Court Opinion

ID: 9749255
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:30:40.135576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:45.646921
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s holding that the trial court did not err by refusing to instruct the jury that Gerald Smith was an accomplice as a matter of law or by refusing to submit the issue to the jury of whether he was an accomplice as a matter of fact. I also agree with the ultimate outcome of the opinion, but I write separately to address a pervasive problem raised by Appellant. It is a problem that has been addressed by federal courts but that continues as routine practice in some jurisdictions — selecting more than one jury from a single venire.
As our sister court in Tyler reminded us, “Although[ ] the selection of more than one jury from a venire panel[ ] has been characterized as a fundamental defect in the trial proceedings, it has never been held to be of constitutional dimension.”7 It is common knowledge that “[bjecause many Texas counties have small populations, interim jury service is allowed.”8 Thus, it is well settled that the selection of more than one jury from a venire panel is a necessary and accepted practice in some counties. In many small counties, a single jury panel is brought in for voir dire. That panel is the jury panel for more than one case, and they sit through the voir dire for all of the cases. Customarily, the prosecutor questions the jury about the issues in each of the cases to be tried, but the lawyer representing the defendant participates only in the voir dire touching on the issues of that defendant’s case. This was the manner in which the voir dire was conducted in the case now before this court.
As the Fifth Circuit has explained, the practice of choosing more than one jury from a single venire is a fundamental defect: “Our refusal to denominate such *633claims as constitutional does not render them insignificant.”9 And as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals explained in Linnell II,
Although in many jurisdictions repeat jury service is inevitable, there is a key difference between prior jury service and interim jury service: the difference is the ability of the parties to question veniremembers about the former but not the latter. As the Fifth Circuit reasoned: “The vice of (interim jury service) is that it forces counsel to act on information that must necessarily be obsolete by the time of trial.”
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In the instant case the parties were required to conduct voir dire and exercise their peremptory strikes before the interim jury service. By picking two juries from the same venire, it was impossible to question the interim jurors concerning jury service which they had yet to experience. No amount of voir dire can determine the effects of sitting in a trial which has not yet taken place. And, as the Courts in Kirkland and [U.S. v. ] Jefferson [569 F.2d 260 (5th Cir.1978) ] noted, there exists a “heightened danger of prejudice” with interim jury service. Consequently, we hold that interim jury service denies the parties the intelligent exercise of their peremptory challenges.
We understand that repeat jury service may be necessary in some jurisdictions because of their small population. However, even in those jurisdictions the constitutional right to counsel encompasses the right to question prospective jurors in order to intelligently exercise peremptory challenges. Therefore, we hold that if the trial judge intends to select more than one jury from a single venire, the veniremembers selected to serve as jurors must be excluded from the venire from which the other jurors will be selected.10
Appellant argues that the trial court erred by conducting voir dire in this manner because it violated the requisites of article 33.03 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, which provides that a defendant “must be personally present at the trial.”11 The State argues that “the trial” refers only to a defendant’s own trial, and not the trial of another defendant who shared the same jury panel.
The State also argues that the morning session of voir dire was for a different defendant and was therefore not part of Appellant’s trial and that the trial court consequently did not err by conducting the morning session outside Appellant’s presence. The State alternatively argues that even if voir dire were erroneously conducted outside Appellant’s presence, any error would be harmless because the panel would be reexamined with him present.
The State relies on Adanandus v. State.12 In Adanandus, the defendant voluntarily absented himself from the first voir dire in his ease, but, according to the State, this “absence ... was ... ‘undone’ [by a] re-examination in [his] presence of [all those] voir dired in his absence.”13 The State argues that because Appellant had an opportunity to fully voir dire in his presence everyone who had been questioned during the previous voir dire, the *634purposes of the statute were met, again relying on Adanandus.
