Odom to write about for the Court in Giles, supra, on the matter of pointing a loaded gun at another being sufficient to indicate he ought to be aware of the requisite nature and decree of risk under § 6.03(d). Then, having also written in Dillon v. State, 574 S.W.2d 92 (Tex.Cr.App.1978), that “[u]pon consideration of recklessness versus criminal negligence, whether one is aware of a requisite risk or simply should have been aware, is a conclusion to be drawn through inference from all the circumstances by the trier of fact,” id., at 94, and having that proposition withstand the test of rehearing, Judge Odom no doubt felt justified in repeating it in Giles, supra, at 691. There is no dissent shown; Judge W.C. Davis was on the panel, as well as Judge McCormick. Since Giles also passed rehearing with flying colors, stare decisis practically dictated it be followed in Schoel-man, and it was.
A little more than a year ago this Court unanimously approved both in Lugo v. State, 667 S.W.2d 144, 148-149 (Tex.Cr.App.1984). (It also quoted substantially the same language excerpted ante from Salinas.) Today, however, the majority opinion charitably characterizes them as “overbroad.” The opinion does not mention Lugo.
In rejecting the Schoelman and other decisions cited along with it, and discussed thereafter, the opinion says:
“The attendant circumstances from which the defendant’s mental state can be inferred must be collectively examined in light of the definition of criminally negligent homicide. * * * In this respect Giles, supra, and Schoelman, supra, are overbroad because they rely only upon the pointing of a loaded weapon as being sufficient to raise criminally negligent homicide. Other evidence raising the issue of whether or not a defendant was aware of the risk must be presented before such charge is required.”
Until today, of course, that last sentence has not been the law. Nor should it be. Upholding a legislative objective to deter people from pointing loaded guns at other people, Giles and Schoelman et al pronounce perfectly sound law. Often defense by an accused is that when pointing a weapon at another he did not intend or know this or that; when one claims in whatever fashion that he was not aware of the risk, the factfinder should to be left free to find that he ought to have been under § 6.03(d).
Strictly speaking, under V.T.C.A. Penal Code, § 6.03(d) “criminal negligence” is not a “mental state” in the sense of such mental processes as thought, will, design or perception. Rather it is aimed at what one “ought to be aware of,” and that is “a substantial and unjustifiable risk” — a risk of “such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the [subject’s] standpoint.” Thus the forbidden conduct element is “weighed against an objective standard, that of the ordinary prudent man,” to determine culpability. Practice Commentary following § 6.03.
When the issue is thus raised an appropriate charge on criminally negligent homicide should be given. That the evidence may also raise an issue of whether the accused was in fact aware of but consciously disregarded the same risk does not mean that criminal negligence is no longer in the case. An instruction on involuntary manslaughter should also be given. Conversely, that a charge on involuntary manslaughter is given will not rule out giving a charge on criminally negligent homicide. *857Moore v. State, 574 S.W.2d 122 (Tex.Cr.App.1978).2 It remains for the jury to determine from the circumstances “[wjhich of the two inferences regarding the accused’s awareness of the risk is correct,” Giles, supra, at 691; Moore, supra, at 124.
The majority opinion asserts that “every case must be examined in light of its particular facts and circumstances.” However, its thesis seems to be that if there is “awareness” there cannot be a lack of it, so the review exercise becomes a search for evidence of “awareness.” And when it gets to analyzing the instant factual situation the opinion undertakes meticulously to compare or contrast one facet or another with its presence or absence vis a vis one or more earlier cases. In my view the thesis and exercise are erroneous and the analysis militates against any clear rule ever emerging from them.
The majority opinion says import of the evidence in the instant cause is analogous to Simkins v. State, 590 S.W.2d 129 (Tex.Cr.App.1979). The thesis, as well as the exercise, certainly is. Simkins says:
“We agree that if the facts raise the issue of negligent homicide, then a charge must be given. We also agree that ... a charge on accident would be inadequate to protect appellant’s rights. However, the evidence in this case did not raise the issue of this lesser included offense. No evidence indicates that the appellant possessed the requisite culpable mental state for negligent homicide, i.e., that he ought to have been aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk. The appellant testified that he had qualified on the rifle range in the Army and that he knew weapons were dangerous. He also stated in his brief, ‘Obviously, the appellant realized carrying a gun toward a crowd of people created a risk.’ ” (emphasis in original opinion)
Putting aside that a mere risk is not enough, the problem created by Simkins is its failure to recognize that in context this part of § 6.03(d) is expressing an obligation, an expectation or a logical consequence commonly held to be understood by an ordinary prudent person; its failure is coupled with its insistence that evidence must indicate that an accused then and there “possessed” the “culpable mental state for negligent homicide.”
One simply cannot “possess” what one “ought” to understand or “ought” to be aware of. Evidence goes more to the nature and degree of the risk that death would result from the conduct shown than to what one “ought” to perceive. Nash v. State, 664 S.W.2d 343, 344 (Tex.Cr.App. 1984). Lopez v. State, 630 S.W.2d 936, 941 (Tex.Cr.App.1982). Viewing those circumstances from the standpoint of the accused, a factfinder must objectively make a value judgment as to whether in failing to perceive that risk accused grossly deviated from the standard of care that an ordinary prudent person would have exercised. Practice Commentary; see Graham v. State, 657 S.W.2d 99 (Tex.Cr.App.1983).
Though not articulated in a homicide case where death results from discharge of a gun, in a case where the facts showed that near midnight accused drove his car at an excessive rate of speed through a red light into a car being driven by deceased, Judge McCormick wrote that the jury could assay the risk in terms of whether “the possibility of injury was so great as compared to any possible beneficial result of appellant’s conduct” in finding that he “took a substantial and unjustifiable risk by his conduct.” If so, then, it was for the jury to decide whether “an ordinary or reasonably prudent person, in appellant’s position, ought to have been aware that [kind of risk] was created [by his conduct].” Lopez, supra, at 941.
*858Essentially, Lopez expresses the unwritten rationale for Dockery and its followings: the possibility of injury, harm and death in pointing a loaded gun at another person is so great in comparison to any possible beneficial result of doing so that “awareness” of the risk must be evaluated by the factfinder. That is why Giles and all the others hold, in effect, that “it is indeed permissible for the State to allege and prove the identical acts — ‘conduct’—for both voluntary manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, for the only distinction between them is the ‘required culpability’ elements of each offense,” Graham, supra, at 104 (emphasis in original).
Relegating Dockery, London, Giles and Schoelman to mere words printed on pages in the reports and in their stead requiring the bench and the bar to find and follow whatever rule the majority lays down in this cause is, in my judgment, a blunder of policy that seriously undermines legislative considerations of that which is in the public interest.3
Accordingly, I dissent.

