Court Opinion

ID: 9762026
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:07:59.258195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:29.232494
License: Public Domain

BROOKSHIRE, Justice,
concurring.
This concurring opinion is written separately to augment my concurring opinion in George Wawrykow v. State, 866 S.W.2d 87 (Tex.App.—Beaumont, 1993, n.p.h.) and filed this date, Nov. 24, 1993.
Again, the writer of the other concurring opinion states that he would not be “so cautious” in following the “recent dictates of our reviewing court in Criner v. State, 860 S.W.2d 84 (Tex.Crim.App.1992)”. The Court of Criminal Appeals has been properly characterized as the caretaker of Texas law, being the court of last resort within the State court system in criminal matters. In Criner, the Court of Criminal Appeals was applying Texas law as a law court confronting and correcting errors of law; the High Court was not passing upon or writing upon a fact question or an insufficiency of factual evidence question. It should be obvious that when a court of appeals is considering and analyzing an insufficiency of the factual evidence issue, that the courts of appeals must apply the correct rules of substantive law and must avoid errors of law.
In civil appeals, a parallel, harmonious, and functional doctrine is correctly and judiciously applied by the Supreme Court of Texas. See and compare Pool v. Ford Motor Co., 715 S.W.2d 629 (Tex.1986). Courts of appeals are simply not free to reanalyze or to reweigh the evidence and set aside a jury’s verdict unless the intermediate appellate court acts correctly and constitutionally while exercising its fact jurisdiction. See and compare Dyson v. Olin Corp., 692 S.W.2d 456 (Tex.1985). See also In re King’s Estate, 150 Tex. 662, 244 S.W.2d 660 (1951), Robert W. Calvert, “No Evidence” and “Insufficient Evidence” Points of Error, 38 Tex.L.Rev. 361 (1960); St. John Garwood, The Question of Insufficient Evidence on Appeal, 30 Tex. L.Rev. 803 (1952). The landmark decision in In re King’s Estate firmly established that the Texas Supreme Court might properly take jurisdiction, notwithstanding the finality of the judgments of the intermediate courts of appeals on fact questions, in order for the Texas Supreme Court to determine if a correct standard had been applied by the intermediate appellate courts.
Indeed, a number of later landmark cases such as Puryear v. Porter, 153 Tex. 82, 264 S.W.2d 689 (1954); Garza v. Alviar, 395 S.W.2d 821 (Tex.1965); and Harmon v. Sohio Pipeline Co., 623 S.W.2d 314 (Tex.1981) are important ruling cases in a variety of different situations in which the Texas Supreme Court has properly reviewed courts of appeals decisions on factual insufficiency issues because the intermediate appellate courts had employed an incorrect test or standard. Thus, even in crucial, factual insufficiency matters, the Supreme Court has *103set out guidelines and rules of law to be followed by the courts of appeals in reviewing same and the civil High Court has delineated the legal role of the courts of appeals. Inescapably, then, in Criner, the Court of Criminal Appeals was exercising its prerogative as caretaker of the proper principles of law to be used by the courts of appeals in passing upon crucial issues of factual insufficiency.
Indeed, the task of the dual high courts has not been fully completed. In In re King’s Estate, Chief Justice Calvert set out several appropriate procedures and correct analyses of the evidence and favored an explanation of why a certain finding was unjust. Justice Garwood opined that “[mjaybe some day we will develop more rules to aid trial courts and courts of civil appeals in dealing with this troublesome question.”
Therefore, I readily concur with Chief Justice Walker’s decision that sufficient evidence exists to sustain the jury’s verdict. It is important to note that after listening to all of the evidence juries are free to employ their common sense and to use common knowledge, usual observation, and reliable experience obtained in the affairs of life when considering reasonable, logical, ineluctable inferences that may be reasonably drawn from the evidence and testimony. United States v. Heath, 970 F.2d 1397, 1402 (5th Cir.1992), cert. denied sub nom, Cheng v. U.S., — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1643, 123 L.Ed.2d 265 (1993). Thus, circumstantial evidence in a ease is not to be disregarded.
Uniformity and balance, I submit, are desirable in the criminal justice system. The decision and holdings of the Court of Criminal Appeals in Criner are not only salutary and beneficial, they are necessary to have uniformity and equal justice, equally and fairly administered in the 254 counties of Texas as well as in the fourteen courts of appeals deciding criminal cases and writing on the law of crimes. Otherwise, different and varying standards, tests, and erroneous constructions of rules of law might well be applied in the fourteen sister courts.