This is a difficult issue because it requires balancing the limitations of resources in small counties against defendants’ constitutional rights. Allowing the State’s prosecutor to participate in a voir dire examination from which the defendant is barred from participating appears to give the State an advantage. The State has the opportunity to observe the venire members’ reactions to questions that may not be asked when the defendant is present. The State also has the opportunity to watch the body language of the members of the venire at a time denied to the defendant. Additionally, the jury becomes better acquainted with the representative of the State. Anyone who has ever tried a lawsuit knows that it is very important to bond with the jurors who eventually end up on the jury.
At the same time, especially if a defendant is in jail, it taxes the resources of the small county to allow an incarcerated defendant to watch someone else’s voir dire without allowing the jury to see the defendant in handcuffs or shackles or specifically supervised by a bailiff or sheriffs deputy. Personnel resources of the county are strained by requiring supervision of more than one defendant at the same time.
In the case now before this court, Appellant was not in jail at the time of voir dire but had been released after posting bail. Trials are public.14 Under normal circumstances, any person is free to attend court and to watch and listen to voir dire. Appellant, however, suggests that he did not attend voir dire of the panel for the case preceding his, and the record does not reflect that Appellant or his counsel attended court during the voir dire of the panel for the case preceding his. Nothing in the record suggests that Appellant was prevented from attending the voir dire, although he would not have had the opportunity to interact with the potential jurors at the same time that the State was speaking with them and establishing a relationship with them.
As the Texas Court of Criminal
[Sjimilar jury selection procedures have been characterized as ‘a fundamental defect in the trial proceedings’ but nevertheless not of constitutional dimension. ... Claims of administrative efficiency, convenience and necessity as justification for interim jury service in similar cases have a thin veneer indeed. Trial judges should make every effort to avoid such procedure.15
It would be better practice to have a completely separate venire for each voir dire session, but small counties often do not have that resource. It would be better to allow the defendant and his counsel to be present during all discussions with the venire from which the defendants jury will be selected. Again, small counties do not have those resources. Yet article 33.03 requires that he be present.16
Although the Fifth Circuit has called this practice a fundamental defect, it does not offend the constitution of either the United States or of Texas. Consistent with the Fifth Circuit’s holding, Appellant has not raised a constitutional challenge to the procedure of calling a single venire to be questioned regarding more than one case. He has raised only a statutory complaint. Absent a showing that a juror is *635disqualified, whether she was disqualified in an earlier voir dire or for some other reason, or that a juror served on another jury chosen from the same venire, the procedure of choosing more than one jury from a single panel, while not favored, is not necessarily error when the defendant is free to be present in the courtroom during voir dire of the panel for other trials.
In the case now before this court, the evidence of Appellant’s guilt was overwhelming, and it cannot be said that the trial court’s calling a single venire from which both the jury for his trial and the jury for the case preceding his were chosen had a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the jury’s verdict. There is no evidence that Appellant was prevented from being present during the voir dire for the preceding case, nor is there evidence that the voir dire in which Appellant did participate was not sufficient to provide the information he needed. Nor is there any evidence that any juror was disqualified or struck for cause either during the first voir dire or as a result of anything that occurred because of participating in the first voir dire or that any juror served on the trial preceding Appellant’s trial. I would therefore hold that Appellant has not established that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing more than one jury to be chosen from a single venire.
Because I agree with the Fifth Circuit that this practice of choosing multiple juries from a single venire, with only one party present and participating in the entire voir dire process, has serious and fundamental flaws, I respectfully concur in the result only regarding this issue.

. Linnell v. State, 964 S.W.2d 1, 2 (Tex.App.Tyler 1994) (Linnell I) (quoting United States v. Capua, 656 F.2d 1033, 1038 (5th Cir.1981) (internal quotations omitted)), rev’d, 935 S.W.2d 426 (Tex.Crim.App.1996) (Linnell II).

. Id. at 2 (citing Houston v. State, 743 S.W.2d 751, 753 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1987, no pet.)).

. Capua, 656 F.2d at 1038.

. 935 S.W.2d at 429-30 (citations omitted).

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 33.03 (Vernon 2006).

. 866 S.W.2d 210, 217 (Tex.Crim.App.1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1215, 114 S.Ct. 1338, 127 L.Ed.2d 686 (1994).

. Id.

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 1.24 (Vernon 2005).

. Kirkland v. State, 786 S.W.2d 557, 561 (Tex.App.-Austin 1990, no pet.).

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 33.03; see also Kirkland, 786 S.W.2d at 561.