Court Opinion

ID: 9767998
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:37:51.773846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:35.434779
License: Public Domain

TEAGUE, Judge,
concurring.
Jesse Albert Rocha, appellant, was charged with committing the offense of attempted murder. However, he was found guilty by a jury of committing the lesser included offense of aggravated assault. His conviction was reversed by a majority panel opinion of this Court, because the majority found that the application paragraph of the charge to the jury, which concerned the offense of aggravated assault, applied, in addition to the alleged culpable mental states of intentionally and knowingly, the culpable mental state of recklessly, which had not been alleged in the indictment which charged the appellant with committing the offense of attempted murder.
As the author of the majority panel opinion, joined therein by Presiding Judge Onion, who is now the author of the majority opinion on the State’s motion for rehearing, I concur in the opinion Presiding Judge Onion, my colleague on the panel, has now prepared.
A panel opinion, even a unanimous one, of course, represents only the views of ½ of the Court’s membership, and a majority panel opinion represents only the views of ⅜ of the Court’s membership. Since October 1,1982, this Court has ceased to use panels in the disposition of causes pending *305before it, opting instead that all dispositions will thereafter be by En Banc decisions. I, for one, sincerely believe that this has greatly improved, and will continue to improve, at the appellate level, the criminal justice system in the State of Texas.
Contrary to today’s decision, I do not believe that the Court has in the past made crystal clear what probably should have been obvious to me when I wrote the majority panel opinion. Today, the Court expressly states: “For the purposes of the submission to the jury of the lesser included offense of aggravated assault, we hold the culpable mental state of ‘reckless’ is included under the canopy of the higher culpable mental states of ‘intentional’ and ‘knowing’ alleged in the indictment for the greater offense of attempted murder. Thus, it was not error, much less fundamental error to submit a charge authorizing conviction of the lesser included offense of aggravated assault upon a finding of the lower culpable mental state of ‘reckless.’ ” If nothing else, had the panel opinion been written in a manner other than that in which it was written, the Bench and Bar may have been possibly deprived of the clear statement of the law the Court has now made on this point.
All members of the Court agree that aggravated assault may be a lesser included offense of attempted murder under Art. 37.09, V.A.C.C.P. However, not all agree when an offense will become a lesser offense of the greater alleged offense, even though the wording of Art. 37.09, Id., is clear. I find that, perhaps, it was my disenchantment with how Art. 37.09, Id., has been applied in the past by the Court that caused me to unknowingly do what I had no intention of doing, “naturally extending a faulty legal theory.”
Pursuant to Art. 37.09, Id., an offense is a lesser included offense if:
(1) it is established by proof of the same or less than all the facts required to establish the commission of the offense charged;
(2) it differs from the offense charged only in respect that a less serious injury or risk of injury to the same person, property, or public interest suffices to establish its commission;
(3) it differs from the offense charged only in the respect that a less culpable mental state suffices to establish its commission; or
(4) it consists of an attempt to commit the offense charged or an otherwise included offense.
Just as it is the conscientious prosecuting attorney who, after he has prepared the charging instrument, could probably care less about lesser included offenses, I do not believe that this Court, in its treatment whether a lesser included offense instruction should be given, should mandate that before such an instruction must be given the defendant must establish that he is guilty only of the lesser included offense for which he seeks the instruction. As easily observed by the clear and precise wording of the statute, there is no such requirement that before a defendant is entitled to an instruction on a lesser included offense, he must establish that, if guilty at all, he is only guilty of the lesser included offense. McBrayer v. State, 504 S.W.2d 445 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Daywood v. State, 157 Tex.Cr.R. 266, 248 S.W.2d 479 (Tex.Cr.App.1952); Watson v. State, 605 S.W.2d 877 (Tex.Cr. App.1980), and the like, should be in all things overruled.
That issue, however, is not before this Court today. Nevertheless, because I do not find in the record of appeal the express reason why the trial judge gave the lesser included offense instruction, and he could have given the instruction pursuant to Art. 37.09, (3), i.e., “it differ[ed] from the offense charged only in the respect that a less culpable mental state suffices to establish its commission,” and it matters not in that instance what the allegations of the charging instrument contain, I believe the Court today has implicitly taken a giant step forward in its consideration of when a lesser included offense instruction should be given by the trial court.
I respectfully concur in the opinion.
MILLER, J., joins.