Court Opinion

ID: 9772028
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:05:15.328573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:41.648429
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting on State’s Petition for Discretionary Review.
The Court errs today to hold the jury charge in this cause was sufficient to authorize the jury to convict appellant under the law of parties. The Court compounds its error when it blames the court of appeals for failing to take into account that appellant did not object to this supposedly non-existent deficiency. The fact of the matter is that the Court grossly misinterprets its own opinion in Chatman v. State, 846 S.W.2d 329 (Tex.Cr. App.1993), in more ways than one. I respectfully dissent.

I.

The jury charge in this cause contains an application paragraph authorizing the jury to convict appellant as a primary actor in the offense. This application paragraph fails to reference the law of parties at all. By itself, therefore, it fails to authorize the jury to convict appellant as a party to the indicted offense. Were this the only application paragraph in the charge, the court of appeals would unquestionably be correct that it is obliged to measure sufficiency of the evidence without applying the law of parties. See Jones v. State, 815 S.W.2d 667 (Tex.Cr. App.1991) (application paragraph that fails altogether to reference abstract definition of the law of parties, or to otherwise apply that law to the facts of the case, does not authorize conviction on that theory, and evidence must show defendant guilty as a primary actor); Walker v. State, 823 S.W.2d 247 (Tex. Cr.App.1991) (same); Biggins v. State, 824 S.W.2d 179 (Tex. Cr.App.1992) (same). In fact, its holding would be unremarkable, and we never would have granted the State’s petition for discretionary review in this cause.
But, as the majority opinion points out, there is another application paragraph, of sorts, in the jury charge. Immediately after the first application paragraph, the charge sets out the law of parties in the abstract— reminiscent of the jury charge in Jones. See 815 S.W.2d at 668. Immediately following that, however, is a further paragraph, not to be found in the jury charge in Jones, viz:
“Therefore, if you believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, either by his own conduct, or acting with intent to promote or assist the commission of the offense, solicited, encouraged, directed, aided or attempted to aid another to commit an offense, and said other person did commit the offense, you will find the defendant guilty of said offense.
If you do not so believe, or if you have a reasonable doubt thereof, you will find the defendant not guilty.”
The only issue presented to us is whether this second purported “application paragraph” adequately applies the law of parties to the facts of the case so as to distinguish this cause from Jones and its progeny — in other words, whether this cause is controlled by Jones or by our subsequent holding in Chatman v. State, supra. In my view, Chat-man does not control.
In Chatman the jury charge first defined the law of parties in the abstract. Later, in the application paragraph, the jury was authorized to find Chatman guilty should it find he committed the offense “either acting alone or as a party, as that term has been defined,” presumably in the earlier abstract definition. The court of appeals held that mere allusion to abstract definitions in the application paragraph was not sufficient to authorize the jury to convict under the law of parties. Therefore, on authority of Jones and Walker, both supra, the court of appeals reversed the conviction and ordered entry of a judgment of acquittal. Chatman v. State, 830 S.W.2d 637 (Tex.App. — Beaumont 1992).
*901We granted the State’s petition for discretionary review in Chatman, and reversed. We noted that the application paragraph was objectionable for not applying the law of parties to the facts of the case with all the precision to which an accused is entitled under the law. Id., at 331-32. Had Chatman objected to the charge, we acknowledged, he would have been entitled to greater specificity in the application paragraph. Failure to grant it to him would surely have constituted reversible trial error. Nevertheless, we held, the charge was minimally sufficient to authorize a jury to convict under the law of parties, and that theory of culpability was also available to the appellate court as a matter of sufficiency analysis. Chatman, supra, 846 S.W.2d at 332. Although we did not expressly say so, it was in this way that we distinguished our holdings in Jones and Walker.
Although Chatman is instructive here, it is not dispositive. The first application paragraph in the instant charge does not allude to the law of parties even to the minimal extent we found sufficient in Chatman to authorize the jury, by reference to abstract definitions, to convict. In fact, as with the jury instructions in Jones, the first application paragraph calls for a verdict of guilty or not guilty before the jury has even been abstractly instructed on the law of parties. The question here, not resolved by our opinion in Chatman, is whether the second purported application paragraph, coming after the abstract definition of the law of parties, is somehow sufficient, either independently or in conjunction with the rest of the charge, to authorize conviction of appellant as a party.
In conclusory fashion, the majority “finds” that the court of appeals erred by “limit[ing] its focus solely to the one paragraph which applied the law to the factual allegations that were set out in the indictment, and disregard[ing] the instruction which applied the law of parties to the question of whether appellant committed ‘the offense’.” Op. at 899. By this I presume the majority simply means the court of appeals erred to consider only the first application paragraph, without reference to the second purported application paragraph. When the majority considers the charge as a whole, it “finds” that “the general application of the law of parties to the facts was sufficient to refer the jury to the abstract instructions on the law of parties and to the specific elements of the instant offense.” Op. at 899. By this I take the majority to mean that the second purported application paragraph directed the jury’s attention both to the abstract definition of the law of parties, and to the first application paragraph, and that in combination these instructions somehow served to authorize the jury to convict appellant as a party. If this is true, then of course the court of appeals erred. But the reader is not made privy to the analytical path by which the Court came to this “finding.” I am unable to reconstruct the path myself.
It is obvious enough that the second purported application paragraph referred the jury back to the immediately preceding abstract definition of the law of parties. It is less than clear to me, however, that it also suffices to authorize the jury retroactively to apply the law of parties in the first application paragraph. Nor is it clear to me that it independently authorizes the jury to convict appellant for the alleged offense under the law of parties. It seems to me it does neither of these things.
First, the second purported application paragraph does not expressly refer to the first application paragraph, so any reference must be implicit somehow. Yet I do not see any implied reference either. The second purported application paragraph informs the jury that appellant can be found guilty as a party if, with requisite intent he solicited, encouraged, etc., “another to commit an offense[J” (Emphasis added.) It is thus phrased in abstract terms. It does not authorize conviction should the jury find he solicited, encouraged, etc., commission of the alleged offense. Thus, when it directs the jury to “find the defendant guilty of said offense[,]” it is not referring to the specific offense the jury was authorized to convict appellant for as a primary actor in the first application paragraph. Instead, it simply au*902thorizes conviction for the unidentified, hypothetical offense (“an offense”) alluded to earlier in the second purported application paragraph. As such, it is really nothing more than an extension of the abstract definition of the law of parties that comes just before it. It neither incorporates, nor is incorporated by, the first application paragraph. It is simply juxtaposed to it. But as we repeated in Jones, “[m]ere juxtaposition does not amount to authorization.” 815 S.W.2d at 670, citing Garrett v. State, 749 S.W.2d 784, at 789, n. 6 (Tex.Cr.App.1986) (Opinion on original submission).
Second, and for essentially the same reason, the second purported application paragraph does not independently authorize the jury to convict appellant of the alleged offense under the law of parties. Again, it only informs the jury abstractly that it may find appellant guilty for “an” offense if he acted as a party. It does not designate which offense. Although it may have the appearance of an application paragraph, it does not operate like one.
Even if it did operate like a genuine application paragraph, it would not authorize the jury to convict appellant as a party when read in the context of the entire charge. The reason for this is quite simple. The first application paragraph plainly instructs the jury to find appellant not guilty should it find he did not commit the offense as a primary actor. Therefore, following the flow-chart logic of the trial court’s charge — even “reading the charge as a whole,” as we are so often importuned to do by our Presiding Judge McCormick — the jury would be obliged to acquit appellant before it ever considered even the abstract definition of the law of parties, much less the second purported application paragraph. Cf. Cobarrubio v. State, 675 S.W.2d 749 (Tex.Cr.App.1983) (jury charge that did not require negation of sudden passion in application paragraph authorizing conviction for murder denied defendant due process because jury could convict him for murder without ever reaching issue of sudden passion).
Finally, even if the second purported application paragraph were independently sufficient to authorize the jury to convict appellant on the law of parties, the best that could be said about it is that it would conflict with the first application paragraph. The first application paragraph still mandates acquittal unless the jury should find appellant guilty as a primary actor — a theory the court of appeals held not supported by the evidence. A jury “reading this charge as a whole,” even if it were not bound to acquit appellant by the plain terms of the first application paragraph before it ever reached the second, would still face the paradox of a jury charge that both plainly required an acquittal and at the same time mandated, should the jury find appellant guilty as a party, a conviction. I cannot fathom why the majority would want to construe such a mind-bending set of instructions as clearly sufficient to authorize conviction on the law of parties.
For all these reasons I conclude that the jury charge in this cause was indeed insufficient to authorize conviction of appellant under the law of parties. This cause is governed by our holding in Jones after all, just as the court of appeals concluded, and not by our later decision in Chatman. The majority today errs to reverse the court of appeals’ judgment. I dissent.

