Court Opinion

ID: 9777834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:25:35.086699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:01.984412
License: Public Domain

*614CLINTON, Judge,
concurring in the denial of the State’s motion for leave to file motion for rehearing.
I write only to clarify that my own understanding of “reviewable rulings of the trial court” as employed in the majority opinion on original submission, coincides with that expressed by Judge Campbell here. As was explicated in Ortega v. State, 668 S.W.2d 701, 705, n. 10 (Tex.Cr.App.1984) (Opinion on original submission):
“But once the phrase is incorporated, into the court’s instructions to the jury in such a way that the jury must find it before a verdict of guilt is authorized, Article 36.13, V.A.C.C.P., it must be proved, or the verdict will be deemed ‘contrary to the law and evidence.’ See Article 40.03(9), V.A.C.C.P. In sum, there is no such thing as ‘surplusage’ in the part of the court’s instructions to the jury which authorizes a conviction, and if the prosecutor believes that portion of the charge unnecessarily increases his burden of proof, it behooves him specially to request a charge which correctly allocates the burden placed on him by law. This is nothing more than the course of law which is due before a person may be deprived of liberty. Article 1.04, V.A.C.C.P. And if the record reflects the prosecutor has pursued this course to protect his lawful obligations, but the trial court has nevertheless refused the amendment to the indictment or submission of the requested charge, and the evidence is found insufficient to support the verdict because of the trial court’s errors in this regard, those reviewable rulings of the trial court found erroneous by the appellate court constitute ‘trial error,’ and the State is free to pursue another prosecution. Cf. Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978); and Greene v. Massey, 437 U.S. 19, 98 S.Ct. 2151, 57 L.Ed.2d 15 (1978). [Emphasis original].”
Clearly, rulings of the trial court which the State would have us review for error so as to defeat an appellant’s substantive claim of a bar to retrial must be somehow shown to be subject to review for error; appellate courts have no occasion to review such a ruling for error if both parties were satisfied with the trial court’s action at the time it was taken.1
In sum, I agree with Judge Campbell, that in the event the State had objected to the trial court’s unnecessarily increasing its burden of proof, we would be in a position to point to the accomplice witness charge and say, “that charge was erroneous just as the prosecutor argued,” then hold that error was the direct cause of the reversal of the conviction and as such was “trial” charge error.2 But when the defendant, the State and the trial judge all agree as to what must be proved in a prosecution, yet the evidence fails to measure up, the State has had its “bite at the apple” since being given a fair opportunity to marshall the evidence necessarily includes a comprehending election of exactly what that evidence must establish. Indeed there is no “error” other than the sufficiency of the evidence. The State simply cannot argue on appeal that a critical choice to acquiesce in the burden imposed on it in the trial court, constituted a critical “error” entitling it successively to prosecute a citizen.

. While it is true that Article 36.14, V.A.C.C.P., provides for objections by an accused only, the Court has found it "elementary that the state has the right to have issues in its favor submitted properly,” Berry v. State, 80 Tex.Cr.R. 87, 188 S.W. 997, 998 (1916), and has made it the duty of a trial court to submit issues "on the theory of the state’s contention" raised by the evidence, Flewellen v. State, 83 Tex.Cr.R. 568, 204 S.W. 657, 661 (1917). See also Cantu v. State, 170 Tex.Cr.R. 375, 341 S.W.2d 451, 452 (1960) and Jaggers v. State, 104 Tex.Cr.R. 174, 283 S.W. 527, 528 (1926). Surely a trial court would not be in error if it afforded the prosecutor an opportunity to be heard regarding defects in the charge.

. As opposed to an error of the prosecutor in either circumscribing or meeting his burden of proof.