 See V.T.C.A., Penal Code, Section 22.05(b)."

. The majority does not like Dockery and its progeny. So it devaluates the conclusion in *856Dockery "because the rationale is not entirely clear,” P. 850. But rationale is obvious: that in imposing criminal responsibility for newly defined criminally negligent conduct resulting in death, the Legislature sought to deter people from killing each other by pointing or otherwise exhibiting a loaded gun in a manner that the ordinary prudent man understands is substantially and unjustifiably risky. The rationale has been clear enough for the Court to follow without hesitation ever since; so the opinion must also criticize the followings of Dockery.

. Moore is viewed favorably in the majority opinion, although the accused there admitted she was aware that “guns are dangerous and that one should always treat a gun carefully.” The Court said, however, that merely indicated a general awareness, and still left at issue “whether she was aware of the risk and acted in conscious disregard in this particular instance,” id., at 124.

. Under the statute the factfinder must apply that standard of care “an ordinary person” would have exercised in the premises. Thus whether one is personally “familiar” with guns is not a proper test. To focus the evidentiary inquiry on whether an accused is familiar with guns to determine “awareness” of a risk of pointing a loaded gun at another not only puts a premium on alleged unfamiliarity with guns but also requires the State to gather some evidence of “familiarity." In reason, the one claiming to be unfamiliar with guns bears a greater responsibility to be aware of risk and to exercise care in the premises. Ultimately though the legislative determination is to look to the ordinary prudent person.