II.

The majority compounds its error when it faults the court of appeals for failing to take into account the fact that appellant did not object to the jury charge. The majority opines, quite gratuitously it seems to me, that the court of appeals “erred in its analysis by overlooking the fact that appellant never objected to the trial court’s instructions applying the law of parties to the facts of the instant case.” Op. at 899. Later the majority again “finds” the court of appeals “erred in its analysis when it disregarded appellant’s failure to object to the charge[.]” Id. Beyond this, the majority does not explain.
Once again, I am at a loss to understand. It is true, as the majority notes, that in *903Chatman we observed that “[i]f a defendant desires a more explicit application of a particular method of acting as a party, it is his burden to request such or object to the charge.” Op. at 899, quoting 846 S.W.2d at 382. But by this point in our opinion in Chatman we had already concluded that the jury charge was minimally sufficient to authorize the jury to convict under the law of parties. The observation was not part and parcel of our analysis in reaching that conclusion. We were simply admonishing the bench and bar that an application paragraph may be minimally sufficient to authorize conviction based on the law of parties even though not as precise or explicit as a defendant would be entitled to demand; and that it therefore behooves a defendant to object to such an application paragraph, and seek his relief, if any, in the form of trial error, rather than to pursue a claim of insufficient evidence on appeal.
That is all Chatman says about the need to object. Chatman does not suggest, as the majority would have it now, that failure to object to an application paragraph that was not even minimally sufficient to authorize conviction under the law of parties precludes a defendant from challenging sufficiency of the evidence if the State’s proof showed only that he was a primary actor. If this were indeed the case, surely we would have said as much in Jones. But of course we did not, for in the Benson/Boozer line of cases, of which Jones is a logical extension, we have never remotely held that whether we will measure sufficiency of the evidence against the actual jury charge given is somehow contingent upon an objection from the defendant. See Benson v. State, 661 S.W.2d 708 (Tex.Cr.App. 1982) (Opinion on State’s second motion for rehearing); Boozer v. State, 717 S.W.2d 608 (Tex.Cr.App.1984).
To thus heaping inaccuracy upon error, I also dissent.
BAIRD, J., joins.