Court Opinion

ID: 9773241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:40:31.993408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:51.237315
License: Public Domain

BAIRD, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the holding of the majority that the trial court erred by refusing to limit the jury’s consideration of the extraneous offenses. However, for the following reasons, I respectfully dissent to the disposition reached by the majority opinion.
Appellant was convicted in 1981. His original appeal seeking to establish indigen-cy took five years. Abdnor v. State, 712 S.W.2d 136 (Tex.Cr.App.1986). His direct appeal on the merits was not resolved until 1988. Abdnor v. State, 756 S.W.2d 815 (Tex.App.—Dallas 1988). This case has been pending before this Court since that time. Today, the majority remands the cause for the Court of Appeals to conduct a harm analysis.
I believe justice would be better served if we conducted such an analysis instead of remanding this cause to the Court of Appeals. Contrast, Porter v. State, 709 S.W.2d 213 (Tex.Cr.App.1986) (trial court error in failing to limit jury’s consideration of extraneous offenses constituted error; *479reversed and remanded for Court of Appeals to assess harm pursuant to Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157 (Tex.Cr.App.1985)).
An error in a jury charge which has been properly preserved by objection will call for reversal as long as the error is not harmless. Almanza v. State, 686 S.W.2d 157, 171 (Tex.Cr.App.1985) (Opinion on State’s Motion for Rehearing). Where the defendant preserves error by timely requesting a jury instruction, any harm resulting to a defendant will require reversal. Gibson v. State, 726 S.W.2d 129, 133 (Tex.Cr.App.1987) (Emphasis in original).
For the following reasons I cannot conclude that the trial court’s failure to limit the jury’s consideration of the extraneous offenses was harmless. First, there is a greater prejudicial effect from the admission of criminal extraneous conduct rather than noncriminal conduct. Plante v. State, 692 S.W.2d 487, 490 n. 3 (Tex.Cr.App.1985). Additionally, appellant attempted to establish the affirmative defense of insanity, which was sharply contested with experts contradicting each other. As appellant never physically harmed Parsons, the jury might have concluded from the extraneous acts that appellant knew that his conduct was wrong, or that appellant was capable of conforming his conduct, when he killed the complainant. Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. § 8.01. Finally, the State mentioned the extraneous offense involving the knife at closing argument but did not limit the argument to Parsons’ credibility. Therefore, in my opinion, the failure to limit the jury’s consideration of the extraneous offenses was not harmless. Richardson v. State, 751 S.W.2d 663 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1988), rev’d on other grounds, Richardson v. State, 786 S.W.2d 335 (Tex.Cr.App.1990).
Finally, while I believe, for the reasons stated above, the Court of Appeals will find harm pursuant to Almanza, 686 S.W.2d 157, in the event the Court of Appeals does not, we will certainly be called upon to address the remaining two grounds for review, and the disposition of the harm analysis pursuant to this remand. This would result in even greater appellate delay when such can be prevented by this Court at this time.
MILLER, J., joins this opinion.