Court Opinion

ID: 9701415
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:19:17.690025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:23.595862
License: Public Domain

MURRY B. COHEN, Justice,
concurring.
I agree this case should be affirmed, but because I do not agree wholly with the rationale of either Justice Smith or Justice Taft, I respectfully concur.
I agree with Justice Smith that a jury is presumed to follow the instructions in the court’s charge and also agree that such presumption can be rebutted. I would not apply that presumption in this case, however. Here, the prosecutor repeatedly and specifically argued against the charge, and instead of defending the charge by sustaining appellant’s objection, the judge overruled appellant’s objection and allowed the prosecutor to continue. I assume the judge did so because, as we all agree, the prosecutor’s argument was a correct statement of Texas law and of the allegations in the information, while the application paragraph of the jury charge was an incorrect statement of the law.1
I also agree with Justice Smith that allowing the prosecutor to argue against the charge was error. Justice Taft believes this was not error. Thus, the question is squarely presented: Is it error for a prosecutor to argue against the court’s charge and tell the jury the law is different than in the court’s charge, even if the prosecutor is right and the charge is wrong? In my opinion, such conduct by a prosecutor, or any other attorney, is error.
There must be order in our courts, and judges must impose it. Judges impose order by giving jurors written instructions. If the instructions are incorrect, the prosecutor should object and request their correction. The prosecutor here did not do that. If he had and the judge had erroneously refused the correction, then the prosecutor, like the jury, should have followed that charge, not subverted it. Otherwise, order would be lost; the prosecutor will have replaced the judge as the master of the courtroom.
At this point, I begin to agree with Justice Taft. All our cases that reverse because the prosecutor told the jury to disregard the charge are ones where the charge stated the law correctly, the prosecutor stated the law incorrectly, and therefore, by arguing against the charge, the prosecutor was urging the jury to disregard the law. Obviously, that is the opposite of this case.
*418Here, the charge was wrong, the prosecutor was right, and by arguing against the charge, the prosecutor was urging the jury to follow the law as found in our statute and as alleged in the information. That could not have harmed appellant because he had no right to be tried under law more favorable than the legislature has enacted.
If the jury followed the law as described by the prosecutor, appellant got the protection the law allows. If the jury followed the law as described in the charge, appellant got more protection than the law allows. In no case did appellant get less protection than the law allows.
Nor is there an issue of surprise. Because both the DWI statute and this particular information allowed conviction if appellant had lost either of his faculties, appellant could not have been surprised by the erroneous charge, except pleasantly upon receiving an undeserved and unexpected windfall that incorrectly raised the State’s burden of proof. That is not harmful error; it is beneficial error.
The case of Malik v. State, 953 S.W.2d 234 (Tex.Crim.App.1997), is important to my decision. Under Malik, we no longer measure the sufficiency of the evidence against a charge like this one, i.e., one that incorrectly raises the State’s burden of proof. Rather, we measure it against a hypothetically correct charge. Id. at 240. Under pre-Malik law, if the State had proved that appellant had lost only one faculty, then we would have reversed and acquitted because we would have judged sufficiency of the evidence against the charge actually given, even though it had incorrectly raised the State’s burden of proof by requiring proof of the loss of both faculties. However, after Malik, if the State had proved that appellant had lost only one faculty and the jury nevertheless convicted him under this charge that erroneously required loss of both faculties, we would not reverse. We would affirm because the evidence would have been sufficient measured against a “hypothetically correct” charge, even though insufficient when measured against the incorrect charge actually given. In other words, in judging sufficiency of the evidence, we would disregard an erroneous jury charge like this one. Because that is the way we now judge sufficiency of the evidence, I am confident that this error did not harm appellant.2

. I agree with Justice Taft that the way to cure this error was to amend the charge, rather than to allow the prosecutor to argue against the charge.

. I disagree with any suggestion in Justice Smith’s opinion that this error was harmless because of the strength of the State’s case. In my opinion, the State’s case was weak. It consisted of one police witness, no civilian witnesses, no breath, blood, or urine tests, no accident, and no videotape. It relied completely on one officer’s recollection and opinion, four years after the arrest, of appellant’s symptoms. This evidence, although legally sufficient, is far from the overwhelming evidence that might render an error harmless.