Court Opinion

ID: 9768338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:56:32.515105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:39.547039
License: Public Domain

MOTION FOR RE-HEARING
Appellant, pro se, has filed a motion for re-hearing. In it he objects to this Court’s summary dismissal of the pro se grounds of error contained in APPELLANT’S PRO SE SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF SPECIFYING *751ERROR OF WHICH APPELLANT COMPLAINS ON APPEAL.
As authority for appellant’s ability to file his supplemental brief, he cites 1965 Tex. Gen.Laws, ch. 722. art- 44.33, at 517 (Now, Tex.Code Crim.Pro.Ann. art. 44.13 Vernon Supp. 1982, which now states in part:
“... After the record is filed in the Court of Appeals or the Court of Criminal Appeals the parties may file such supplemental briefs as they may desire before the case is submitted to the court.”
Appellant, on re-hearing, specifically relies on his pro se grounds of error one and five. Ground of error one states: “[T]he conviction herein must be reversed because appellant had (sic) been previously acquitted of the offense alleged and the instant conviction was thus obtained in violation of appellant’s right to be free from being twice placed in jeopardy for the same offense.”
Appellant’s argument is two-fold. First, he argues that in the first trial of this prosecution, Cause Number 254,250, the State abandoned one count of the indictment, that alleged an attempted capital murder, after the jury was impanelled and sworn, but before the reading of the second count of the indictment, that alleged an aggravated robbery and which arose out of the same transaction. As argued by appellant, by abandoning the attempted capital murder count after the jury was sworn, jeopardy attached to it and appellant could never be re-tried for the attempted capital murder. Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 98 S.Ct. 2156, 57 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978).
Next, appellant argues that because the aggravated robbery was a lesser included offense of attempted capital murder, the acquittal for attempted capital murder operates as a bar, or jeopardy, to the “subsequent” prosecution for the lesser offense of aggravated robbery. Thus, appellant argues, his prosecution in Cause Number 254,-250 for aggravated robbery (after already being acquitted for attempted capital murder) violated double jeopardy. Likewise, the re-prosecution for aggravated robbery in Cause Number 262,454 would be barred by double jeopardy.
Appellant is aware of Forsberg v. United States, 351 F.2d 242 (9th Cir.1965), cert. denied 383 U.S. 950, which distinguishes between circumstances where a defendant is indicted, tried, and acquitted for a greater offense, but then re-indicted and re-tried for some lesser included offense, and cases where a defendant is indicted and tried under a two-count indictment that alleges a greater and lesser included offense, is acquitted of the greater, convicted of the lesser (or the jury is unable to agree on the lesser), and is later re-tried for the lesser included offense (after the conviction is reversed or a mistrial ordered). The court in Forsberg noted that only in the latter situation may the defendant be retried.
Appellant seeks to circumvent this distinction, however, by arguing that because he was “acquitted” of the greater offense (by the State’s abandonment) before the second count of the indictment was read to the jury (but after jeopardy attached due to the jury already being sworn), he was somehow “tried and acquitted” of the greater offense in a “prior prosecution” before being prosecuted for the lesser offense. Appellant concedes that if the State had read both counts of the indictment to the jury but only submitted the lesser offense for their deliberation, jeopardy would not have attached to the lesser offense and he could later be retried for the lesser offense.
Appellant confuses the act of prosecuting a defendant for a lesser offense under a new indictment (after prosecution and acquittal for a greater offense based on a prior indictment) with the simultaneous prosecution of a defendant under a two count indictment that alleges both a greater offense and a lesser included offense before the same jury. Appellant directs our attention to Castillo v. State, 530 S.W.2d 952 (Tex.Cr.App.1976), for the proposition that a jury trial does not begin in Texas until the indictment is read to the jury. If this be true, appellant argues, then he was indicted, jeopardy attached to the attempted murder prosecution, (by swearing in the *752jury), and he was acquitted thereon before his trial ever commenced for aggravated robbery (by reading the aggravated robbery count to the jury).
Aside from Castillo being neither persuasive nor analogous, appellant’s argument overlooks the reasoning behind the double jeopardy rules. A defendant has a “... valued right to have his trial for an offense completed by a particular tribunal.” Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684, 689, 69 S.Ct. 834, 837, 93 L.Ed. 974 (1949). Appellant was charged with two distinct offenses arising from the same chain of events. “.. . [W]here the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one is whether each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not.” Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 182, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932). By this test, appellant’s two criminal violations constitute but one offense. However, what double jeopardy prohibits is not a prosecution for a lesser included offense based on an indictment that also alleges the greater offense, but which greater offense has previously been abandoned during the same trial and before the same jury; rather, double jeopardy prohibits a subsequent trial on a lesser offense (with a new jury) after the defendant has been previously tried and acquitted for the greater offense. Appellants first ground of error in the motion for rehearing is accordingly overruled.
The final ground of error raised in appellant’s motion for re-hearing alleges: “the conviction herein must be set aside because the evidence presented to the jury is not sufficient, as a matter of law, to support the verdict of guilty of aggravated robbery.” Appellant argues that the State failed to offer evidence that a “deadly weapon” was used or exhibited during the robbery. Appellant concedes that the victim testified to seeing appellant display what she termed a “gun” or a “pistol” during the robbery, but appellant argues this is legally insufficient to show use of a firearm.
This Court will affirm the judgment of the trial court if there is any evidence which, if believed by the jury, would support the conviction. The court in Wright v. State, 591 S.W.2d 458 (Tex.Cr. App.1980), faced this identical argument. It stated: “[tjestimony using any of the terms ‘gun’, ‘pistol’ or ‘revolver’ is sufficient to authorize the jury to find that a deadly weapon was used.” Id. at 459.
Appellant’s second ground is overruled and appellant’s motion for re-hearing is denied.